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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#71

Post by karlding »

DannyBee wrote: post #35
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…

> 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.

Something similar was discussed a few weeks ago with respect to procps [0] and the struggles of maintaining Open Source projects.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19936320

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#72

Post by batbomb »

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…

The $100MM Revenue License...

Once your company surpasses $100MM in revenue you have to negotiate licensing terms.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#73

Post by gtirloni »

CockroachDB is an excellent project but it doesn't have the massive adoption that would prompt AWS/Azure/GCP to implement it as a managed service.

Companies are much more likely to just go with AWS Aurora than to consider CockroachDB at this point.

I'm still amazed as how promising open source projects continue to undermine themselves with this "commons clause" movement. I hope something good comes out of it but I'm pessimistic.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#74

Post by JoshTriplett »

nlh wrote: post #42
JoshTriplett wrote: post #32

And one more database removes itself from the Open Source community, and disqualifies itself as a dependency of other open projects.

How does this move disqualify CRDB as a dependency of other open source projects?

The majority of open source projects need to be usable without installing proprietary dependencies. Whatever you might think of CockroachDB's choice, this means that any other project depending on them makes their users deal with that license too, and while CockroachDB might be willing to push that on their users, that doesn't mean other projects want to follow them down that path and lose their users in the process.

Leaving aside any license compatibility issues, an open source project with a proprietary dependency will lose users compared to an open source project with entirely open dependencies. This also causes problems for some Linux distributions.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#75

Post by JoshTriplett »

jasonlotito wrote: post #69
api wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the open source community is about giving free labor to Amazon? I've been an OSS user and contributor since the middle 1990s and I very much welcome these moves. SaaS has been getting a free (in the unfair sense) ride without contributing in any way.

No, the open source community is not about giving free labor to Amazon. But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about members of the open source community taking free labor from the community and then pulling back on the open source promise. As someone in the same boat, I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used. If somethi…

It also pulls the rug out from under other projects depending on them.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#76

Post by mcphage »

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.

> if you want to gain mainstream acceptance for your database product

They've been around for several years and have had millions of dollars in funding. If you're going to argue that their name is holding them back from mainstream acceptance, first you should establish that they don't already have that.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#77

Post by dymk »

api wrote: post #41
JoshTriplett wrote: post #32

And one more database removes itself from the Open Source community, and disqualifies itself as a dependency of other open projects.

So the open source community is about giving free labor to Amazon? I've been an OSS user and contributor since the middle 1990s and I very much welcome these moves. SaaS has been getting a free (in the unfair sense) ride without contributing in any way.

It's about giving free labor to whoever wants to use it.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#79

Post by amenod »

jasonlotito wrote: post #69
api wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the open source community is about giving free labor to Amazon? I've been an OSS user and contributor since the middle 1990s and I very much welcome these moves. SaaS has been getting a free (in the unfair sense) ride without contributing in any way.

No, the open source community is not about giving free labor to Amazon. But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about members of the open source community taking free labor from the community and then pulling back on the open source promise. As someone in the same boat, I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used. If somethi…

That is a valid point. Of course the question is, how big the contributions from the random people were. Judging by the list of contributors [0] a relatively small core contributed most, but I wasn't involved at any point so this is not a reliable assessment.

[0] https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/graphs/contributors

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#80

Post by phonon »

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…

That's an excellent approach.
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