MongoDB switches up its open source license • Hacker News Board

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#231

Post by BFatts » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #193

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OSI is a respected organization that defends basic and non-controversial rights in open source. The underlying reasons behind the Anti-Commons Clause are unimportant if the execution leads to such an egregious violation of these principles. I support the OSI and their mission is important. Getting angry with them for protecting open source from bad actors who try to subvert its freedoms while reaping its benefits…

>Getting angry with them for protecting open source from bad actors who try to subvert its freedoms OSI was specifically created to subvert freedoms that the Free Software Foundation protects, so this statement is quite ironic.

No, again someone who doesn't really know the history. Open Source was a way to make free software acceptable to businesses, not subvert the FSF. The FSF's goal is to have ZERO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE at all and that software patents are stupid and should be illegal.

So, without such knowledge your statement might make sense. But even stating that OSS subverts FSF is laughable!

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#232

Post by sangnoir » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #221

sangnoir wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

I think OP meant in the spiritual sense, free software is the original "open-source". A better one, I'd argue, but that's a different discussion.

I was addressing OP's suggestion that RMS is the authority on "Open Source" (which was the question further up the thread). He'd rather have you use/contribute (to) Free software instead.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#233

Post by BFatts » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #207

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really true. The FSF and OSI have subtly different goals but the definition of open source and free software are nearly identical. The OSI exists to be a non-political entity so that people who want to work on open source have resources to do so without necessarily participating in the politics of the FSF.

> The OSI exists to be a non-political entity so that people who want to work on open source have resources to do so without necessarily participating in the politics of the FSF. In what way is the FSF any more political than the OSI, beyond trying to protect the defined freedoms of free software? By inserting itself as the only legitimate body to define what "open-source" is, it is by definition engaging in politics…

>> The right to take my code, profit from it and not share back is essentially what the OSI stands for and is thus not respected by me.

Nope. You are so very wrong here. The OSI defines open source so that licenses comply with the terms... that's all. They don't have any other agenda, period. Stating so shows a complete lack of understanding OSS and the OSI.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#234

Post by lacker » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

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…

Of course it's true. Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on. That's exactly how open source works. Google helps "open source" in general by releasing and funding open source projects. But Google doesn't pay companies that build useful open source software in the first place, to use their software.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#235

Post by metheus » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

jahewson wrote: post #189

vmbrasseur wrote: post #120

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.

Who's not allowed to use it?

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#236

Post by amirathi » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

None of OSI's Open Source licenses (including AGPL) protect creators financial interest in the cloud first world. Period.

I want to issue "View and Internal Use License" for my work. Anyone can view the source code, modify, and use the software for their own benefit as they see fit. Under no circumstances can anyone sell/re-distribute/host the paid version of software or any derivative thereof. Why can't OSI create such a license?

I understand the spirit of OSI is to foster more usage of open source software. I admire it. But probably a LOT of open source software is not getting built in the world because it's not possible for everyone to spend few months/years of their prime without any financial outcome (not even a possibility of it).

I'm a developer who spent 3 FULL days reading up licenses for my indie project [1] that I aim to make some money with. Not even a single license was adequate to protect me from large teams/companies if the software were to become popular. I resorted to only open sourcing a required critical library [2].

[1] https://www.nurtch.com/

[2] https://github.com/Nurtch/rubix

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#237

Post by darkarmani » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 6:59 PM UTC

muks wrote: post #200

vmbrasseur wrote: post #120

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 "…

> because the OSI don't appear to have a right to restrict use of the phrase

You are really hung up on this. Where did they say they were restricting the use of the phrase? If they said: "MongoDB is not good software" would you be saying they aren't allowed to restrict MongoDB from saying they are good software?

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#238

Post by merb » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

hendzen wrote: post #27

Disclaimer: IANAL. From MongoDB, Inc's POV, its fine to run MongoDB in-house for the purposes of supporting some user-facing application. Coinbase would be a good example, they make a consumer product that uses MongoDB as the storage backend. What is definitely not allowed is selling fully hosted MongoDB instances. E.g. ( https://cloud.yandex.ru/docs/mdb/ ). To do this you will need to open-source all the supporting…

> To do this you will need to open-source all the supporting infra/automation code which will be a deal breaker in many cases.

it isn't actually I guess google runs their RDS on kubernetes anyway.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#239

Post by BFatts » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #191

BFatts wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OSI is the founder and DEFINER of the term "open source" so saying that it's open source without an OSI approved license is like saying your app's an approved Android app without it first being reviewed. Get it?? Open Source is a term coined by the OSI.

> Open Source is a term coined by the OSI. No, it's not: http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html And even if it was, popular terms reach beyond the persons/organizations that coined them. Unless it's trademarked, it's just a term all kinds of people use, many of which don't know/care about OSI. In fact: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

Okay, pedantry... If you want to be specific: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source...

But it was done coincidentally with the discussions that ultimately led to the OSI and the OSD.

>> Bruce Perens has applied to register "open source" as a trademark and hold it through Software in the Public Interest. The trademark conditions will be known as the ``Open Source Definition'', essentially the same as the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Your own reference contains this text, btw.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#240

Post by lacker » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #77

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…

Here, i'll make a provocative statement: Google has released roughly every meaningful patch it has made to the open source software it was built on[1]. As for funding, that's definitely not true by the numbers last i looked (and definitely was not true in the past). Without concrete disagreements, this is just handwaving. So if you make some, i'm happy to argue with real data. [1] The only cases i can think of that t…

Google has released roughly every meaningful patch it has made to the open source software it was built on.

Chrome or Android seem like good counterexamples, where the software that most people use (Chrome, or Android + Google Experience) is specifically kept in two separate buckets, open source and closed source, so that Google can strategically keep some parts open and some parts closed.