Can I modify the Mattermost Open Source?

I am in need of Chatting app for group of students. We don’t have any budget to spend on Enterprise Edition. Features of Open Source Team Edition is sufficient for us our activities.

Can I modify the code for our internal use? License is bit confusing. So I am asking again, Is Team Edition Open Source is under MIT license? Can I modify as I wish (w/o branding as Mattermost).

I will be rebranding as per my requirement and will not include anything related to Mattermost (as other cases in OSS).

My project is not for commercial purpose, incase if I have to redistribute, I will include all the changes and same MIT license (distribution is nowhere in the plan).

Please give me a DIRECT ANSWER consider me as non-technical user, w/o making me go through a huge doc, simply I don’t have time.

Thanks for making this wonderful software.

Hello, @Rathish

This section from the documentation pretty much explains what you need to know about Mattermost rebranding in 3 points:

  • When you create a derivative version of Mattermost and share it with others as a product, you need to replace the Mattermost name and logo from the system, among other requirements, per the Mattermost trademark policy.
  • You can rebrand your system using convenience tools for custom branding.
  • For advanced whitelabelling, and to whitelabel in Team Edition under MIT license without Enterprise Edition branding tools, you can manually update files on the Mattermost server per product documentation. This can also be done without forking.

May I know if that helps? Happy to get you in touch with the right people if you need more information on this.

Thanks for your response. I am learning to do it myself. It’s really an awesom software.

Regards,
Rathish.

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Hi! I did see that @ahmaddanial did reply already with information, but as I have actually personally been looking into the same topic for my own use of the platform, I thought you would find this useful as well.

I know you stated that you wanted to avoid any technical work such as code modification, but the most complete way to access the ability to customize and modify your installation of Mattermost to fit your needs best is (in my opinion) using the mattermost web app, which provides you with the full filesystem of mattermost in one bundle, easy to install, and even more configurable than the mattermost server install.

You can find the code on Github here, and the documentation on how to install and deploy the Mattermost Web App is linked in the description of the Github Repository.

I hope you achieve the customization your looking for, if you have any difficulties please feel more than welcome to open another thread!

This helps a lot. Thanks for taking time to read and respond.

I am looking for something, which is free from any kind of future issues, as this is our initiative to empower student community.

Regards,
Rathish Kumar B.

In theory, once properly configured and set up(with the stable release), It is not going to have issues so long as the server you are running it on can handle the capacity. If you would be interested, I am personally willing to assist you in setting up your server and installation, I have already done it on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic with Apache2 and MySQL, connected it to a domain, generated the SSL HTTPS certificates, and the rest of it, and I can assist in setting up the email connection and customizing the branding as well.

Just a thought, if you don’t have any interest or need, that is perfectly fine as well, I’ll be here to provide assistance if you encounter any issues!