I'm just here for the promised comment drama.
MongoDB switches up its open source license
31–40 of 487 posts
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#32I'm not an expert in licenses, could someone weight in and explain how the AGPLv3 was being abused? Did the mentioned companies follow the spirit of the license and were getting away with something the company didn't like or were they just improperly distributing the software, regardless of licensing terms? Also: "So while the SSPL isn’t all that different from the GNU GPLv3,(...) [it] explicitly states that anybody…
https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare... “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring softwa…
The "all programs you use" clause seems to make it extremely viral, perhaps unprecedentedly so. It seems to me that anyone not willing to comply with AGPL would be even less likely to comply with this. Not sure how that's supposed to be a good outcome, even for Mongo.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#33(Context: I worked on Compose/MongoHQ for a very long time. We were the first to monetize MongoDB)
I'm sure people will get riled up about this, but it makes sense. Building a business on an OSS database in a world of behemoth cloud providers is really hard. It's clear Google and Amazon (and maybe even Azure) are comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind.
These things are going to keep happening as long as mega tech companies (a) use OSS to commoditize other companies' products and (b) exploit permissive licenses to the max.
I don't want to live in a world where the only infrastructure software we have access to is what the big companies deign to open source. Life is better when small groups of devs can build and sustain critical infrastructure software. We need more haproxies and redises and binds and (fill in blank).
That said, MongoDB has never figured out how to work with their ecosystem in a way that's good for everyone. They've gone from trying to extort money from smaller companies to undercutting them to this. And it's likely not gonna change much this time, the world of "run a database as a service" is changing I think, and being replaced with more generic tools that just so happen to manage complex persistence well.
_Also_ I bet some random licensing folks are crapping their pants at IBM right now. I'm ashamed at how funny that is.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#34At the outset, it sounds simple that MongoDB inc thinks why should some 3rd party cloud provider (AWS, GCP, DO and the like) be allowed to run MongoDB as a service and make money while MongoDB contributes the biggest part of the open source project that is MongoDB. But, it feels like yet another fallacy. What really is an open source project then? Say some developer X contributes to a project like MongoDB his/her ope…
If you contribute to a project, you have no entitlement, moral or otherwise, to _future_ contributions to that project that others choose to make. Future contributions may be made under different terms, as you point out. The project might stop development, get forked privately, and you may never see active future developments distributed again.
This is self evident from the licences themselves but also clearly reasonable if you consider the proportions of contributions made. Why should a contributor get rights to all future work on a project made primarily by others solely by making a contribution?
> ...and the open source contributors walk away with nothing?
Nope. As others have pointed out, they walk away with the Free Software licensed version of the code to which they contributed, together with their contributions. This code base does exactly what it did at the time of their contributions.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#35This is a bad move and does not inspire confidence. Instead of switching the license, they should have gone after companies that were abusing the terms of GNU AGPLv3 license.
To legally fight in China pretending that something you can't see was modified is... hard. IMHO the only wrong thing about this move is trying to get it OSI approved, otherwise I can understand that they have concerns that do not apply to most normal users. However one should boldly say we are moving away from an OSS model, to a "available source" model where you retain most rights.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#36I'm not an expert in licenses, could someone weight in and explain how the AGPLv3 was being abused? Did the mentioned companies follow the spirit of the license and were getting away with something the company didn't like or were they just improperly distributing the software, regardless of licensing terms? Also: "So while the SSPL isn’t all that different from the GNU GPLv3,(...) [it] explicitly states that anybody…
https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare... “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring softwa…
That... is an impressive load of shit. So because I want to host MongoDB, I have to offer up the source for the Linux distro used to host the Jenkins server that I use to test it, huh.
Last week I was debating whether MongoDB is now completely obsoleted by PostgreSQL’s JSON datatype. As of now, I consider that no longer a debate.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#37This license seems to insure that MongoDB Inc either gets all source code to Mongo-as-a-Service from their competitors (which they can use to make a better service themselves) or they make money from all of their competitors through commercial licensing. Perhaps Oracle is preparing to acquire MongoDB Inc and this move is a prerequisite to acquisition?
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#38This is a bad move and does not inspire confidence. Instead of switching the license, they should have gone after companies that were abusing the terms of GNU AGPLv3 license.
To legally fight in China pretending that something you can't see was modified is... hard. IMHO the only wrong thing about this move is trying to get it OSI approved, otherwise I can understand that they have concerns that do not apply to most normal users. However one should boldly say we are moving away from an OSS model, to a "available source" model where you retain most rights.
How is those going to affect China? If the old enforcement methods didn’t work with the previous sane-ish license, they certainly won’t work any better with the new monstrosity.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#39I'm not an expert in licenses, could someone weight in and explain how the AGPLv3 was being abused? Did the mentioned companies follow the spirit of the license and were getting away with something the company didn't like or were they just improperly distributing the software, regardless of licensing terms? Also: "So while the SSPL isn’t all that different from the GNU GPLv3,(...) [it] explicitly states that anybody…
Speaking as a lawyer: There was no abuse, there was only mongo not being able to make money in all cases they wanted to. That's what they see as abuse. It isn't. While they complain of bad actors, bad actors always act bad. This will not disincentivize them (they are also often in a lot of interesting jurisdictions that would make it hard anyway). Instead, this is really about making it completely unpalatable for nor…
Speaking as not a lawyer: there is lots of abuse of OSS infrastructure from big tech corps — because the AGPL isn't equipped for everything-as-a-service eating software licensing. If "abuse" were license violations, they wouldn't have to use a new license.
Abuse is often legal.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#40I'm not an expert in licenses, could someone weight in and explain how the AGPLv3 was being abused? Did the mentioned companies follow the spirit of the license and were getting away with something the company didn't like or were they just improperly distributing the software, regardless of licensing terms? Also: "So while the SSPL isn’t all that different from the GNU GPLv3,(...) [it] explicitly states that anybody…
https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare... “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring softwa…
Original: your modified version must prominently offer all users
interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version
supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding
Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source
from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary
means of facilitating copying of software.