I just wish that Rocket.Chat were actually fully open source, instead of open core that hides features like SSO, read receipts, and canned responses in closed-source modules.
Or you can see it the other way around: if it wasn't for the money those closed-source modules make for them (presumably?), there might be no Rocket.Chat at all, open source or not.
I just don't know if that's what sustains the people working on the oss parts of the project, so it was all a big supposition on my side.
Like, if someone sees a business opportunity for selling proprietary modules, to the point of hiring people, making a team, and creating an oss project to support it all, then without those commercial parts the open pieces of that project wouldn't even have been written to begin with, right?
Modern hosting platforms have made this less viable. AWS, Azure, and GCP will just integrate this as a one click service at a cheaper price than the actual development company can afford and drain all of the profits out.
AGPL does nothing to help here. AGPL simply requires you release the source for any changes. AWS is still free to host and sell the software without contributing any funds back to the project.
It’s not closed source but it’s also rejected by the major open source institutions and violates the OSI definition of open source which is what most people based off of.
