91–100 of 487 posts
Alibaba & Tencent have been offering managed MongoDB offerings for a while but MongoDB, Inc. has historically not made any major investment in its own managed offering (Atlas) for that market.
This license shift is aimed squarely at AWS, who is rumored to be ready to announce/release their own MongoDB-compatible service at AWS re:Invent next month.
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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.
This sounds like a violation of provision 9 of the Open Source Definition and the DFSG. It's going to backfire hard when distros start removing Mongo from their main repos.
(Thanks for the explanation, "DFSG" passed over me the first time I read this. "Debian Free Software Guidelines".)
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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?
The projects you mention: Linux+git development has good financial standing from companies who could be seen as going (or having gone) aggressively against commercial Unix from a business PoV. gcc thrived on freedom enthusiasm but has seen many, many patches from commercial vendors wanting their OS, CPU or whatever supported.
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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.
You clearly didn't read the link i said which says our issue with WTFPL is with the lack of warranty disclaimer and with the rights grant (which is not likely to be valid in a number of countries).
You will find nothing, nor have i stated anything about the ability for google to use the code for "monetization" reasons. It doesn't even enter the equation
It is very hard to take your comment in good faith as a result.
Our policy pages are clear on why we ban licenses, even things like AGPL. You'll note they are not economic concerns (IE google won't be able to monetize), but compliance ones.
(Of course, you should view these in good faith, they were originally written for an internal audience)
I can definitively state I have never banned a license at Google due to Google's ability to "monetize" the code, or even indirect versions of that (IE that if it became popular, it would hurt google's ability to do that). All concerns are compliance ones.
Additionally, the pages i linked you to very clearly encourage people to contribute back as much as they can.
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This sounds like a violation of provision 9 of the Open Source Definition and the DFSG. It's going to backfire hard when distros start removing Mongo from their main repos.
Why would they? They don't make a Mongo service available. Neither do most users who install Mongo from a Linux distribution repository. (Thanks for the explanation, "DFSG" passed over me the first time I read this. "Debian Free Software Guidelines".)
Since the new Mongo license violates rule 9 of the DFSG, it is considered proprietary software by Debian's definition, and that means Debian's FOSS policy will require Mongo to be moved out of the core repos and into the non-free repo. Fedora and Ubuntu have their own policies which will have the same effect.
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...
I don't see how the distinction makes a difference here, both have the same clause about changing not being allowed.
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A lot of AWS's managed services are just off the shelf open source projects on the backend. Amazon can afford to fork the project and poach top talent from your company. I think these moves are extremely short-sighted. Changing license models only causes instability in the overall ecosystem.
Why doesn't Amazon just pay mongodb? If you you hired some employees from mongo you would have to pay money.
If I want to use MongoDB in my ecommerce app no worries. If I want to simply use MongoDB offer some minimal improvement or added functionality, call it ZongoDB and sell subscriptions... not so fine?
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The drivers are all permissive OSS licenses. It's on purpose, they never wanted to own applications that are built on top of MongoDB, but they never wanted to give away the server bit either.
I meant people seem to install the server too, thinking that the server itself it free. Most of MongoDB tutorials on the internet starts with "how to install locally" without mentioning nothing about the license.
Is there an OSS license where it won’t allow other providers to offer the original technology as a service and charge for it? If I want to use MongoDB in my ecommerce app no worries. If I want to simply use MongoDB offer some minimal improvement or added functionality, call it ZongoDB and sell subscriptions... not so fine?
No, because such a license would - by definition - not be an Open Source license. That's basically what the Common Clause says, but a license with that clause attached isn't OSS.