Your amendments to the GNU License has some scary language

[cheerios911]

I'm hoping the twake team can clarify a few items on the license we noticed, or our attorney noticed on the amendments provided to the GNU v3 agreement. As it reads, this isn't really that open source if Linagora can at any time sue us or stop us from using the code. While I understand you guys want to keep your brand on everything this system does, from email messages to the UI, that is your choice as you are giving away free software, but being able to pull the rug from your community based on some legal language to be able to do it at will, doesn't make much sense to me.

1. Linagora makes it clear we can't remove your logo's or branding from the system, nor from system generated messages without consent from linagora. (We've emailed Linagora corporate many times on this with no response, but i saw someone else in the OpenPaas brought this up and the license changed from the amended version to the standard GNU (with no response to the thread and it sits there open to this day). Just a side note, people want to customize their own messages on outbound mails, and the UI, but again, your guys choice.

In accordance with Section 7 and subsection (b) of the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, these Appropriate Legal Notices consist in the display of the Signature Notice “Twake is powered by Linagora.” for any and all type of outbound messages (e.g. e-mail and meeting requests). Retaining this Signature Notice in any and all free and Open Source versions of Twake is mandatory notwhistanding any other terms and conditions.

2. The problem is in your next amendment that says you can pull our license to use the software for anything that you deem to hurt the brand, but you have to promote the brand lol. So in essence, it's free software unless Linagora says so? What happens if someone does something your firm doesn't like, no more twake for you and Linagora gets to sue you because you used twake and they don't approve of what you do?

Using these trademarks in a way harmful, damaging or detrimental to the value of the Twake brand or any other Linagora trademarks, integrity, image, reputation, and/or goodwill, as determined by Linagora, is also strictly prohibited, and constitutes an infringement of Linagora intellectual property rights over these trademarks as well.

Thanks and I'm not trying to be a pain here, but I don't want to be apart of a community that the creator holds god like power over its users - the same language resides in Linshare as well. Unless we are mistaking something here, why even open source this if you want to pull it from someone. That's the complete opposite of open source software is about if you ask me.

[teach-ed]

You actually aren't wrong here. I'm the one who had that ticket open with openpaas as that language made no sense to be in an open source email system, and its still open because I don't know why lol.

[RomaricMourgues]

Hello all, unfortunately I cannot clarify this point myself, I'm a technical guy. I ping our PO @BenoitTallandier . I'm sure we'll soon have answers to give you, we are just overbooked right now :)

[BenoitTallandier]

Hello Cheerios911,

Thank you for your interest in Twake !

Just for the sake of precision, Twake definitely is under a GNU Affero GPL v3 license and is free & open source software. No part of the license is amended : we only activate the additional terms related to paternity notices and trademarks.

1. Yeah, since we work on communication software, basically having our signature notice in the emails footers and interface is a way for us to ensure that people using a possibly revamped Twake derivative hear about us, and are encouraged to make enquiries, get in touch and so on (hopefully downloading and deploying Twake themselves - that would be so cool). We think that casual / community users do not usually mind the interface mentions (and email footers when applicable for example with LinShare). For companies using Twake, since they usually want to completely customize the interface with their own brand/logos/messages, we do grant a special dispensation alongside our corporate support contracts (which some corporate companies do not even use). We sometimes also grant such dispensation independently of corporate contracts, on a case by case basis : do get in touch with us and we can talk about it !

2. The original AGPL v3 license is all about copyrights but doesn't say much about trademark and branding. We're trying to avoid people associating our trademark brand with illegal stuff. We also don't want people to market a million-lines-of-code-long project as LINAGORA software (which would indicate that we did it all) whereas all they did was to integrate a single source file from Twake. Forking is great, as long as it's clear that the fork is based on LINAGORA but not made by LINAGORA. RedHat basically has the same kind of trademark policy for RHEL and basically it doesn't seem to faze anyone (nor is it the opposite of open source software since it incurred the creation of CentOS). If you have a specific (re)use case in mind, please tell us about it.

As an additional remark, our wonderful (re)users are extraordinarily respectful of this policy, and we never ever had any issue with any of them regarding the signature notices in the interface, nor regarding our trademark.

All our best !

[cheerios911]

Thanks for the prompt reply and I just spent a considerable amount of time with my attorney reviewing your documents and hopefully the community realizes what this really means to them.

basically having our signature notice in the emails footers and interface is a way for us to ensure that people using a possibly revamped Twake derivative hear about us

This is your choice, as it's your guys software, however my input is that users want to edit this info to their brand.

We're trying to avoid people associating our trademark brand with illegal stuff.

That's nice language but unfortunately, this is not the case. What you need to make clear to the community is the Linagora can at will, decide anything is infringing upon their trademark BECAUSE YOU FORCE THEM TO USE YOUR LOGOS. The language is looser than brittany spears and literally gives your new daddy company the legal right to pull the software from anyone at anytime, no questions asked.

users are extraordinarily respectful of this policy, and we never ever had any issue with any of them regarding the signature notices in the interface, nor regarding our trademark

Then why do you feel the need to impose draconian legal language on your so called community? sorry Benoit, that is the complete opposite of what open source stands for. Good luck to you guys, but I won't waste another development hour or dollar working on a project with this mentality and I'm sure when the community of other users realizes what your legal language really means you will see a lot of other users heading for the door.

[teach-ed]

@BenoitTallandier I'm hoping you go back to linagora and express to them what their legal language really constitutes. I don't think Cheerio is going to be the only community member leaving if you guys don't.

In all fairness, why don't you guys just do saas since that is what it seems linagora is about?

[teach-ed]

Just for further clarification on this point. I sent the license to our legal team as well and as @cheerios911 points out, Linagora can pull the license from anyone at anytime for any reason they want.

I've instructed my developers to stop working on this project immediately as that language is highly unacceptableand irregular.

Comparing twake to redhat did give me a good laugh though but that statement is far from true.

[Fuseteam]

hey @BenoitTallandier in case it wasn't clear, the difference between what you are doing and what redhat is doing is that redhat not enforce their brand to be used in any fork.

Protecting your trademark and such is fine, but when you make it mandatory to use your trademark, it becomes muddy and unfeasible. while i do understand the fear of being overshadowed by a fork, i do not believe there are many cases where a fork actually does overshadow the original

In fact Centos was able to collaborate closely with because it lacks any redhat branding.

[woakes070048]

@BenoitTallandier Is this going to be cleared up. We have been demo this and Open Paas but our lawyer has told us not to go to production because there is a 99.99% chance that you won't do anything you can,

Thanks

[GurjinderSingh]

so if I install it for someone and they remove name from email signature its violation of licence. you can change your mind in future too and can ask them to remove everything ? if i am right what is point of open source.

I was planing to create module :( but their is no point now because it will benefit only few people. it is open-source but not open use. I believe small footer notice on every webpage should be enough. I do understand your company concerns about branding and things as you are using JAMES without mentioning it in emails and other thousands things too.

@BenoitTallandier

why not you guys come up with small fees per installation $$ (please don't go above two number) per year to allow remove branding anywhere but not from footer and licence. let user enjoy as they please and still you get credit for work. money will not be meaning full at start but by providing paid support will change game. it can be good alternative to MS exchange Ex open exchange suit. In my opinion, no one can overshadow you guys. creator always wins as long as one is interested.

https://www.invoiceninja.com/faqs/what-are-the-costs-for-self-hosting/ If you self-host, you don’t need to pay any monthly fee to use the Invoice Ninja platform. If you choose to white-label your invoicing, (ie. remove all Invoice Ninja branding), the fee is $30/ year.

@cheerios911 & @teach-ed

thank you for your work and post.

please look in to sogo or nethserver, they does the job I need to do. my problem is Canadian laws are strick around medical information. my client is a doctor. he was using government owned solution onemail and now government decide to shut-it down. last time with similar type of problem with invoicing, I have installed invoice-ninja they paid 30 USD, good to go and happy ending. opensaas was good solution:(

need lawyer :100: from now thank you

https://github.com/inverse-inc/sogo or https://www.nethserver.org/

[shivam9593]

Hello @cheerios911 and @teach-ed We heard your concerns and after much deliberation, we have decided to stick with the additional terms to Affero GPL Version 3. These terms were already well explained by my colleague @BenoitTallandier, that even with additional terms, Twake is still free & open-source software. We are fully aware that these additional terms can alienate some members of our community as few people do not like to retain trademarks and brands while working with open-source software. However, we cannot pull the license from you or sue you for any reason we want. We can do that if you actively use our brands and trademarks to defame LINAGORA or earn profit by selling our software without getting consent from LINAGORA. An example of this can be if you use our source code and use it to distribute a malware with LINAGORA brands and trademarks. However, we usually grant temporary authorization not to comply with this clause to non-profit organizations, certain open-source communities, etc. on a case-by-case basis. If you have a certain use case in mind, please email me at schauhan@linagora.com and we can discuss together if we can suspend this clause in your case.

We have all witnessed what has happened between Elasticsearch and AWS and this even led Elastic to close their open-source license. With these additional terms, we are trying to avoid the same fate. We at LINAGORA have always believed in free and open-source software. With these additional terms, we have constrained the freedom of a minority of people to abuse our open-source software to ensure the freedom of a majority of our users and contributors.

[shivam9593]

Hello @woakes070048 and @GurjinderSingh Thank you for bringing this up here. Please let me know your use case for Twake and OpenPaaS on my email address - schauhan@linagora.com and we can discuss further the implications of our license in your case. 😸 But if you are using Twake or OpenPaaS to make profits or for outbound messaging, you have to comply with our additional terms regarding notices, attributions, and trademarks.

If you want to white-label our product / your module, please reach out to me and we can discuss further.