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MongoDB switches up its open source license

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Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#481

Post by DannyBee »

lacker wrote: post #234
DannyBee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"Google doesn't pay companies that developed open source software that Google now relies on."

This is false. Seriously - i'm not sure why people on HN like to offer things as facts that they simply aren't ever going to know about.

Google in fact does pay companies that developed open source software that Google relies upon.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#482

Post by DannyBee »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #294
DannyBee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do understand your viewpoints. I just disagree that they're significant enough in practice to outweigh the value I see in WTFPL. The lack of a warranty disclaimer isn't an issue in practice; my readme just says "WTFPL, no warranty". The vague rights grant isn't something I've seen as an issue in analogous situations in case law. More important, to me, is what WTFPL says about my code: I'm not precious about it, I g…

"The lack of a warranty disclaimer isn't an issue in practice;"

There have in fact been developers sued (and they lost!) over this very issue in analogous situations, so i'm not sure why you say this.

"my readme just says "WTFPL, no warranty". The vague rights grant isn't something I've seen as an issue in analogous situations in case law."

I'm not sure where you looked. Judges have varied wildly in what they have done in analogous situations.

We are nothing if not data driven. If we didn't have very good data that suggests it is an issue, we wouldn't care.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#483

Post by DannyBee »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #443
DannyBee wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AGPL compliance wouldn't be that difficult if you remove making money from the equation. So indirectly your compliance concerns are based on economic concerns. This is simply false (on both points), and you haven't given any reason it would be true past "i feel this way". Even with direct support from our build system, AGPL compliance is incredibly difficult relative to GPL and other licenses[1] This argument also…

Appreciate your response, but what's so incredibly difficult to open-source all the things when you're running AGPL software? You choose not to, which is fine, but it's still just you wanting to monetize other's work without giving anything to others to run yours, in turn.

First, Your assertion is basically not that compliance with AGPL is not hard, it's that "you could just do more than the license requires".

That is always true, even for non-open source licenses.

You could take MIT code and comply not just by publishing a notice but by publishing all of it. I don't think that is a meaningful argument against the annoyance of having to collate and publish notices.

Imagine if you have a commercial license that requires you be able to allow them to look through your books to verify software licensing, that often has high cost. Your suggestion is basically "why not just make your books public" (IE more than the contract requires). I don't think that's a meaningful argument against the cost of compliance, because that's not about compliance with this license, but instead one that requires more.

The whole point of contracts/licenses is that they are a deal. What you are suggesting is a very different deal, and we'd deal with it a very different way.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#484

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

DannyBee wrote: post #482
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do understand your viewpoints. I just disagree that they're significant enough in practice to outweigh the value I see in WTFPL. The lack of a warranty disclaimer isn't an issue in practice; my readme just says "WTFPL, no warranty". The vague rights grant isn't something I've seen as an issue in analogous situations in case law. More important, to me, is what WTFPL says about my code: I'm not precious about it, I g…

"The lack of a warranty disclaimer isn't an issue in practice;" There have in fact been developers sued (and they lost!) over this very issue in analogous situations, so i'm not sure why you say this. "my readme just says "WTFPL, no warranty". The vague rights grant isn't something I've seen as an issue in analogous situations in case law." I'm not sure where you looked. Judges have varied wildly in what they have do…

If you could share some of that data, that would be helpful.

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#485

Post by thekozmo »

metheus wrote: post #87
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...

I've written a blog about this: https://www.scylladb.com/2018/10/22/the-dark-side-of-mongodb... Spoiler: It's a big nono Disclosure: I'm ScyllaDB co-founder

Re: MongoDB switches up its open source license

#487

Post by ddorian43 »

anarazel wrote: post #209
NathanKP wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of AWS's managed services are just off the shelf open source projects on the backend. Amazon employee here. Amazon offers two different types of service. For a service like Amazon RDS then yes it is the standard open source project hosted and managed by AWS. The value add is that you don't have to administrate and back it up, etc. For something like Amazon Aurora its a different story. Aurora is API compatibl…

> For something like Amazon Aurora its a different story. Aurora is API compatible with MySQL and Postgres but it is designed internally to work quite differently, really designed for the cloud first. And the result is its up to 5x faster than the standard open source software and just better than the open source version in many ways. It's also noticably slower than plain PG in other cases.

As the cloud often is.
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