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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#31

Post by bdarnell »

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…

I'd like to thank our friends at TimescaleDB for the idea to use schema control as the dividing line (they're doing the same thing in their license)

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#33

Post by jasode »

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…

>, but it may be interesting to create a new license to protect against this for new OSS projects.

Well, you also have to take the game theory of incentives into account.

Let's say you develop a new database called NextGenCockroachDB with a required 30% royalty license. That type of license will alter the behavior of people evaluating it and may very well prevent it from being adopted at all. If there's no critical mass of the market using it, the 30% royalty becomes a moot point.

The whole market of choices available to economic participants has to be analyzed. If potential buyers have an option to substitute a db with 30% fee with another open source db with $0 license, they will be incentivized to avoid paying 30%.

If an open source db requires royalty payments from cloud platforms, it will need to have amazing technology that nobody else can duplicate.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#34

Post by TheresaBraccio »

ziddoap wrote: post #26
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?

^ nice 'Name of the Wind' reference

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#35

Post by DannyBee »

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…

The problem with this argument is that there has always been a before and after.

IE This is not the first business model issue OSS has dealt with.

For example: It seems ridiculous now, but at one point authors were significantly squeezed by commercial distros offering support and feature work directly to customers for their packages.

(And this was even a similar kind of disintermediation applied to authors as you see now - people only cared what they got from redhat, not from the original author)

One interesting constant is that most of the projects that felt a need to change licensing to react to business model issues over the years are dead ;) . Not all of them, mind you. But the failure rate seems really really high.

The underlying issue here in this one is that people (apparently so far!) want to use AWS/GCP/etc more than they want to use mongo, redis, cockroach, or any particular technology.

No license change will fix that. In that case, AWS actually controls your customer more than you do. Unless something comes along that is "better enough" that people are willing to buck AWS to use it, this approach of relicensing fails.

(and the customers certainly don't care about your licensing scheme)

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#36

Post by thrower123 »

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 this needs to be added to the guidelines as a flame-bait topic. Every single CockroachDB post devolves into bickering about whether it is a good or bad name, and I can't stop thinking about that one episode of the Dilbert TV cartoon[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Gdu0OBXX0

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#37

Post by tdb7893 »

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…

I think from a practical perspective this makes sense but having to change their licenses makes me sad. I don't want to see licenses change from "you can do whatever you want with this" to "you can do whatever you want with this unless you are competing with us".

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#38

Post by napsterbr »

ansible wrote: post #28
napsterbr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

This makes more sense, thanks. I just realized I mistook cockroachdb for timescaledb.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#39

Post by rolleiflex »

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…

This is well thought-out. Thanks for the clear line.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#40

Post by DVassallo »

This is not the best way to compete with Amazon. The believe that their feature set is enough of a differentiator is probably delusional. CockroachDB does "massive scale SQL without manual shading". BSL won't hinder Amazon offering those features too.

If CockroachDB remained OSS, there would have been a chance of Amazon offering Elastic CockroachDB eventually, and at least make the Cockroach brand more popular. But now it will likely be an Aurora feature.

If you want to compete with Amazon, do something Amazon cannot do.

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