France and Europe must build their sovereign digital platforms on Free Open Source Software. Since the beginning of 2023, all our software are under the standard AGPLV3 licence.

After years of trying to advocate for an enhanced version of the AGPLv3 licence, with additional terms governing the distribution of its software, LINAGORA has decided to turn back. Faced with the difficulty of convincing people of the merits of its approach and in order to bring clarity to its offer, LINAGORA has decided to return to the simple Affero GPL v3 licence, with no additional terms or restrictions.

Alexandre Zapolsky, President and co-founder, explains why:

« What licence should we choose to guarantee that free software are and will remain free, while protecting ourselves from the predatory and destructive attitudes of third parties, whether competitors or users?

This was the question we tried to answer a few years ago with "our proposal" to use a modified AGPLv3 licence.

We wanted a free licence that was even more restrictive than AGPLv3. As you are aware, AGPLv3 already provides a great deal of protection for the producers of software licensed under it, since even the use of these solutions in cloud mode is protected. Nonetheless, we wanted to strengthen the obligations to redistribute the work by making it compulsory to redistribute the interfaces of our software "identically" with regard to their trademark and authorship notices. Basically, we were saying: "If you want to use our software for free, then you have the right to do so if, and only if, you retain our signature (our authorship notices) on the work". All the code remained free and open to everyone, on the single condition that the authorship notices on the interfaces were accepted. By inventing this model, we thought we were doing the right thing, and in particular avoiding falling into the Freemium or COSS (Commercial Open Source Software) models that are becoming the main business models for Free Software publishers.

The complementary explaination was that for individuals, associations and very small businesses, there was no problem in keeping our signature on our interfaces. However, for companies or large government departments that didn't want to keep these mentions, they could remove them, with our agreement, as long as they subscribed to our support offers.

We thought we had invented a virtuous model for financing free innovation. Decades after the creation of the Free Software model, this remains a source of concern for many software developers and publishers.

But that was without counting on the stubbornness of a few who saw this as a way of attacking us. They campaigned against this possible development of free licences. We regret that these people, rather than trying to understand why we had adopted this new type of licence, exerted pressure in international discussion groups to remove this type of licence from the scope of Free Software. We have taken this into account.

We cannot afford to be outside the field of Free Software. Free Software is our raison d'être. We have always been advocates of Free Software. We have always believed that Free Software offers a fairer and more ethical digital model. This has been LINAGORA's fight (and mine!) for nearly a quarter of a century.

So, in order to put an end to any controversy, we have given up trying to develop this more restrictive licensing model that is better able to finance free software. Since the beginning of 2023, we have once again placed all new generations of our software under the standard AGPLv3 licence.

I am therefore asking Dinum, and more specifically the team that manages the software repository, to once again place our software (Linshare, Twake, Team Mail) in the Free Software category.

Faced with the GAFAMs, we urgently need to build sovereign platforms based on digital commons.

LINAGORA and its software have a key role to play in building these platforms.

Free Software is a fascinating subject that is still being written and developed. If you'd like to continue discussing the subject, don't hesitate to write to me via my blog (www. zapolsky.fr) or come and meet me at one of the many events we're organising at the Villa Good Tech, which is also our head office, in Issy-les-Moulineaux. The purpose of the Villa Good Tech is to be a place where people can meet, think and exchange ideas about ethical, responsible, sustainable and committed digital technology.

It is through exchange, dialogue and respect that we can all move forward together. That's the spirit of Free Software. It has always been our spirit.

Alexandre Zapolsky,
President and founder of LINAGORA
 

PRESS CONTACT

To arrange an interview, please contact
Frédéric HERMELIN, Head of Communications
fhermelin@linagora.com or communication@linagora.com