Comment by petcat
25 days ago
Am I understanding this right that the main complainant in that issue thread is an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
At first they tried to say that "we're a school" and then when the MM rep said they have an Education license, they admitted that they are not actually a school, but rather a consulting company that is gouging schools by overcharging for open source software.
> an IT company that wants to resell the (free) version of Mattermost software and is now complaining that they have to pay?
A user that was following the letter of the license and has suddenly had their access to the software restricted without warning.
Open source software means people are entirely within their rights to sell it to others, perhaps creating value by providing the warranty that all licenses expressly disclaim.
I'm aware of what open source software is.
And there are 3 things that you can do when in this situation:
1) Pay the fee, if that is what is required for it to continue to be easy for you to re-sell the software.
2) Fork the project, remove the restrictions, and maintain it yourself.
3) Stop using the software.
All of those are perfectly within the spirit of FOSS.
The user who is the IT company is not the same user who started the thread and claims to be a school.
No, you are not understanding this right.
It's about rug pulling your users and cutting them off at the knees. I don't use mattermost but read the github thread in it's entirety.
The good brand of open-source software is basically being abused to do basic rug pull schemes. Sad.
I’m having a lot of trouble with your comment. The word ‘resell’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the issue - there is absolutely nothing about reselling it anywhere within the linked issue.