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>> who do you consider be the authority? That would be Richard Matthew Stallman, the proverbial OG in this entire field.
You will find that RMS detests "Open Source"[1]. He's more of a Free software guy, the distinction on user's freedom is important. 1. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
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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.
The server _is_ free. As long as you don't modify the server, you don't have any obligations. If you do modify the server, you're only obligated to publish the changes you made to the server. No one is at risk of violating the license by installing it locally and using it in an application.
Well, that isn't true any more. If you start selling MongoDB functionality as a service, you now have obligations, even if you didn't modify it.
The meat of the change: SSPL explicitly states that anybody who wants to offer MongoDB as a service — or really any other software that uses this license — needs to either get a commercial license or open source the service to give back the community. Looks like a pretty straightforward extension of GPL principles, by replacing the linking of licensed code to remotely calling the licensed code. It can have a lot of i…
MongoDB was already under the AGPL (which adds the copyleft via network provision) so I suspect there is a bigger difference than that.
It was like LGPL in the local case: you alter the library and make it available through the software you link with it, so you have to share the changes you've made to the library, but not the rest of the linked code.
With SSPL, it's like the full GPL in the local case: if you take the licensed software, and link it (via rpc / network) to your other software, you must share not only any changes you've made to the licensed part, but the whole thing that uses it.
Another tricky question is where the border line is. If I write a wrapper that interfaces with MongoDB and repackages its data, then makes them remotely available to the rest of my service, do I only need to share the wrapper? If not, and any network connection that substantially uses an SSPL piece counts, then do I have to share my internal monitoring system? Am I even allowed to connect closed-source data analysis tools to an SSPL database? Etc.
Vice President of the Open Source Initiative here. MongoDB submitted this new license for approval by OSI at the same time that they announced that they'd relicensed all of their code. We wish they'd started the process prior to the announcement, but what's done is done. The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. As the license review process…
I don't think that an appeal to authority is a very good way to make this argument. It's the blatant restriction to the field of endeavor which makes this license quite obviously not open source, because there's nothing open about something which certain people are not allowed to use.
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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…
The article is missing the specifics of what Mongo are saying that others are doing that they won't be able to do under this new licence.
Some companies are illegally running a modified version of MongoDB while keeping their changes closed source.
As I understand, the new licence will allow them to do that if they pay a commercial licence (contributing to the project by financing instead of coding).
I might be reading this wrong, but doesn't this qualify as a "super viral" license in that any code that in any way is part of the stack for hosting Mongo as a Service must be open sourced as well? Granted, a company could buy a commercial license to avoid this but if (for the sake of example) Azure's Mongo hosting was using the open source license would this mean that EVERYTHING that goes into Azure, down to Windows…
Vice President of the Open Source Initiative here. MongoDB submitted this new license for approval by OSI at the same time that they announced that they'd relicensed all of their code. We wish they'd started the process prior to the announcement, but what's done is done. The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. As the license review process…
You don't own the term open source mate.
See https://opensource.org/osd which is what DEFINES open source. The term has been around for 20 years. Your lack of understanding the history doesn't make you any kind of an expert.
> some cloud providers — especially in Asia 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.
What's the source of this rumor?
Vice President of the Open Source Initiative here. MongoDB submitted this new license for approval by OSI at the same time that they announced that they'd relicensed all of their code. We wish they'd started the process prior to the announcement, but what's done is done. The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. As the license review process…
> The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. Perhaps you meant to say "is not OSI Certified", because the OSI don't appear to have a right to restrict use of the phrase "open source". See what's on your own website: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p... On the other comments in this thread, even though MongoDB have "…
It's like someone claiming certain software doesn't scale. There is no need to clarify that the author doesn't own the word "scalability".
Op is speaking for the OSI's opinion on whether it's open source or not.
(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…
Aren't you glad it isn't you! ;-)