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License Changes for Confluent Platform

confluent.io

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Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#21

Post by mindcrime »

ensignavenger wrote: post #17
mindcrime wrote: post #2

This is a really negative trend for Open Source, and I hope it runs its course and dies out soon. License proliferation, bizarre "field of use" restrictions, blurring the line between what is open and what isn't, none of this stuff is a win for anybody. If you want to make something proprietary, make it proprietary, call it proprietary, and let that be the end of it. If you want to make something Open Source, then ma…

At least in this case, they are being more clear about what they are doing and not claiming their new license is Open Source or trying to poison an existing Open Source license, the way some other companies are doing things. I agree that it is always sad to see a company closing its (future) source code like this, but such is their perogative.

or trying to poison an existing Open Source license

Yes, kudos to Confluent for at least creating a new license, as opposed to adopting "Commons Clause + Apache" or something.

All of this said, even though I don't particularly like this "you can do everything except build a SaaS of this project" model, if people are going to do this, I hope that eventually things consolidate to where there's one de-facto standard "Shared Source - Non-SaaS" license.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#22

Post by andrewshadura »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #12
chuhnk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is not synonymous with free software. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Confluent have made it abundantly clear that the Apache Kafka project is and always will be Apache 2 licensed. Therefore that's where you go for your completely free solution. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. Enterprise is some…

> Open source is not synonymous with free software. This is literally the point of Open Source. It is "Free Software" repackaged for business people who hate ideals and morals as part of the story for the development of software.

Actually not even that. It is just defined from the other point of view. Open source is free software. Free software is open source.

http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#23

Post by mindcrime »

AlexB138 wrote: post #20
chuhnk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is not synonymous with free software. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Confluent have made it abundantly clear that the Apache Kafka project is and always will be Apache 2 licensed. Therefore that's where you go for your completely free solution. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. Enterprise is some…

The only time I have an issue with this sort of setup is when the commercial entity employs, or directly is itself, a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka). It creates an incentive structure that is counter to the community at large. e.g. a PR is issued to the open source project that makes a piece of the commercial product irrelevant. For the community that's…

a primary maintainer of the open source project (not sure how that works for Confluent and Kafka).

In theory Apache projects are supposed to exist in such a way that one vendor doesn't dominate all the decision making and development. In reality, it's not uncommon for a given vendor to have outsized influence on a given project. See: Ambari and Hortonworks, for example.

I don't follow Kafka development super closely, but I believe Confluent do have significant influence, but I'm not sure if it's to an extent that could be considered dangerous or not.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#24

Post by dominotw »

boredandroid wrote: post #8
dominotw wrote: post #6

Is aws now in violation of the license if they ever upgrade kafka version?

No, this has no effect on Kafka, which is part of the ASF and under the Apache 2.0 license. This just impacts things like KSQL that are part of Confluent Platform.

oh ok. I was confused by "(kafka)" in the title. Mods can you please remove kafka from the title.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#25

Post by greglindahl »

ah- wrote: post #11
mindcrime wrote: post #2

This is a really negative trend for Open Source, and I hope it runs its course and dies out soon. License proliferation, bizarre "field of use" restrictions, blurring the line between what is open and what isn't, none of this stuff is a win for anybody. If you want to make something proprietary, make it proprietary, call it proprietary, and let that be the end of it. If you want to make something Open Source, then ma…

I'm not sure what else they could do about this. I'm as sad as you are about licensing complications, but I can totally see why they're doing it. And I'd say it's miles better than these parts being closed.

They could adopt a different business model. Open source business models are hard.

What they're doing is changing to a proprietary license and keeping the business model. That's a fine thing for them to do, and lots of their customers are going to choose different software as a result.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#26

Post by boredandroid »

WoodenChair wrote: post #19
boredandroid wrote: post #4

Hi all, I'm Jay Kreps, the CEO of Confluent and author of that blog post. I'm happy to answer any questions.

The first sentence of your blog post reads: "We’re changing the license for some of the open source components of Confluent Platform from Apache 2.0 to the Confluent Community License." This implies that the components are still open source. However, as you probably know from the open source definition: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated your new license does not qualify as "open source" by the most commonly unders…

Sure, I've updated the post so it doesn't imply that we comply with the OSI open source definition.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#27

Post by nine_k »

mindcrime wrote: post #14
chuhnk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is not synonymous with free software. The world is evolving and so open source should also evolve with it. Confluent have made it abundantly clear that the Apache Kafka project is and always will be Apache 2 licensed. Therefore that's where you go for your completely free solution. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. Enterprise is some…

Open source is not synonymous with free software. Nobody is saying that it is. The community license is additional features free for use but not for you to provide as a managed service. IOW, "not Open Source". And that's fine... a company has a right to create software using any licensing terms they want. But making something that's "almost OSS, but not quite" and trying to steal the sheen of respectability that come…

Why, the source is open. You can use it to look for bugs, to make your own optimized / customized / verified build, etc.

The change applies to making the running code available in certain ways, not to access to the source.

I wonder how "free as in freedom" such software is, though. OTOH AGPL is considered "free software" by GNU, so this likely is, too.

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#28

Post by zozbot123 »

boredandroid wrote: post #13
mindcrime wrote: post #2

This is a really negative trend for Open Source, and I hope it runs its course and dies out soon. License proliferation, bizarre "field of use" restrictions, blurring the line between what is open and what isn't, none of this stuff is a win for anybody. If you want to make something proprietary, make it proprietary, call it proprietary, and let that be the end of it. If you want to make something Open Source, then ma…

I agree that the proliferation of new licenses is annoying. But I think the reason you see changes in licensing from Elastic, MongoDB, etc is that the world has changed pretty dramatically since most of the original licenses were created. This proliferation existed early on in the days of open source and eventually died down to a set of standard things that solved the problems most people had. But the reality is the…

> many of the people who want to make code available with a permissive license don't have an option that is common and well understood and that protects them.

The AGPL is that option. It is a copyleft license that explicitly regulates the 'public performance' of software (putting conditions on public performance of a copyrighted work is a right of all copyright owners, there's nothing "exotic" involved here) in order to close the perceived 'service provider loophole' where software that's made available as part of an application services platform is not required to make its complete source code available, including even modifications that are purportedly asserted to be "for internal use".

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#29

Post by Conan_Kudo »

andrewshadura wrote: post #22
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open source is not synonymous with free software. This is literally the point of Open Source. It is "Free Software" repackaged for business people who hate ideals and morals as part of the story for the development of software.

Actually not even that. It is just defined from the other point of view. Open source is free software. Free software is open source. http://deblanc.net/blog/2018/12/13/the-osd-and-user-freedom/

Very true. But of course, we'll be downvoted by folks who want to "revise" history in their favor...

Re: License Changes for Confluent Platform

#30

Post by sctb »

dominotw wrote: post #24
boredandroid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this has no effect on Kafka, which is part of the ASF and under the Apache 2.0 license. This just impacts things like KSQL that are part of Confluent Platform.

oh ok. I was confused by "(kafka)" in the title. Mods can you please remove kafka from the title.

Done.
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