Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

access.redhat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 231 posts

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#11

Post by marcosdumay »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #7
choeger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it can be called free. But section 13 of the SSPL is certainly incompatible to RHEL's distribution model, or any other linux distribution I know of. In particular it requires you to license "the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service" under the SSPL. That naturally includes the linux kernel which is licensed under the GPL - and…

But they don't make it available as a service. They distribute binaries and perhaps source code.

There is plenty of non-free software that a distro can legally distribute.

They still usually don't, because it would break the automatically trouble-free property of their distribution. If users have to check the license of software before using them, there is little point in packaging all of it together and automatically installing, so there is little point on making a distro at all.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#12

Post by viach »

hannob wrote: post #2

Anyone surprised? Of course you can choose a non-free license for your code, but it comes with consequences. One of them is that Linux distributions that value free licenses will no longer act as your distributor.

This comment sounds like RHEL's license is more 'free' than Mongo's, which is not the case, imho.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#13

Post by preinheimer »

This seems like a non-issue to me...?

The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list. I'm a debian user, but their redhat installation instructions are similar: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-...

I guess it will be a small speed bump for people experimenting their first time, but I've never had any concerns about using a vendor provided source for packages (third party provided ones are a different story.)

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#14

Post by dankohn1 »

avar wrote: post #4

It looks like it is, but is there any official word that the SSPL is proprietary? As far as I know MongoDB claims it isn't, and it hasn't been reviewed officially by either the FSF or the OSI. Is it in license purgatory?

Bruce Perens feels “it manifests a lot of ignorance about Open Source and utter contempt for our community.”

https://opensource.org/LicenseReview122018

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#15

Post by ergo14 »

viach wrote: post #12
hannob wrote: post #2

Anyone surprised? Of course you can choose a non-free license for your code, but it comes with consequences. One of them is that Linux distributions that value free licenses will no longer act as your distributor.

This comment sounds like RHEL's license is more 'free' than Mongo's, which is not the case, imho.

Really? It's so non-free that you have CentOS.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#16

Post by pilif »

preinheimer wrote: post #13

This seems like a non-issue to me...? The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list. I'm a debian user, but their redhat installation instructions are similar: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-... I guess it will be a small speed bump for people experimenting their first time, but I've never had an…

> The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list.

Going with the maintainer's repo means that you trust the maintainer with providing security updates for the version you have installed or you trust them with providing a useable upgrade path.

If you go with a distro package, you will get both the benefits of security updates for the lifetime of the OS itself and the benefits of the underlying software not changing.

Of course it also means that you don't get new features for the lifetime of the OS.

So depending on your target usage of MongoDB, you either would want to go with the OS packages (if MongoDB is just a dependency of a dependency and you don't really care about its functionality aside of it being there) or with the vendor packages (if you're directly depending on MongoDB and you're willing to keep up to date with feature releases).

But even then, sometimes a vendor's official response to a security problem is "run apt-get upgrade to update to the latest major release" at a time when you really don't have the time to read the release notes and adopt your software to the changes in the new version.

Other vendors still provide maintenance for older releases, so it really depends on the vendor, whereas if you go with the OS packages, none of this matters.

Also, in this particular case, there's also the licensing issue to consider. I don't know whether it's safe for a company offering some service and/or application over the web to use current versions of MongoDB without paying for a license.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#17

Post by detaro »

preinheimer wrote: post #13

This seems like a non-issue to me...? The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list. I'm a debian user, but their redhat installation instructions are similar: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-... I guess it will be a small speed bump for people experimenting their first time, but I've never had an…

It could have consequences for other Open-Source software using MongoDB: if they rely on a database system that distributions can't include, they also won't be included.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#18

Post by mikekchar »

vbezhenar wrote: post #10
avar wrote: post #4

It looks like it is, but is there any official word that the SSPL is proprietary? As far as I know MongoDB claims it isn't, and it hasn't been reviewed officially by either the FSF or the OSI. Is it in license purgatory?

If I understood that message correctly, it seems that Debian decided to remove MongoDB from its main repository as well: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15

It's really not clear to me as he kind of backtracked in the next message by saying that he was writing under the role in the FTP team, rather than as Project Leader of Debian. My interpretation of that is that it is his opinion, but not a statement of policy. I'd be pretty surprised if they allow SSPL in Debian, but I don't think this is the statement that disallows it.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#19

Post by tinus_hn »

mikekchar wrote: post #18
vbezhenar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood that message correctly, it seems that Debian decided to remove MongoDB from its main repository as well: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15

It's really not clear to me as he kind of backtracked in the next message by saying that he was writing under the role in the FTP team, rather than as Project Leader of Debian. My interpretation of that is that it is his opinion, but not a statement of policy. I'd be pretty surprised if they allow SSPL in Debian, but I don't think this is the statement that disallows it.

The FTP team performs a license check before a package is moved into the archive, so they do get to decide what goes in and what doesn’t.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#20

Post by cmsj »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #3

Somewhat orthogonal but I wonder if this is one of those times where people in forums like these can see further ahead than the usual stock market actors can? $MDB seems to be unaffected by this news (and the DocumentDB news as well). Maybe I've overestimating, but this looks like it will be a blow to accessibility of Mongo -- or maybe it will only be RHEL since they're focused on commercial applications? [EDIT] - I…

If RHEL is dropping something for license reasons, you can be pretty sure that others will too: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15
Post reply on HN