Bug 28207

Answered in bug 14944 with possible new urls. Looks to me like the host name was
taken over by someone redirecting it to sell their version.

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

If nothing prevents us to distribute the software I'd say URL should be changed to the same Github project page from where the sources are fetched.

https://github.com/symless/synergy-core

Agreed. From https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/blob/master/LICENSE
GNU General Public License v2.0

I'll repost to this Bug the same discus email I sendt on the subject, in case not everyone here reads the discuss list.


On Tuesday 02 March 2021 04:13, "David W. Hodgins" wrote:
> Running it, I now see the request for the Serial key. Select cancel, and it just
> asks for confirmation with a dialog saying
> "Are you Sure? If you don't activate Synergy you'll be missing out on some great
> features.", with a "Buy now" link. No way to exit without either buying or killing
> the process.
> 
> I guess using the gui is now considered one of those "great features".

I got curious, and did some research. The serial key question has been there since at least april 2018.
https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/6283

A user asked about this very issue back in 2018, and it was closed as WONTFIX, citing a gnu.org article about selling software[1], and this was the reply from one of the developers:

=== Quote ===
Synergy being Open Source, or even Free Software, doesn't preclude commercial licensing. Unlike e.g. Google Chrome (which is proprietary and not completely open) we just open source everything, including the serial key / license management code and branding, and trust the community to do the right thing (as several forks have done)
=== End ===

Why this havent shown up untill now I don't know, but it is not a new problem.


So we either need to 
1: remove the GUI version,
2: figure out how to patch the code to deactivate the serial key part of the code (it is GPLv2 licensed after all), or
3: find a fork that has already removed it.

In my strong opinion the synergy-gui in it's current form does not belong in Mageia, even if the license is GPLv2.
We should treat it as if it was proprietary.

I clearly remember we discussed something similar some years ago when someone asked about including a proprietary package in the nonfree repo that also required the purchase of lisensing keys to function, and the strong opinion by most developers was that any software that required any kind of money exchange in order to operate Does Not belong in Mageia and should be removed.


[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

CC: (none) => cooker

(In reply to Dave Hodgins from comment #1)
> Answered in bug 14944 with possible new urls. Looks to me like the host name
> was taken over by someone redirecting it to sell their version.

If so, they have also taken over the github repo.
Notice that the github repo links to the proprietary symless.com/synergy page.

As a first step the package URL should at least be changed to the github repo, as the synergy.com page doesn't link to the GPLv2 licensed github repo.

Both removing or fixing the gui package and fixing the url to point to
https://github.com/symless/synergy-core
are fine by me. The crippleware portion does not belong in Mageia.

There's a fork, named barrier, still GPLv2 and nothing to pay :
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
Same interface and functionalities, but less bugs.

CC: (none) => papefigue

(In reply to Bug Danny from comment #7)
> There's a fork, named barrier, still GPLv2 and nothing to pay :
> https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
> Same interface and functionalities, but less bugs.

Then I recommend we switch to that.