Call only in DMs is a massive step backwards! #864
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I can not agree more with @Tampa We're a tiny team of 3 with one third of the members who doesn't like Mattermost already and with whom I'm struggling to explain that it's great. Now this... |
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I agree, this is really shameful |
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I totally agree. It's a shame to restrict already existing (!) features for users without valid license! I'd get it if this was a restriction from the beginning of Mattermost Calls, but this is total crap. This won't help you to reach your goal of getting more paying customers. Indeed, they will just migrate to other solutions as soon as possible. To claim group calls are a feature that aren't used so much as calls in DMs shows, that you don't know what most of your users are doing the whole day. I'm really disappointed. |
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Is there any alternative for this? I tried jitsi-plugin before, but is not available in 'official plugins' anymore. Its not the best, but a work around. |
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@novo-github You can stay on v9 and even roll back from v10 still, though you may have to nuke the plugin manually so it installs the previously packaged version. Outside of that, the harder approach is to fork the plugin and reverse the changes, which means maintaining a fork and manually deploying it each version change to make sure it stays fixed. Been a couple days since this went up. Over on reddit the discussion also ended with the supposed CEO offering to hear comments, but not saying anything on what's going to happen. I suspect they'll be just waiting it out and ignore the complaints as is tradition. So if any of you folks want this actually reversed, make sure to keep putting them on blast for it. After all as they say themselves "We are open to feedback and share our ideas constructively and respectfully." So maybe some of the higher ups can chime in as to what the thought process was behind this abomination of a decision: https://mattermost.com/about-us/ |
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I totally agree with this. Also this sets a precedent and who knows what else will be paywalled. |
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This is such a disappointment. We are a small team using mattermost because we use gitlab. Removing an already implemented feature for free users "in order to focus supportability and quality on licensed servers" does not make any sense. How does it impact licensed servers by blocking an existing feature for unlicensed servers (which do not get support anyway). I think this will be the decission to drive us away from mattermost. If we need to pay to get the minimum featureset we need to work we will ultimatly choose a competitve product which offers way more features for less money. I really do support the open source movement and I am willing to pay for software but not like this. There is so much potential and many missing features and opportunities to bundle features in licensed servers for good reasons. This is not the way to convince me to pay. |
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Seeing as there seems to now be radio silence, which is probably an attempt to let the whole thing blow over, how about this. https://gist.github.com/Tampa/090bb7ff89c0e15a4570b6c4d9de7736 Anyone with some experience in golang can probably verify if this will work or not, or could just test it. Reversing just the commit that made the change might be enough. Kinda surprised there hasn't been a public fork yet, but that's probably the next step here. |
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Extremely frustrating, Its a big step back. Someone might make a fork if it's possible or even maybe a new plugin that is similar in functionality. Currently, we updated to V10 but using the old calls plugin version which is working just fine for us so far. However, we cannot update to a newer plugin version so it might stop working when we update mattermost in the future. |
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Following @codingPotato21 's thought , I went ahead and downgraded the mattermost.calls plugin. In steps, I have disabled and removed the latest mattermost.calls plugin from the SystemConsole, enabled 'plugin Uploads' from config file, uploaded the plugin package from https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-plugin-calls/releases/tag/v0.29.2 which is <1.0.0 with breaking changes. This seems to give back the group calls feature, but I am still not aware of the drawbacks. Hoping for a fix soon. If I think back, there was a jitsi plugin, that enabled voice and video calling. Can't find it at the moment, but worth a try. I'd hate it if I have to use Zoom / Teams plugin for this :| |
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I've "sold" Mattermost for a long time to others as a great solution. As I typically make 1:1 calls this is not in itself a deal-breaker but confirms the direction of travel together with the removal of core support for boards (after incessant nagging to install it in the first place). Seems pretty clear enshittification is firmly on the menu here now. I've been evaluating a switch to Matrix for some time but have held off as it's more "flakey" and "amateur" with excessive complexity from the e2ee but I've now found a very palatable fork of that (Conduwuit) which is a breeze to deploy and does support group calling and (most importantly) threads. I'm waiting to see if Matrix V2 - due "soon (tm)" will remove the rough edges - if so, then I have a viable alternative (until they too jump the shark). As an aside - the stated reason for removal from team-edition is blatant spin.... If you're going this direction then at least own it instead of gas-lighting. |
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Totally agree with @Tampa and others here. Paywalling existing features without actually enhancing them feels like a cash grab, especially for small teams that rely on open-source contributions. Any change not to do this? |
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Mattermost has been doing this for a while. |
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As small business we only need core communication functions. Why not create a cheap package for small businesses? We'd be Ok paying 15-20$ per month for Mattermost. We don't need all the Enterprise functions. I'd be OK with paying something but the only choice you leave are the highly expensive Enterprise plans. I am sure Mattermost would earn much more money by introducing a cheap small-business plan that supports the core communication features than trying to force entrprise plans on all these small companies who do not need 95% of these functions. |
Great pitch! Small fee of $10-$20 / month for enhanced core functions is a great idea. Lite Mattermost. Can this be done? |
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While I think a small business type license is definitely a good idea. I don't think even that would justify locking previously existing features behind a paywall unless there is additional stuff added to it, because pulling things out of open source into license is always going to be a dick move no matter what. When software is better because of the collective effort put into it, to treat them with "now pay up suckers" is just not okay. On the reddit thread I did outline multiple options and their pros and cons, but the supposed ceo of the mattermost org has not really replied to those beyond the initial outreach they did. Not sure what their github user is else I'd tag them. What's telling is that despite the activity on this ticket no one higher in the org has responded yet. Looking like they are trying to wait this out and we should absolutely not let them! |
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Personally I think: Yes, it is/was a "dick move" but Mattermost is a company paying developers to develop things and releases their products as OpenSource. They can do with their product whatever they want. If we are not OK with that, we can fork it and change the code to our liking. We just did the simpler thing and setup an internal Jitsi Server and linked that in the Mattermost settings. Which is just as good if not better than the Calls Plugin since it supports video conference and lots of other features. For small companies a really simple server with 512MB RAM and 1 Core CPU is enough. I am annoyed by how this is playing out but there are (good) alternatives. And the more they close and limit their system, the farther away they drive the small businesses. At one point, they will just be another Slack on the market, working only for large corporations and there will be new products like Mattermost for us small businesses. Maybe someone else will fork Mattermost, call it differently and continue another path. Since switching the system is expensive and time consuming, I would be OK to pay a "Small Business Package Fee" for the product. We are paying for various services we need daily and a fee of 15-20$ would be OK for us. Mattermost is a good system. But those Enterprise Plans are just way too expensive reaching 200$/month and more for our small team where we pay a lot of overhead for functions we never ever use. Personally, I think, it would be even better to have prices for features. For example I'd like to being able to unlock the Group functionality. That would be kind of handy to us (but not necessary). We'd pay a fair 1-time-fee for unlocking it. That would be nice. |
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I just gonna leave this here. Let's see when it is removed. |
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no go pro, but couldn't you simply set the environment variable |
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According to this I would say: that should work. The interesting question is, if it's sufficient to set this var in the systemd file 🤔 |
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Talking about license: It's a mix and I'm no lawyer but seems to me that source code is free:
I wonder about these exceptions. Can something under AGPL have execeptions? |
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Hahaha! This actually works (for now) :) Edit the service file and add the ENVIRONMENT variable:
Big thanks to the Mattermost programmers leaving this "loopwhole" for the Pros ;) |
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Seems to work with docker as well: Thank you developers. Let's hope they won't remove this env var now. |
Verified working with Mattermost Version: 10.1.1 Build Number: 11162711545 Update: verified working with Mattermost Version: 10.4.2 Build Number: 12918017578 |
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That is until that is changed too. By the way, good job on packaging the plugin in the tar. It contains a ./ directory with a different user, so extracting directly from the tar into the plugins folder will change the user of the plugins folder and even mess with the permissions. Who packaged it like that? Don't include that stuff! 🙄 |
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For those running mattermost embedded in self hosted Gitlab CE, mattermost is not run as a regular service and the # Workaround the limitation of Calls disabled in Groups (only allowed in 1/1 conversations)
mattermost['env'] = {
'MM_CALLS_GROUP_CALLS_ALLOWED' => 'true'
}Then run |
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Verified on a Gitlab Ominibus deployment wit Docker and environment:
GITLAB_SKIP_UNMIGRATED_DATA_CHECK: "true"
GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
...
mattermost['MM_CALLS_GROUP_CALLS_ALLOWED'] = true |
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isn't there a way to set that env variable on Cloudron ? I'm running mattermost on it and the config.json gets reset each time I restart the app for the env variables to be taken into account. |
Just go in the Mattermost-Calls-Plugin Repo and download the Release: v0.29.1. Install it in Mattermost, after that the group calls will be available again. |
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It's very nice that there is a work-around identified but it doesn't affect the underlying issue. If Mattermost really care about locking it out then that parameter is trivial to kill and at some point it will be. For now? I stay on 9.11 as it does what I need - I have client installers for the current version so I'll just stay here. Yes, yes, security fixes etc which is why I'll keep looking at Matrix 2.0 - saw a quick and dirty docker implementation which seemed to address most of my concerns with it so will likely move to that as "main" and just have my current MM as a static archive. Mega, mega disappointed as I prefer Mattermost but what is next? I clung on to Twitter for far too long but eventually jumped to Bluesky and Mastodon - lesson learned - once things start going in a direction, they usually keep going that way. |
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The past three years, I’ve been an ardent advocate for Mattermost, particularly for small teams. However, after transitioning my entire team to Mattermost, I find myself in a bit of a predicament. The standout feature of Mattermost was its ability to centralize all our communication needs. Now, we’re faced with the task of searching for a suitable tool to replace Mattermost for our internal communication and occasional group calls. We’re at a loss about what to do next. The workaround what was found likely won’t be viable in the long run. A 10€ per user per month license simply doesn’t make sense for us. While we’re willing to support the project, we’re not interested in another subscription-based model. |
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I am really disappointed about this change. I really don't like the direction Mattermost Inc. is taking. Moving things that were in the OSS version to the non-free one is a really bad signal |
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Related discussion on Reddit with appearance of Mattermost CEO: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattermost/comments/1fjnykj/is_v10_the_practical_end_of_free_and_open_source/ |
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Predictably all this fuzz about this is being completely ignored now. Shows how much we matter I guess. |
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@it33 Can we have the official position of Mattermost Inc. on this change. I'm interested in the motivation of this change. Is this the same as in mattermost/mattermost#26105? Would it be possible to add an official way to circumvent this limitation? |
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Update to my last post. I'm now comfortable with Matrix (even without 2.0) but it will get much better when that finally goes live. I'm just using my Mattermost system(s) as an archive reference and all new stuff goes into Matrix. In addition, whenever I'm asked for advice on messaging/collaboration apps, Mattermost is no longer mentioned - instead it's Matrix coupled with Nextcloud for media storage as that solves the (what I see as an) issue both MM and Matrix have with convoluted storage hierarchies - I find Matrix storing into minio S3 hosted via Nextcloud AIO to be just about perfect. Would still like MM to revert but it is 99% certain not to. Was great while it lasted but no more. |
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No news from the CEO of Mattermost Inc. I have opened a thread on the forum: https://forum.mattermost.com/t/request-for-clarification-from-mattermost-inc-on-certain-limitations-introduced-in-v10/22428. |
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I'm not commercially naive - I understand very well how much it costs to run software teams, and I understand the need for open-core products like Mattermost to reserve some functionality for their paid solutions. However: over years, I've built a small community of children - those in my family, and in their friends' families - who use voice chat in channels to communicate while playing co-op video games. I recently upgraded, and have been receiving bug reports from distraught eight year olds that they can't call their friends any more. There's a big qualitative difference between reserving functionality for a paid solution, and deliberately regressing functionality previously available in the open-core version. |
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This is a followup to my old comment on the issue. We updated to v10 and were able to use the old calls plugin for a while until someday it stopped showing shared screen. Updating it to the new plugin version solved the issue but calls in groups were not possible anymore. What we did was DELETE MATTERMOST from our server and INSTALL NEXTCLOUD. I have to say that there are some differences between the two and that the experience is not the same. However, As a small company we are not able to pay what mattermost is asking for per user even though we are interested in it. We are paying for Microsoft accounts which is half what mattermost is asking for and we get access to email, cloud storage, office online, and teams. Which is much more valuable to us compared to what mattermost is offering. Also, we don't have to host anything ourselves so that is indeed a plus! Anyways, now we have nextcloud which also offers way more features and is more flexible for us as well. Thanks for making us try another software we are now happier than we were with mattermost. |
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I cannot see a valid reason for paywalling in this specific case. It doesn't cost them anything to have community edition users run the plugin as I understand it is fully self-contained not requiring an outside turn server. You could argue the development equals cost, but then abandon the plugin if you don't want to pay for the development anymore. I'm sure the community will happily take things as they have in the past. There was no addition. It wasn't paywalled as a result of adding features to it or enhancing it beyond security and stability fixes. To justify requiring payment of what is a significant chunk of money is insane. Think about it. Who is the core audience for a self-hosted solution? Not startups that have millions of dollars in runway to burn, they go to Slack anyways. It's mostly smaller businesses and non-profits that themselves might be heavily involved in developing of other free open source software. Software Mattermost might themselves be reliant upon. So in a way this isn't just trying to secure some more revenue, it's a middle finger to the open source community that helped them along and embraced them. Think you could have secured as much funding as you got without the user numbers from the community edition? Open to debate, but it likely helped. That a bypass exists and can be set with a variable is great, keep it that way, because at this point removal of that will mean a lot of organizations just won't upgrade their installations. Do you want to be responsible for potentially insecure communication in those organizations and litter the web with outdated software? Is that the stewardship you'd want for the software you rely on? Is that the reputation you want to have? What's mentioned in the forum thread is also valid. The way this was not communicated publicly reeks of underhanded bullshit to sneak it in and only mentioning it on the plugin github page and the documentation says a lot about the attitude and regard they have for the community. Don't say that's enough communication when your own moderation refers to the blog. Don't try to weasel out of that one. That's ugly. We make a stink about this here and it's probably lucky it hasn't reached more mainstream media outlets in the FOSS space, because, from the track record of those publications, stuff like this doesn't fly well with them. It's now a matter of public record how this whole thing went down. The complete indifference is given to the community by the Mattermost leadership. Do if any of the journalists ever dig into things for an article about how great Mattermost is then you best hope they don't stumble across this chapter, because it's not a great look. A public apology about how it went down and a referral to the variable to set is the only way forward if you want to save your face. Deal with the controversy. The longer the silence continues to worse it will look. With the variable existing still at least you have a way out. Nothing too catastrophic has happened, yet... Don't make it worse! |
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Still don't have any answer form the Mattermost team (here or on the forum topic I opened), I'm really disappointed to be honest. They moved the issue from the main Mattermost repo to this specific repo, reducing the visibility of it, but this still have a lot of activity and upvotes. The forum topic is completely ignored from Mattermost Inc. expect a message from a moderator that redirects here and on their blog (there is nothing on the blog, just bullshit marketing). I don't know what to do... |
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From what I've read people are ditching Mattermost and moving to other solutions like Element+Matrix, Zulip, NextCloud Talk and Rocket.chat. If I were MM I would listen to the community and revert these shenanigans. Otherwise people will just keep jumping ship to alternatives.. |
and others
I get that you all want people to move to the licensed plans to make back the money from all the capital investment, but actively paywalling existing features without actually upgrading them is disgusting practice. It's a sure-fire way to get users to not upgrade their installations or even downgrade them. Trying to force small teams to hand over hundreds per month just for communications is a great way to drive them back to the competition. You want to paywall stuff? Make it worth it! You want to sell licenses? Scale them properly with team size and revenues. Otherwise, there goes the userbase, which by the way contributes to your success through open source, so maybe have a bit of respect towards them!
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