---
disqus: hackmd
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A mail to HackMD contributors
===

Dear Markdown hackers,

We are writing you because you had contributed code to the project [HackMD](https://github.com/hackmdio/hackmd) before. More specifically, we want to propose a license change, from **MIT** to **AGPL 3.0**, for the open source project HackMD Community Edition (CE), and ask for your understanding and agreement.

We will soon be [introducing **HackMD Enterprise Edition (EE)**](https://hackmd.io/s/Bk-zpEC9-), hosted SaaS HackMD instances with features specifically designed for enterprise knowledge sharing and collaboration. We are also committed to continuous support of the open source project, **HackMD Community Edition (CE)**, which is an updated and patched version of HackMD 0.5.2 and would be given a new version name: 1.0.0-ce.

To do all these right, we need to change the license from MIT to AGPL 3.0, here's why:

### What do we want to achieve? (the 3 goals)
We were greatly inspired and encouraged by the support of the community, therefore as a give back, we want the community to
1. still have the **fun** of creating useful things and contributing to an open source project, so their work get used worldwide and their contribution acknowledged.
2. still have the **option** of hosting the open source HackMD(CE) themselves whenever they want to.

We also want to

3. monetize the project, so we can **sustain** this project, the free hackmd.io, and ourselves.

### How do we do that?
We would change our copyright license of the CE, at least the parts we wrote and own copyright over (that's 90%+ of the entire project), from MIT to AGPL 3.0. Also, the project would be licensed under AGPL 3.0 going forward, so that all future works based on the CE would have to be open source and always available to the community. That means going forward, **NO ONE**, we the HackMD team included, can take the fruit of the collaboration of the community and make it proprietary.

### What we ask of you?
We only own 90%+ of the project and can only change open source license on that portion of the project. We ask you to join us in changing the license. The license change is beneficial to the community as a whole, because it makes sure all derivative works from the project would be open source and contributed back to the community.

That said, we fully understand and respect that if you don't want to change your license. If that is the case, we would keep your contribution licensed under MIT, until future contribution under AGPL 3.0 overwrites them. To get everyone's consent going forward, we would also ask contributors to sign Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) as an additional step before the PR is accepted.

### How do you help?
We just created a [pull request](https://github.com/hackmdio/hackmd/pull/578), please leave a comment below the PR saying:

**"I agree to the change of license from MIT to AGPL on all my past code contribution to the project HackMD.
Signed-off-by: Full Name <[e-mail]>"**

Thank you again for your contribution to the project and the community.
Please let us know if you have any questions.

Best regards,
HackMD Team