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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#21

Post by easel »

bdarnell wrote: post #12
chuckgreenman wrote: post #3

This is pretty interesting, I'm thinking about how edge cases will be handled. Consider a product like Airtable: at present I think most people would classify it as a consumer productivity tool. Firebase on the other end would be a platform as a service. Airtable is adding features that make it more of a platform as a service. I wonder where the line will be drawn for the new BSL.

(Cockroach Labs founder) The details are in the "additional usage grant" clause: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/8acfe8ffd0028c... We decided to draw the line at whether the end user has direct control over table schemas. If users can specify the schema to be used, it's a database service and needs a license. If you're fitting everything into a generic schema (even if the user can specify things that lo…

As a startup founder and CTO who has had to deal with getting (or not getting) such licenses through legal, I really appreciate the clarity of definition here. Typically the language tends to be vague around "derivative works as a service" which conservative lawyers treat as a risk.

Well done.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#22

Post by chuckgreenman »

bdarnell wrote: post #12
chuckgreenman wrote: post #3

This is pretty interesting, I'm thinking about how edge cases will be handled. Consider a product like Airtable: at present I think most people would classify it as a consumer productivity tool. Firebase on the other end would be a platform as a service. Airtable is adding features that make it more of a platform as a service. I wonder where the line will be drawn for the new BSL.

(Cockroach Labs founder) The details are in the "additional usage grant" clause: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/blob/8acfe8ffd0028c... We decided to draw the line at whether the end user has direct control over table schemas. If users can specify the schema to be used, it's a database service and needs a license. If you're fitting everything into a generic schema (even if the user can specify things that lo…

Neat, that's a good delimiter!

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#23

Post by jsty »

napsterbr wrote: post #15
makkesk8 wrote: post #11

It's a good move and I even welcome it. However, I would have loved to see the removal of their enterprise version of the product at the same time. I love cockroachdb to death, but the key features that prevent me from using it in any real projects I'm doing are the backup/restore feature, which is currently locked behind their enterprise version. I also would love to use CDC and table partitioning. Nevertheless, gre…

Never used CRDB so this question may make no sense, but given it builds upon Postgres (AFAIU), couldn't you use any of the many backup solutions Pg offers?

It uses the Postgres wire protocol, but isn't based on Postgres under the hood

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#24

Post by ummonk »

jacquesm wrote: post #5

Maybe a good time to change the name as well? Funny names are cute and all but if you want to gain mainstream acceptance for your database product CockroachDB is not the one I would have picked. Downvoters: if you think names for products do not matter you are mistaken.

I think it would be a bad name for a consumer product but this isn’t a consumer product. CockroachDB invokes a feeling of resilience which is perfect for marketing to engineers.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#25

Post by nradov »

gonehome wrote: post #14
dhd415 wrote: post #4

This is more validation of the threat that cloud providers (mainly AWS) are to businesses built around open source products. Yes, AWS and others are legally permitted by existing open source licenses to create SaaS versions of these open source products, but with cloud computing becoming an increasingly winner-take-all market, it leaves little room for the software's authors to generate revenue via hosted offerings o…

It'd be interesting if there was a way to specifically require AWS, Azure, Google Cloud (or more generally any cloud hosting reseller) to pay if they use the open source software or any derivative of it (or if they create any company which then uses it) for the purposes of reselling it to others. Basically give the open source project a 30% cut if you're going to resell it (or fork and resell it). It might be hard to…

You can put any license on your software that you want, but a license that required revenue sharing wouldn't really count as "open source".

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#26

Post by ziddoap »

jacquesm wrote: post #5

Maybe a good time to change the name as well? Funny names are cute and all but if you want to gain mainstream acceptance for your database product CockroachDB is not the one I would have picked. Downvoters: if you think names for products do not matter you are mistaken.

>CockroachDB is not the one I would have picked.

What would you have picked, master namer? What criteria determines what the mainstream will accept? "Mongo" seems like a bit of a funny name to me, but they seem to be doing alright... What makes Mongo okay but Cockroach not?

Apple is a cute name. Does it pass your test?

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#27

Post by hartator »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #20
hartator wrote: post #7

> The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license. How much a SaaS has to do to not be consider as selling CockroachDB as is? These questions apart is worth noting that AWS can still copy CockroachDB APIs, rename it AWS Ants, and called it a day.

The "API" you are referring to is known as SQL, transmitted over the wire using the pgsql protocol. There's nothing to copy. The magic of Cockroach is in the implementation.

Not sure why they changed their license then. Doesn't AWS have already a Postgres-like database with RDS but also with DynamoDB?

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#28

Post by ansible »

napsterbr wrote: post #15
makkesk8 wrote: post #11

It's a good move and I even welcome it. However, I would have loved to see the removal of their enterprise version of the product at the same time. I love cockroachdb to death, but the key features that prevent me from using it in any real projects I'm doing are the backup/restore feature, which is currently locked behind their enterprise version. I also would love to use CDC and table partitioning. Nevertheless, gre…

Never used CRDB so this question may make no sense, but given it builds upon Postgres (AFAIU), couldn't you use any of the many backup solutions Pg offers?

CRDB is compatible with the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so you can use existing database drivers (in C#, Golang, whatever) to talk to a CRDB instance. The SQL itself is slightly different (no two databases are the same these days), so that would have to be adjusted.

If your backup solution is fine with "SELECT * FROM table1; SELECT * FROM table2; ..." you can use the client interface for backups. But usually you want to a snapshot of the entire database at some (self-consistent!) point in time, and back up that.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#29

Post by docapotamus »

Well played cockroachlabs. I find it awkward being an AWS user and knowing there products are something else under the hud, even when they do use the product name. It leads to user lock in, which is what they want. These addendum to licenses are what the world needs. Not sure it would work for certain products, like BSDs though, although they seem to get a lot more back from those who use them in products (Netflix is a good example)

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#30

Post by reificator »

jacquesm wrote: post #5

Maybe a good time to change the name as well? Funny names are cute and all but if you want to gain mainstream acceptance for your database product CockroachDB is not the one I would have picked. Downvoters: if you think names for products do not matter you are mistaken.

> Downvoters: if you think names for products do not matter you are mistaken.

Disagreeing with your particular opinions on a particular name doesn't imply a belief that names don't matter.

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