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MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

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Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#151

Post by tdb7893 »

merlynn wrote: post #137
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

It seems[0] the new MongoDB license is basically non-free and it would make no sense to include it in RHEL8. I hope Debian and other distros follow suit as a result if they come in agreement. It's sad that the license change all resorts to greed basically, as if Oracle took over MongoDB. If I were to ever use a NoSQL database for a new project I'd aim for MIT / 2-clause BSD based projects instead. PostgreSQL has no i…

Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license.

For me the problem isn't so much the license as the change felt somewhat like a bait and switch. After you became popular you changed the license to be more favorable to you, which is always a sketchy move.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#152

Post by unethical_ban »

NeonVice wrote: post #144
merlynn wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license.

If I offer MongoDB as a cloud service with a homegrown web interface (e.g. mLab) then I am required to release my web interface?

Yes.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#154

Post by gnulinux »

merlynn wrote: post #137
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

It seems[0] the new MongoDB license is basically non-free and it would make no sense to include it in RHEL8. I hope Debian and other distros follow suit as a result if they come in agreement. It's sad that the license change all resorts to greed basically, as if Oracle took over MongoDB. If I were to ever use a NoSQL database for a new project I'd aim for MIT / 2-clause BSD based projects instead. PostgreSQL has no i…

Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license.

Yeah but both free software and open source are well defined terms MongoDB doesn't have power to redefine (sorry guys). It's good to be principled because then you make fewer arbitrary decisions along the way. Your new license isn't free nor open; it's just a custom proprietary license that allows people see the source code and fork; just like freeware software can be "for gratis" but it's never "free software" or "open source". So, MongoDB is definitely proprietary software now. And it didn't used to be proprietary, and I think it's definitely a valid question whether this relicensing has something to do with greed. In the meanwhile, Debian and other free-only distros (e.g. GNU distros) should not include MongoDB.

I'm under the impression that everything in the paragraph above is objective and not subjective. I do not claim it is definitely greed, but since MongoDB did a completely arbitrary move to make license favoring them, it's valid to ask this question. My subjective opinion is that MongoDB committed suicide and they'll be forgotten in a few years time.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#155

Post by giancarlostoro »

merlynn wrote: post #137
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

It seems[0] the new MongoDB license is basically non-free and it would make no sense to include it in RHEL8. I hope Debian and other distros follow suit as a result if they come in agreement. It's sad that the license change all resorts to greed basically, as if Oracle took over MongoDB. If I were to ever use a NoSQL database for a new project I'd aim for MIT / 2-clause BSD based projects instead. PostgreSQL has no i…

Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license.

But it's one less freedom I have. Say I contribute to MongoDB heavily and want to get into the Mongo as a service business, will I be able to without having to pay for the freedom to do it? It's a crippled form of freedom when some things are free as in free beer, and others aren't. I preferred the AGPL because it was explicit about sharing code if you change anything on the server-side.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#156

Post by tracker1 »

threeseed wrote: post #121
TimMurnaghan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. My characterization of Mongo is that it's the back end choice of front end developers. The only possible justification for it could be time to MVP (and that's being kind). It's bad for all of the reasons that back-end people make back-end choices - non-functional requirements like operability, clustering, etc. Hopefully this is the start of it being removed from any infrastructure uses. I spun up an opens…

Actually the NFRs are one of the best parts of MongoDB. It is by far one of the easiest databases to administer, clustering is orders of magnitude easer than say PostgreSQL and it can be the fastest database by far for certain use cases e.g. cell level updates. Can you be more specific about what in particular is deficient ? And if you look at their customers most of them aren't using it for front end work. Likewise…

Agreed to an extent. It does have its' place and is definitely very easy to use if you have a limited number of collections, mostly distinct in use and have deeply structured objects.

The ease of clustering is pretty nice for either replica sets or basic sharding, but sharding + redundancy isn't great, and if you happen to have a majority of nodes offline it may never catch/sync up right again which may require bringing on/off new nodes or the whole thing down and restoring from backup.

About 4-5 years ago when a bulk of Azure went down, I experienced this, and it wasn't fun to say the least. Fortunately it was mainly a replica of primary data source for search/display for mostly-read scenarios and was easier to re-replicate the records from SQL in the end. If I were to do it again, I'd probably reach for Elastic first.

It can be very good for some use cases and less than good for others. The clustering is absolutely easier than anything but RethinkDB (in the box) and SQL Server (break out your checkbook) in my opinion.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#157

Post by dsnuh »

threeseed wrote: post #120
Twirrim wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not pick a mature database software, learn to use it properly, and just get on with life? Why would you risk _anything_ to immature databases?d

It's a 9 year old database. Can you be more specific about what makes it immature ?

Pretty sure that they were referring to ArangoDB and OrientDB as being immature, not MongoDB...

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#158

Post by cheald »

merlynn wrote: post #137
giancarlostoro wrote: post #22

It seems[0] the new MongoDB license is basically non-free and it would make no sense to include it in RHEL8. I hope Debian and other distros follow suit as a result if they come in agreement. It's sad that the license change all resorts to greed basically, as if Oracle took over MongoDB. If I were to ever use a NoSQL database for a new project I'd aim for MIT / 2-clause BSD based projects instead. PostgreSQL has no i…

Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license.

Just FYI, a few years ago, I went through the due diligence process for an acquisition. The AGPL on MongoDB (at the time) was the single biggest sticking point for the lawyers. I had to do a lot of work to demonstrate that we had sufficient separation that our proprietary IP wasn't at risk due to the license. This was complicated by the fact that I was a major contributor to one of the drivers and the maintainer of one of the popular ODMs.

I would not make the choice to build a startup on MongoDB today given the expansion of the license's virality. Even if my business model wasn't in the SSPL's immediate crosshairs, the direction the license is moving gives me no confidence that MongoDB won't make my life harder down the road. It's just not worth the eventual headache. Lawyers make things hard enough, I'm not going to take on any more legal exposure than I absolutely need to in order to ship my product.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#160

Post by jhall1468 »

nwmcsween wrote: post #133
jhall1468 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing Redhat does is shady. There's nothing wrong with license agreements for closed source software, or even license-agreements that support open source software. The latter is how open source companies make money.

The license agreements restrict use of the work on top of the GPL, same as mongo does..

No, the Mongo license explicitly forbids cloud providers from using the software without open sourcing the entire stack. Unless you have an example of Red Hat doing the same, I'd retract the statement.
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