Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no fee, and no need to submit any code. The entire approval process is documented on our website: https://opensource.org/approval
I don't see anything on that page with gives you, the OSI, the legal right to declare things as being opensource or not. You categorically stated it wasn't opensource. Had you stated that in your opinion it wasn't opensource it would be different.
MongoDB switches up its open source license
411–420 of 487 posts
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question. If I write some code and release it on Github with an MIT license, do I need permission from OSI to call my project "Open Source"? Is there a legal requirement? I am confused.
Fair question :-) And the answer is no, you would not need OSI's permission to call your project open source -- because you'd be using the MIT license which has been reviewed and approved by the OSI. You can find the list of approved licenses, along with information about the review and approval process, over at https://opensource.org/licenses
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#413(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…
> 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…
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a fine interpretation of the term for amateurs. By which I mean, it's probably fine to think of things that way when you're working in an amateur capacity. If you're working in a non-amateur capacity, thinking about things that way could result in unwittingly exposing yourself to more legal risk than you want.
No, it has nothing to do with "amateurs". Whether the source is open and what the license dictates are two wholly different things. The danger is exactly in conflating the two. Take for example the NPOSL-3.0: A variant of the Open Software License 3.0, this license requires that the organization using it is a non-profit and that no revenue is generated from sale of the software, support or services. https://tldrlegal…
Nowhere does the license say that you can't use the code outside non-profit orgs. In fact 17.d says very clearly that if you're not a non-profit, you are allowed to distribute your modified works, but under the original OSL license, not the NPOSL. So you can use, modify it and distribute it, only with a complication in the licensing.
The other amendment the NPOSL adds is where the original OSL gives a grant of patents and a warranty of provenance, and the NPOSL explicitly doesn't, because it's designed for non-profit companies, which have no money, so it's intended to reduce legal exposure.
It's a Free Software license in my opinion, and I bet you a drink that Stallman and the FSF would consider one too, even if they would not recommend using it.
Also note that the license's author is Laurence Rosen, who was General Counsel of the OSI, knows more about software licensing than most people, and who explains the details and rationale of the NPOSL in [1]
[1] https://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm
If you have any other license that's OSI-certified and you think is non-free according to the principles of the FSF, I'm interested in learning about it.
One thing to take into account, though, is that the OSI is a certification body, and the FSF isn't.
Thhis means that the list of Open Source (according to the OSI) licenses is closed and published on their site. The FSF gives a set of principles and also publishes a list of licenses with some analysis, but the FSF's list is non-exhaustive, nor does it pretend to be. There are infinite potential free licenses that the FSF will not list, because its doesn't count license certification as one of its goals.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#415I'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…
Or they might just release their entire stack, which is probably 90% open source stuff with 10% glue code anyway.
There’s more to running a business than just cloning a software stack. Any idiot can fire up an OpenStack based ‘cloud’, but that won’t make them the next AWS.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think simply checking that the license is "OSI approved" gives you many legal guarantees. There are currently 83 "OSI approved" licenses containing a variety of terms, from aggressively copyleft to extremely permissive: https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
I don't either. . . we might be playing a game of moving goalposts here. I was specifically responding to the observation that, "Open source for most people means whether you can see and modify the source code.", and saying that that, while that is a workable definition, it's probably not one that most people want to use.
Oracle or Microsoft or any other copyright holder that didn’t release that is going to be ticked off at you.
There has to be some element of the author wants you to have it.
I know this sounds silly and pedantic. I think there have been organizations that ignored copyright and released stuff they didn’t control the rights to.
You might want to tack on something about the authors want me to have access to this.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#417Is that the same as modify and/or improve?
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see anything on that page with gives you, the OSI, the legal right to declare things as being opensource or not. You categorically stated it wasn't opensource. Had you stated that in your opinion it wasn't opensource it would be different.
You sound like you're arguing just to argue. Do you have a valid point? Their OSD is what defines open source. You didn't define it. It wasn't defined at some party or demo-conf. It was defined by the OSI - they defined Open Source Software. Arguing otherwise shows a serious lack of OSS knowledge.
Actually, that's exactly where it was defined.
> I brainstormed this with some Silicon Valley fans of Linux (including Larry Augustin of the Linux International board of directors) the day after my meeting with Netscape (Feb 5th). We kicked around and discarded several alternatives, and we came up with a replacement label we all liked: "open source". [0]
Also note, that the OSI didn't exist when they came up with this new label.
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open source for most people means whether you can see and modify the source code. Not whether OSI gives it some arbitrary stamp of approval.
Yeah, but that's a really dangerous position to take and if they'd work with me I'd be quick to set them straight. Because that path leads to legal adventure. What you are describing is "source available", not "open source". And that's a huge difference in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using basic context clues and inference, it's obvious she meant "IS NOT OPEN SOURCE [currently]". The license has not been approved as open source. It may be eventually, but it is not at present.
No. She's conflating "an OSI-approved licence" with "open source". The Open Source Definition does not contain a requirement that a licence must be OSI-approved.