Thanks everyone for your support. I've applied for it on KickStarter so let's see if it goes through.
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Hi @laurent,
I understand you intention but that also means development on the server is limited to your resources. The discussion is as old as open source is known. You are the boss and you decide but if you want joplin server make more traction and also earn money with it you should rethink your strategy.
Most common model is multi licensing. GPL has also selling exceptions as long as you are the owner of the full code or if you have .
You should also think about accepting contributions (including the right to change the terms under which joplin is offered to others). This would not work without a open source model.
If you want to have commerical success, I suggest not to focus on getting money from private users. I doubt that you find many people paying monthly fees as you expect. I see two business models
- fund a company which is getting it's value for the millions of users
- partner with organisations providing your support by subscriptions
By today joplin is still a little bit a nerd tool for IT people. To change that you would need either a lot of money and/or active help from larger organisations you may have contracts with. I feel it is is a littel bit too early for consulting a lawyer. Start with a standard open source license with a selling exception and offer commercial licenses for companies doing money with your system.
Just my 2 ct ...
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Hmm, ok but we don't have at all the same perception of the project or open source in general, to the point where I don't really know how to answer your post. But anyway you're certainly entitled to your opinion.
Turns out KickStarter wasn't the right platform for this, as they are more focused on crowdfunding actual products.
I've created a page on GoFundMe instead, so if you're using Joplin Server and would like to help with this, please follow the link!
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To me, the appeal of Joplin is its openness. It's open source, I can encrypt my own data and store it wherever I want, and I can and hack it to do cool stuff. In terms of functionality, it is strictly inferior to its competitors in my estimation, but that's OK, since this deficit outweighed by the fact that it's open source. A "nerd-tool" like hi-ko said.
I don't think a restrictive license on any part of the project is a good idea, when the project's primary "selling point" is its openness (assuming that most other users are like me, and value openness over raw functionality: otherwise we would all use ever-note).
I understand your concerns, but don't think they are realistic. I don't think a significant number of companies will start hosting commercial joplin server instances while Evernote exists. It's just not going to happen. I don't expect a restrictive licence will do anything to preserve reliability.
Since you explicitly except personal use (which is what I expect the vast majority of Joplin users are doing) I don't expect it would really hurt the project either? Just seems silly.
So I don't think I can really donate to something which explicitly detracts from what I like about this software (even if the detraction is very minor). I will just keep up my regular monthly donations to support the development.
Probably it is a good idea to add this to the top post.
I work for Red Hat, but my opinions here are my own. Red Hat takes an interesting approach to the topic of intellectual property. Red Hat open sources all software it sells (with the exception of a few SaaS offerings), but maintains control over the copyright and most importantly the Trademarks. You can take the source code from Red Hat and create your own derivative (ala Rocky, CentOS, etc), but you may not use the Red Hat name or reference Red Hat. Red Hat in turn, signs all their software. This means that Red Hat customers can verify that the software they received is genuinely from Red Hat itself, which can help from a legal and support perspective. I, personally, would pay for Joplin officially supported versions of the Server, especially if my life or income was dependent on it being available. (In fact, that is currently a consideration for me right now.)
In the same vein as @saarantras's comment, the server license you are proposing here adds a dual system. This seems like your desired effect, but it has some downsides. For example, "for commercial purposes" is actually quite vague. If I use Joplin Server for my job, am I required to pay for the license? Does the license only prevent me from making money off of the Joplin Server? What if I make it indirectly, like say use Joplin as a customer database and it's crucial to my business function, but I don't host a "public" Joplin Server where I charge customers for access.
I assume these questions are what you want to engage a lawyer for, and that makes sense. I might say that the AGPL, may cover your use cases. It wouldn't technically prevent someone from offering a Joplin Server service, but it does heavily de-incentivise it, as any features added would also need to be open source. You could then maintain market differentiation by being the only officially supported Joplin server service.
That said, this is a deeply personal decision and I fully understand and support your decision either way. I likely will be purchasing Joplin Cloud soon. Especially as I take more and more notes relating to my job.
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My preference is any model that keeps the project going beyond one person (with thanks to Laurent). I think a business model that supports a handful of full timer employees (perhaps not Laurent) would support that.
Despite no E2EE, Evernote met all my needs until they switched to Electron, broke core functionality and worse, decided to start limiting exporting to force people to stay on their platform. For me I want an "it just works" solution. I'd like QOwnNotes even more - per note backup is appealing - but the interface is clunky compared to Joplin.
Anything that adds value for users can generate revenue, but in my opinion to make this sustainable across decades requires a small paid staff.
For example, I started to use Joplin when Joplin cloud syncing became available (and I got around the "no workspace" / difficulty of loading separate profiles by paying for two separate cloud subscriptions). The subscription is perhaps a viable model - you could mark up reasonably like fifteen euros a year above costs, and with every 10k users, support a fairly compensated full time person. I don't see Joplin as being popular with corporations, but I do see it as being popular enough with casual users to support 100k paid individual users (so 5 to 10 full timers), which would be sufficient to keep it going indefinitely and avoid some of the problems of companies that seek millions of users, still keeping everything open source. Or perhaps try both - a paid Joplin server license for corporations, and the paid Joplin cloud service.
Some other random observations. Some of the Joplin community of developers seem a bit unwelcoming, to suggestions from non-developers, compared to other open source projects (not Laurent but some others). I've gotten a "if you want x, learn how to code and do it yourself" attitude when suggesting features that many others have also suggested but aren't of interest to coders. Some projects are much more welcoming of "This would be much better with x functionality, but I don't know how to code, so I hope someone will take time to implement x" suggestions. A model that lets full time coders be paid to keep developing Joplin, encourages working on projects that improve the end user experience for non-coders.
While I understand the thought-process behind this, I think that the Joplin Cloud can offer some guarantees that other clones will not be able to offer, and using some open-source license such as the AGPL should make the equation good enough for you to be able to offer a better service than other "clones" would.
It's a similar model to what Grafana is doing right now, and it works well enough for them with Grafana Cloud.
Thank you for considering making the license open source as is the software. I myself contribute money monthly solely on the basis of this being a free project, and would never pay for a service for note-taking otherwise.
@laurent @Daeraxa I hope to help in some way
Some good ideas
I don't know if you know, but it is possible to have 3 licenses in an open project: MIT/GPL/Copyright. A good example of this is MySQL which is released as GPL, but there is a proprietary version with support as well and another license if the company wants a specific feature or its own version of MySQL.
I imagine if in the case of Joplin you distribute it as GPL to prevent any company from profiting from the open optimizations that was something you cited as problematic. At the same time you want it to be for the self-hosted user.
So, I'm not a lawyer. But it is quite common to release specific license types. In this case for example, the Joplin server could be released as GPL v.2 which "guarantees that any company" releases any version in the same condition as the GPL v.2 license
In this hypothetical case that I write, we would have at least 4 distinct licenses for use:
- GPL V.2 for Joplin Server if self-hosted: this avoids commercial use of any part of the joplin server
- MIT/BSD 2 or BSD 3 for user that uses Joplin App: Opens space for new plugins, themes, customizations and integrations with third-party services. Also, it allows community developers to have ownership of the source code as they are part of the same project, idea. What prevents some developer from wanting to change the license to something proprietary or more restrictive as GPL.
- License Copyright if is company that use Joplin Server wish version custom Joplin Server:
- "this would be possible if there is the proprietary brand Joplin-Brad"
- This also prevents any company from using the Joplin name for any products and services other than Joplin-Community, Joplin-Brad, Joplin-Server, Joplin-Cloud.
- Joplin Cloud by company/people with license AGPL.
more some good ideas
I believe we should separate things: 1) Joplin-app, 2) Joplin-server, 3) Joplin-cloud, 4) Joplin-Community, 5) Joplin-Brand. Each of these things should theoretically have a specific type of license. In theory because they are different products and services with different purposes and objectives.
What I speak here is not a legal advice but a reflection of existing things. Look for your lawyer.
For example, Linux Torvalds owns the Linux brand:
- In theory any distribution with the name linux like 'aaa-linux' should ask permission from Linux torvalds to use that name.
- In theory, you would protect the source code with your own brand as Joplin-brand or Joplin-Company etc.
- No company could publish under the name Joplin without legal authorization to do so.
- That's where the business comes in, the brand is copyright and the software is gpl.
- In this case, if Joplin-brand is a brand it would have ownership: 1) Joplin-app, 2) Joplin-cloud, 3) Joplin-server, 4) Joplin-Community.
What do you think of these ideas?
It might make more sense to release Joplin server under the AGPL — according to the FSF, it includes additional protections for software that often runs on servers.
@personalizedrefriger Hi! Here my answer:
As you can see, I talked about different licenses, I which is defending as a sale of exceptions. Or like, multi-licensing what has already been commented here: GPL v.2(Self Hosted), AGPL(Joplin Cloud), BSD v.2(Joplin-app), Copyright(Joplin-Brand/Joplin-Company), Joplin-Community(Creative Commons).
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Sorry! I missed this!!!
@personalizedrefriger In my opinion this makes things clear: Joplin for users, developers, companies and the community.
What do you think of this idea?
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