@skyfaller Indeed, we'd prefer that these projects remain under our auspices, open source, and unencumbered by a CLA.

For the avoidance of doubt, the Foundation's mission and rules forbid us from acting for the private benefit of any party, and as such we cannot contribute anything that requires us to sign a CLA wherein the assignment is made to a privately-held entity.

We are committed to building up the open source commons around Matrix.

@skyfaller I agree in general, but they could have relicensed right now to a proprietary license too, so the CLA doesn't really give them any new rights that they didn't have before.

That said, the Element team being the primary contributors to the project is itself concerning. I do think that the structure of the Matrix protocol itself limits their ability to do harm thankfully.

@jfred @skyfaller We think this is a great opportunity for the ecosystem to shine, and highlight that the spec remains open source *and* under open governance – though we will also be the first to note that our governance needs improvement.

Broadly speaking, we find it concerning when any major open source project is dominated by a single contributor. We look forward to channeling our resources to help improve the size and diversity of the contributor ecosystem in the months and years ahead!

@jfred @skyfaller

Have you ever contemplated why the Matrix contributor ecosystem has not grown as much as you expected so far? Don't you think not-so-good communications by those who both contribute to specs and Element might have discouraged possible contributors from even enter the ecosystem? For example, check the discussion full of mistrust and resentment: github.com/vector-im/element-m….

I guess it is a matter which cannot be solved by changing licenses or replacing DCO with CLA, etc.

Possibility to define our own emoji · Issue #339 · vector-im/element-meta

I would like to have the possibility to add my own emojis. Could you please add this feature? Kind regards

^GitHub

@networkexception While we hope that Element's decision has the intended impacts for them and the broader ecosystem, we do also hope this shines a spotlight on the rest of the ecosystem.

We want to see a world in which the Matrix ecosystem includes multiple stable, popular open source implementations of servers and clients.

to be fair, the fork in itself reflects reality and is very fair - element has (always) been the main force behind development.

Still taking ownership of the project entirely is pretty bad. It changes synapse (lefts face it, dendrite has been degraded to a playground) from being the forefront of a free, open source messaging ecosystem to an asset of the company, in the hope to get people to pay for developing it further I assume.

@herzenschein To your questions:

1) The Foundation itself never did maintenance or development of either project.
2) Assets refers to the copyrights, or at least those which Element was entitled to assign to the Foundation in the first place.
3) Infrastructure here refers to the GitHub org, repo, and communications infrastructure including Matrix rooms and their moderation.
4) Our understanding is that the forks will live under a GH org belonging to Element.

@larsmb The Foundation's position is that we'd prefer the projects remain under our auspices and unencumbered by a CLA.

As Element is the one implementing a CLA on their forks of the projects, this is a question that only they can answer.

@mirdaki Yes, thank you. We also believe the historical perspective is important in understanding what is happening and what may follow.

With regards to the reasoning for the CLA, our position is that we'd prefer the projects to remain under our auspices and unencumbered by a CLA – and that Element is the only one who can answer the question as to why they're implementing one.

@mirdaki There are several dimensions to this that are difficult to boil down into a thread. Expect more comms from us soon.

Our view is that the Foundation's role in developing open source software is to fill gaps that others are not addressing.

We would both need to (1) see a gap and (2) have the resources to fund development.

Today, we don't have the funds to even meet current obligations. Fixing that and actualizing open governance are the first big projects of our Managing Director.

@yuvipanda We're not happy with the changes and our stance is that we'd prefer the projects to remain under our auspices, unencumbered by a CLA.

Given the nature of open source, there's nothing we can do to stop any individual or entity from forking our projects, and that's true of projects at other open source foundations too.

We will be doubling down on our efforts to implement open governance and cultivate a contributor base with a diversity of employers and lived experiences.

@csolisr We have every reason to believe the forks will remain interoperable, in part because that is a core selling point for Element.

But should that change, the Foundation's role remains: to act as a neutral custodian and to nurture Matrix as efficiently as possible as a single unfragmented standard, for the greater benefit of the whole ecosystem.

With that in mind, it would absolutely be within our scope to invest in compatibility should we need to.

Doing specs is good, but synapse is the only viable project out there and now that they took full control over it they will have zero incentive to wait for specs to be written before implementing features.

You will either be on synapse + element or you will be a second class citizen.

That's a shame, I used to like this project.

@hamburghammer The Foundation's stance is that we'd prefer these projects to remain under our auspices and unencumbered by a CLA.

Only Element can answer why they've decided to implement a CLA with their forks.

thank you for the answer and you're right, I should have directed the qestion directly to Element.

Thanks for your work on shaping the communication of tomorrow.

@serebit Indeed, the Foundation's stance is that we'd prefer the projects remain actively maintained under our auspices and unencumbered by a CLA.

We're glad they chose an open source license, and we also think this is a moment for the rest of the ecosystem to shine.

Ultimately, this is a point in favor of protocols, as the spec is the beating heart of Matrix and remains open source *and* under open governance that will only get more open as we seat the first elected Governing Board next year.