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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#81

Post by amenod »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #75
jasonlotito wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really. The limit is clearly defined (if you are using it as DB, there is no change). If you allow users to create schemas, then it's a different thing, but I'm guessing there is no such project.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#82

Post by juped »

reificator wrote: post #30
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.

You shouldn't downvote to disagree!

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#84

Post by DVassallo »

lacker wrote: post #47
DVassallo wrote: post #40

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 n…

The believe that their feature set is enough of a differentiator is probably delusional. If their feature set isn't a good differentiator from other databases, then their company isn't going to succeed in any situation. This strategy is CockroachDB doing something that Amazon cannot do.

I estimate the odds that AWS Aurora will offer "massive scale SQL without manual shading" in the next 3 years to be >95%. Then why would anyone want to to use Cockroach? They need to differentiate on something else. Ideally something that Amazon is unwilling to do, or would find very hard to do.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#85

Post by will4274 »

didibus wrote: post #63

Could someone say just take a normal open source license, like MIT, and just add a provision saying, if you are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, this license doesn't apply to you and you are not permitted to use the code in any way? Basically, just blacklist certain companies that compete with you directly.

The whole point of open source is that anybody can read, modify, and run the code. If you remove "anybody", it's just another proprietary license.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#86

Post by DVassallo »

api wrote: post #45
DVassallo wrote: post #40

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 n…

> If you want to compete with Amazon, do something Amazon cannot do. ... run it somewhere other than Amazon?

lol. True, but not much to differentiate on that unfortunately, unless they're able to point out something fundamentally wrong with the Amazon platform.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#87

Post by otterley »

tus87 wrote: post #57

> or embed it in their applications (whether they ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). They can even run it as a service internally. The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service Great so I will write a little shim that loads libcockroach and call it TermiteDB and I'm set.

Intent matters in the law, and judges see right through transparent attempts to evade the spirit of agreements on a frequent basis. They aren't stupid.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#88

Post by justin66 »

reificator wrote: post #30
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.

The belief that names are particularly important to corporate software adoption and that CockroachDB is a good name for such a purpose is probably pretty rare.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#89

Post by sangnoir »

OJFord wrote: post #43
DannyBee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Well, perhaps not a licence change , but if it's good enough that it's The One the provider wants, but it can't offer it under the terms of the licence, then paying for it under a separate licence could…

Depending on the licensing cost and the effort required to integrate the project with their infrastructure, it might be cheaper for the provider to fork the last version before the relicense and support it going forward. Maintaining API/wire-protocol compatibility isn't that hard for large tech companies these licenses are trying to battle. I don't think these open source companies are not aware of the risk of forking, but they are between a rock (AWS/GCP) and a hard place (VC returns demands).

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#90

Post by DVassallo »

FactolSarin wrote: post #48
DVassallo wrote: post #40

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 n…

>If you want to compete with Amazon, do something Amazon cannot do. That doesn't sound like competing

Sure is. I didn't mean a product that Amazon can't do, but other factors that Amazon would likely be unwilling to do or find very hard to do. For example, offering high-touch support, or having a great UI... Or being an open source champion! Lots of things that Amazon is likely incapable of doing in the near future.
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