I hoped that someone would fork OpenWebUI before the license change an maintain a OSS Version. Like Valkey¹ is the OSS Fork of Redis and OpenSearch² is the OSS Fork of ElasticSearch.

[1]: https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey

[2]: https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch

▲

mindcrash 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That might still be an option, all code before a license change falls under the license at that time.

A new license legally becomes active once it has been made public (i.e. it is committed to the source tree) and is not retroactive (for legal reasons).

And because of this, unless the owner/maintainer is willing to nuke a huge chunk of the history within their public repository (with all repercussions which might come with it) it is still possible to make a safe fork of a open source / open core product suddenly moving into a different direction. Time travel to the point before the new license was added to the repository, and fork from that point in time.

The owner/maintainer involved might absolutely not like that but legally they have no choice to allow it, given the license and its permissions at that particular moment in time in the repo.

	▲	randomtoast 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> That might still be an option, all code before a license change falls under the license at that time. This is technically true, but as more time passes, it will be more and more unlikely that someone is willing to fork an old codebase, especially since the newer version has so many bugs already fixed and the old version gets outdated in many aspects fast. So if there is not any active fork right now that is backed by a community, then it's more likely that we would see alternatives coming up like the one OP mentioned here.

▲

evv 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It is honestly ridiculous that "Open WebUI" made it past the US trademark office.

https://www.trademarkia.com/open-webui-99027970

If somebody forks this project, I dare you to name it "Open Open Web UI". If they threaten you, just rename to "Open WebAI", "Open UI Web", and other permutations, until their legal budget runs dry.

Clearly this company is following OpenAI's playbook- start with lofty OSS ideals, put "open" in your name, then fall down a slippery slope.