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MongoDB switches up its open source license

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Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#81

Post by redwood »

DannyBee wrote: post #45
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like WTFPL as a permissive licence in these cases. Small developers and companies without layers of lawyers will read the licence, see that it says "do what the ---- you want", and use your code accordingly. Big companies with layers of lawyers will read the licence, blanch in terror, and either refuse to use the software, or contact you for alternative terms. Case in point: Google forbids use of the WTFPL.…

So i'm the one who forbid WTFPL at Google, and we forbid it mainly because it's bad for developers, believe it or not. We go over it in new googler training (and our reasoning is on the Google open source policy site we publish: https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfp... ) You are welcome to not (but if you go and look, it's completely consistent with my viewpoints and history in OSS so ...). I w…

It's in small companies' interest to have their creations used and monetized by Google without anything being given back? I'm glad you're transparent about your own context here--it's appreciated, but I hope you can see that outside the walls of Google there's another world.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#82

Post by kstrauser »

antirez wrote: post #52
kstrauser wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now you don't have to pretend that they changed something without having any way to prove it. Now if the orchestration software is not open source, they can't use it.

I suspect you’re exactly right.

There is literally no reason I’d use MongoDB anymore over any of its better FOSS competitors.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#83

Post by golubbe »

super3 wrote: post #70
oropolo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Have you seen the degree of investment Microsoft has made lately in Open Source? It's an upside-down world where Microsoft if a bigger champion -- and funder -- of open source than a company like Google which was built…

The total cloud market is around $180B. 90% are on running Linux, and 2/3 are running on OSS. If it is not in the billions its not enough.

To put that $180B in perspective, the TOTAL revenue of the public OSS companies (or those that were public recently before being acquired) is roughly $5B. That includes Red Hat, Mongo, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Elastic, and Mulesoft. If 2/3 of a $180B market is driven by open source, and we want the cycle of innovation to continue, it's in everyone's best interest to find ways to connect open source cloud usage to direct open source monetization.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#84

Post by gshulegaard »

babuskov wrote: post #73
mrkurt wrote: post #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 al…

> exploit permissive licenses to the max I feel like many people deciding to use an open source license for their project never consider the consequences of such choice. They use OSS because it's "cool" or they hope to get some free work done for them. If you pick an open source license and someone uses your code to build something else within the license boundaries, that is not a Bad Thing(tm). I have released many…

I generally agree with you.

I just wanted to point out that from an Economic perspective this:

> I don't feel like Google/Amazon/etc. owe anything to anyone just because they made it and now have a lot of money.

And the ability to utilize that war chest to cannibalize the best of open source to create private differentiators raises the barrier of entry for competition. This market would naturally drift towards an oligopoly-like market equilibrium.

Like I said, I agree with your perspective on licenses. I would just also like OSS to be the great equalizer that instills innovation and disruption in the greater tech market place. But so long as tech giants can take any good new OSS, pay top dollar to recruit great engineers, and then throw them at OSS then I don't think this ideal vision will come to fruition.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#85

Post by kstrauser »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #78
k__ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the feeling that AWS and Azure are pushing their own NoSQL solutions and don't care much about MongoDB.

Azure offers Cosmos DB advertised as a drop-in for MongoDB. I'm guessing Cosmos is Mongo in disguise, though I don't know if it really is, and/or whether MS has made a deal with Mongo or just think they can use the AGPL version. For the record: I'm not a big fan of Mongo (the DB) but I think MongoDB, Inc. raises a valid point wrt. developers doing all the hard work including community building and a million other thi…

Did the MongoDB pay for their Linux distros? GCC? Git? How much are they paying to the FOSS projects they used to build their software for sale?

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#86

Post by znpy »

kstrauser wrote: post #85
tannhaeuser wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure offers Cosmos DB advertised as a drop-in for MongoDB. I'm guessing Cosmos is Mongo in disguise, though I don't know if it really is, and/or whether MS has made a deal with Mongo or just think they can use the AGPL version. For the record: I'm not a big fan of Mongo (the DB) but I think MongoDB, Inc. raises a valid point wrt. developers doing all the hard work including community building and a million other thi…

Did the MongoDB pay for their Linux distros? GCC? Git? How much are they paying to the FOSS projects they used to build their software for sale?

Fair point, actually.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#87

Post by metheus »

zokier wrote: post #25

The license is clearly based on (A)GPL which is copyrighted by FSF, and has the following notice: "Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed." Does that mean that MongoDB is now infringing on FSF copyright of the license text itself?

SSPL is based on the GPL, not the AGPL, so no, the SSPL isn't itself a copyright infringement.

BTW, check out the "What specifically is different between the GPL and this new license and what will it be called?" section of the FAQ:

https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license...

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#88

Post by wmf »

DannyBee wrote: post #74
mrkurt wrote: post #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 al…

"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. " This is simply not true in any meaningful way. Please cit…

It seems like even if the cloud providers contributed 100% of their code back to Mongo it still wouldn't be enough to keep Mongo alive. They need money, not code. That's the subtext to this whole discussion.

AGPL was a roundabout way of hinting that cloud providers should kick back some revenue and now that it didn't work the truth can come out.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#89

Post by setgree »

babuskov wrote: post #73
mrkurt wrote: post #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 al…

> exploit permissive licenses to the max I feel like many people deciding to use an open source license for their project never consider the consequences of such choice. They use OSS because it's "cool" or they hope to get some free work done for them. If you pick an open source license and someone uses your code to build something else within the license boundaries, that is not a Bad Thing(tm). I have released many…

> I feel like many people deciding to use an open source license for their project never consider the consequences of such choice

I might say instead that the norms of open source software development -- attribution, collaboration, good faith -- are so baked in to small, high-trust communities that they might seem as though they'll be obvious to everyone. And then your software makes it way to the public and you realize that those were just assumptions and not written into the letter of agreement at any point.

I'm speaking as an outside observer on this.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#90

Post by pauldix »

I don't think this really changes anything with MongoDB and how open or closed it is in practice. This really is just MongoDB clarifying their original intent with picking the AGPL. Basically, if you're going to offer MongoDB as a service, you either need to make all your service's code freely available, or you need a commercial relationship with MongoDB. This doesn't change anything for users of the software that are building applications.

This is just another highlight of the cloud vendors making it very difficult to build a business based on open source infrastructure software. Either you pick an infectious license (like AGPL) or you go open core. Otherwise, if your project gets popular, the cloud providers will offer it as a service, which will eat into your revenue.

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