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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

#181

Post by stingraycharles »

karolist wrote: post #168

MongoDB is a strange company. I've downloaded their Compass software to visualise some throwaway JSON I had loaded in Mongo, gave my real email and here's the emails I was sent before I blocked their marketing account (allegedly someone named Alena) day 0 "Regarding your interest in MongoDB" day +1 "Alena with MongoDB in reply to your interest" day +3 "Alena with MongoDB making sure you're all set" day +7 "Alena from…

This is a common practice, it's called "Drip Marketing", "Nurturing" or a few more other variations. It's completely automated, and it sounds like some template / tagging gone wrong.

Lots of companies do it, and it's fairly effective.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#182

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

zachruss92 wrote: post #165

I'm not super surprised that RHEL removed Mongo because of the licensing change. I don't completely understand why people getting upset about the licensing, however. As far as I know, MongoDB is still open source. If you are a hosting provider offering "MongoDB as a Service" the provider then needs to pay a licensing fee to Mongo. This seems ok to me, with the logic that MongoDB is a business that needs to make money…

You're free to offer RHEL as a service without paying a fee. Most people do it through CentOS, but that's not a requirement of the GPL license; you have every right to copy the exact RHEL source code, build it, and run the resulting blob as a service for customers. The only things you can't do are call it "Red Hat" and use the Red Hat logo.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#183

Post by dankohn1 »

latk wrote: post #161
dankohn1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bruce Perens feels “it manifests a lot of ignorance about Open Source and utter contempt for our community.” https://opensource.org/LicenseReview122018

That Perens quote refers specifically to Sunil Deshpande's article about the SSPL and Open Source, not to the SSPL itself. But it's not far off either way… The reaction on the OSI's license-review list is more varied. Lawrence Rosen and Ken Mitchell argue that the license should be approved. Everyone else is criticizing that it clearly violates the spirit of Open Source software (no discrimination against fields of e…

Thanks for the insightful summary.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#184

Post by nwmcsween »

jhall1468 wrote: post #160
nwmcsween wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the Redhat service license restricts redistribution of the binaries and modifications or you get blacklisted and cannot get any updates

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#185

Post by papito »

xellisx wrote: post #32
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…

I had hopes for MongoDB back 10 years ago, but it just let me down. I'm thinking of trying out ArangoDB next. OrientDB is just riddled with bug and their docs are lack luster.

It ain't a new cool Javascript library. Databases are hard. Many tried, many failed. Don't play around.

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#186

Post by NeoBasilisk »

sokoloff wrote: post #129
StreamBright wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The webscale video was our absolute favorite in one of Amazon's systems engineering team for a long time.

That's the case for many engineering teams. For those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

still one of my favorites

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#187

Post by gnomewascool »

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.

As a counterpoint to all the flack that you're getting here, I admire the way that you're trying to create a license that is still in the spirit of reciprocity of Free Software and Open Source (if "maximally viral", beyond the limits of copyleft as it was initially envisioned), but compatible with what you perceive the economic realities to be, and how you're maintaining a dialogue with the community (at OSI).

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#188

Post by brazzledazzle »

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…

I’ll never understand why we collectively wag our fingers at individuals or companies that try to keep the likes of Amazon from building a profitable service off of their hard work then contribute back little-to-nothing. Would redis, mongodb and dgraph have even considered alternate licensing if companies like Amazon had thrown them a minuscule amount of funding and patches? We can’t know because they didn’t. And then we sneer at them for having the audacity to try to stay open but stop these giants from using them and throwing them away.

This kind of aggressive behavior toward these people trying to stop their own destruction at the hands of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with our industry. This could easily be any of us. It might be any of us in the future. What do we gain by consolidating control in 3-4 different giants? What are we achieving with such a black and white view of what constitutes open source or not?

Re: MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license

#190

Post by jillesvangurp »

sascha_sl wrote: post #25

MongoDB is the reason I don't contribute (outside of work) to any copyleft project that asks for copyright assignment anymore.

It's a fair point to make: mandatory copyright transfer in combination with copyleft means the copyright holder can at any moment decide to change the license. Not retroactively of course, but you'd be left with the choice to fork, to buy a license, or abandon the product. None of those are great options for anyone serious about making a contribution.

Copyleft can work great but it works better if the copyright stays with the original authors. This makes it impractical to re-license because you need all copyright holders to agree to that, which in the case of most OSS projects is virtually impossible. Imagine tracking down everyone who ever contributed to Linux. Not going to happen. And as Oracle has learned the hard way, forking is what happens if you mess up. Copyleft serves users of the software.

IMHO the long term success of OSS projects requires a diverse community of contributors. If a project has value, people and companies will step up to keep it going. Companies don't last forever and their fortunes or priorities might change. Having copyright transfers basically means one company calls all the shots and if it suffers, their software and its wider community suffers. This dis-incentivizes externals to contribute; weakens the community; and can become a problem for projects being long term sustainable or indeed profitable as most of the burden of maintenance is for the sole copyright holder.

Of course it's not too late for MongoDB to swallow their pride and fix this PR disaster. Lets be frank, all this negative news around their product has got to be unpleasant for them and their shareholders. At least, I doubt that they expected or wanted this to happen and I think they should be bracing for more bad news when e.g. some of their big accounts start eyeing competing products because of this mess. The fix is obvious: move the other way and go with a business and customer friendly license (Apache 2.0 seems to be popular for this) combined with closed source components/add ons for commercial customers.

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