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Making the GPL more scary

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Re: Making the GPL more scary

#121

Post by bhickey »

batty_alex wrote: post #65
bhickey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This License Means More Open Source Code You're going to get flak for this because you're factually incorrect. The SSPL is not an open source license. It might as well contain a clause that says "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." As far as I can tell it was submitted to the OSI in bad faith.

> The SSPL is not an open source license. It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. > "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." Sounds to me like, "thou shall not offer MongoDB, and your own custom tooling, in your cloud without talking to us about licensing fees or making your cloud tech open source."

> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights.

And you'd be mistaken. It isn't open source because (among other reasons) it discriminates based on your purpose for using the software. This tickles freedom zero of the free software definition and point six of the open source definition.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#122

Post by bhickey »

weinzierl wrote: post #60
bhickey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This License Means More Open Source Code You're going to get flak for this because you're factually incorrect. The SSPL is not an open source license. It might as well contain a clause that says "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." As far as I can tell it was submitted to the OSI in bad faith.

> The SSPL is not an open source license. So far this is just your opinion. If the OSI will approve it has yet to be seen...

Be that as it may, my opinion is informed. Like the Commons Clause before it the SSPL is an effort at undermining open source. It violates the Open Source Definition in letter and in spirit.

The OSI isn't going to approve it and Mongo damn well knew this when they submitted it.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

amingilani wrote: post #9

I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this, but here's an opinion supporting the MongoDB license. Two things: 1. MongoDB has the right to do whatever they like ------------------------------------------------------ The creator of a product: 1. Has a rational interest in maximizing their returns 2. Owns all the rights to their products (barring existing IP restrictions) And if they choose to open source their co…

> This License Means More Open Source Code

Probably true, non-open source code provokes multiple open source compeitors when successful, so this non-open (per OSD criterion 9) license will, when used, probably provoke more open source code to be written.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

binomialxenon wrote: post #104
msbarnett wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This license is only open source in a very obscure interpretation of the word. It's "open source" in the dead-obvious meaning "the source code is open for inspection". I'd argue it's all of the extra baggage that the OSI have read into the words "open" and "source" that are considerably more obscure. Neither the word "open" nor "source" implies "free for commercial exploitation to all and sundry"

This is why "Open Source" is terrible terminology for Free/Libre software.

But not as bad as “free software”, which was well-established before the FSF for, and has continued to be used (even now) widely for, gratis software.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#125

Post by dragonwriter »

batty_alex wrote: post #65
bhickey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This License Means More Open Source Code You're going to get flak for this because you're factually incorrect. The SSPL is not an open source license. It might as well contain a clause that says "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." As far as I can tell it was submitted to the OSI in bad faith.

> The SSPL is not an open source license. It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. > "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." Sounds to me like, "thou shall not offer MongoDB, and your own custom tooling, in your cloud without talking to us about licensing fees or making your cloud tech open source."

> It seems like it is to me,

It directs licensing of software that is not a derived work of, or part of a combined work with, the software offered under the license, in violation of criterion 9 of the OSD.

(OTOH, it might be Free Software under the FSF Free Software Definition.)

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

sseveran wrote: post #79
cyphar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. It is effectively impossible to follow the conditions of the license -- according to the interpretation by Bradley Kuhn and others this would require you to provide the source code for Linux under this license if you run MongoDB on Linux. Linux is GPLv2 and has thousands of copyright owners -- it is not possible for any ind…

Individuals interpretations of this are unlikely to matter much until such a clause is tested in court. The interpretation that the license is as broad as Mr Kuhn claims may be true, but it may not be. Personally I think that both Mongo and Redis doing this is great as it shows the danger posed when a company can just relicense a project at will, which IMHO is the greater issue here. If Mongo felt the need they could…

> Individuals interpretations of this are unlikely to matter much until such a clause is tested in court.

If the interpretation is reasonably plausible and untenable for a user, they just won't use the SSPL licensed version of the software.

So, yes, they will matter substantially.

For a big-money cloud provider, it's probably less risky to fork and maintain their own version from the GPL version (and share it to get code from the community).

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#127

Post by dragonwriter »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
iSnow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, that feels more like a hidden contract. Giving away for free a software only to require the user to do the same. That's why I prefer BSD-style licenses - when they write "free", they mean "free".

And that is why BSDs will never be as big as Linux, companies don't like to give free beer back to the tap. Also why all new open source OSes done companies are all based on BSD/MIT licenses like Zephyr, RTOS, Fuchsia, ... When we get back to PD, Shareware world, don't start complaining companies don't contribute back.

> And that is why BSDs will never be as big as Linux, companies don't like to give free beer back to the tap

BSDs will (perhaps) never be as big as Linux because Linux had first mover advantage in the FOSS operating system world, and hasn't (yet) fumbled it badly enough to be displaced.

OTOH, Postgres and SQLite do quite well (with plenty of contributions from big downstream users and sellers), despite being permissively-licensed, and (in Postgres case) despite having a GPL competitor that used to be much further ahead of it in acceptance.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#128

Post by pjmlp »

trasz wrote: post #120
pjmlp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this specific case, Sony would have been forced to actually spend money doing a compiler from the ground up instead of cutting costs down costs while giving a few crumbs back to keep the plebe happy. What I find ironic with the current anti-GPL trend is the eventual return of the shareware model, then lets see how well the MIT/BSD folks will appreciate it.

Only if you assume the only choices were 1. using GCC or 2. writing from scratch. Thing is, this assumption obviously doesn't match reality. Absurd assumptions -> absurd conclusions. And no, BSD has nothing to do with shareware. Shareware was never about sharing sources; meanwhile, BSD-licensed projects are fine with respect to sharing - just take a look at Postgres, LLVM, FreeBSD, X11, or Python. GPL is an attempt t…

I have plenty of crufty shareware CDs and most likely unreadable floppies with source code on those .zip and .arj files.

FreeBSD vs what Linux has achieved, LLVM still lacking many of the hardware targets supported by GCC don't seem to be doing that great in company contributions. The others I don't know well enough to comment on.

Lets check again in about 10 years to see how far they managed to develop themselves.

Maybe I will be wrong, maybe not.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

akjha wrote: post #62
StudentStuff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and I'm perfectly fine with this. If someone wants a non-copyleft branch, they can pay me to rewrite the features I didn't author, otherwise I will exclude the added code from said pull request. Its a definite edge case, but if I can get active contributors, I am not about to ask them to sign a CLA.

Keeping track of and excluding commits authored by others seems a lot of work. I am curious if you use any kind of tooling or process to make it easier.

A bigger issue might be trying to filter anything that might be derivative of contributed work not covered by CLA.

Re: Making the GPL more scary

#130

Post by dragonwriter »

pessimizer wrote: post #77

Weird thought, but I think that with this license MongoDB has managed to attack the OSI without attacking the FSF. To me, this is perfectly acceptable Free Software but so strict that it basically reads "do not use this software commercially, it requires you to open every piece of software that any of your employees have ever seen or heard of, including software you do not own. Purchase a license from us." In other w…

> Since their primary goal is to help business, they can't help but disapprove; since they don't explicitly state this goal, they have no nominal basis to reject it without rejecting Free Software in general.

Without engaging with your characterization of OSI motives, the OSI has a clear basis to reject it without rejecting Free Software in general; unlike all other existing Free Software licenses, SSPL (which might be Free Software) violates criterion 9 of the Open Source definition by restricting licensing of other software not derivative of, or part of a shared work with, the software originally distributed under the SSPL.

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