Element, a for-profit open source company and creator of the Matrix protocol, has announced a change in their licensing approach. They will now license their main Matrix server (Synapse), their second-generation server (Dendrite), and associated server-side projects under the Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3. This change aims to create a level playing field and allow Element to better support Matrix while meeting customer requirements. The switch to AGPLv3 ensures that downstream developers contribute back to the core project, either by releasing modifications as open source or by contacting Element for an alternative license. Users and those running unmodified instances of Element will not be affected by this change.
https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/