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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#111

Post by eblanshey »

gtirloni wrote: post #99
staticassertion wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this undermine their efforts? It seems totally reasonable to say "You can't just sell a hosted version of this yourself". Anyone who was planning to use Cockroach still can, it even seems that you could be a CockroachDB shop that provides consulting services, so long as you don't manage and host it.

Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs. While they are experts in the technology they've created, offering a managed service is much more than just having awesome developers. Not to mention some companies have other restrictions (on premises, local presence, etc, etc, etc). For a customer, unless I'm completely sold on their technology and really n…

> my only option is Cockroach Labs.

Their new license doesn't forbid others from offering a managed service. It simply requires the managed provider to pay them for a license. AWS, GCP, etc can still create a managed service.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#112

Post by gtirloni »

filereaper wrote: post #105
gtirloni wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs. While they are experts in the technology they've created, offering a managed service is much more than just having awesome developers. Not to mention some companies have other restrictions (on premises, local presence, etc, etc, etc). For a customer, unless I'm completely sold on their technology and really n…

>Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs. I don't think this is the case, a third party can provide hosted CockroachDB provided they license it from Cockroach Labs. >"The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license." Again, IANAL.

Good point. We shall wait and see how that turns out.

Right now their sales chat can't say how much that would cost.

It seem an alternative could be to provide something like a cPanel-like thing that would enable other companies to easily offer CockroachDB DBaaS solutions. That's adding value rather than subtracting.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#114

Post by toyg »

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…

> But that's not what we are talking about.

No, that's exactly what we are talking about. The threat of big cloud players swallowing up the SaaS model that powered opensource to the current highs, is very real. Until Amazon and friends were mostly interested in powering the low-level bits, it wasn't a big deal; but now they are moving up the stack and pulverizing the small businesses that drive the OSS ecosystem. That is a problem.

The AGPL was supposed to protect against this sort of play and it really isn't, for various reasons. Personally, I welcome the attempts at innovating in this area particularly when they are clearly well-intentioned like this one.

> I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used

Unless you've waived your rights, you can exert your copyright and block any such move.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#115

Post by toyg »

didibus wrote: post #60

I'm all for businesses coming up with whatever licensing terms they want. That said, as a user, it'll be a harder sell if I can't easily understand or validate what the license permits and doesn't. For example, with their new license, could I fork cockroachDB, rebrand it, add considerable improvements of my own, and then offer that as a service? Or what if I'm not offering cockroachDB as a service directly, but the s…

> could I fork cockroachDB, rebrand it, add considerable improvements of my own, and then offer that as a service?

If you were to do that, even with current licenses, you probably couldn't call it CockroachDB anyway.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#116

Post by AsyncAwait »

elcritch wrote: post #103
alfonsodev wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you mean and totally agree with you, I just feel the need to remind (not to you) the term free software, as many things are open source but not free software [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Unless the AGPL becomes the new GNU default, "free" software is largely moot as well in the age of SaaS.

Most software I use daily is (luckily) not SaaS and as for AGPL being the default, for SaaS free software that's already pretty much the case today.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#117

Post by espadrine »

bithavoc wrote: post #101

Good for CockroachDB, they need to make money. I understand I'm not their target user though, I stopped using them when they released Follower-Reads as an enterprise feature. I'm back to Postgres for now but I can't stop thinking about the opportunity CRDB is missing by not releasing the enterprise features as part of the BSL-licensed core, that way I can use them from the very beginning(when I have no money) and whe…

> I stopped using them when they released Follower-Reads as an enterprise feature.

I read Cockroach Labs’ strategy to be good on single nodes, great on single-datacentre cluster, phenomenal worldwide.

They offer single-DC features open-source, and worldwide enterprise-only.

Apart from SQL features, their open-source cluster offer seems superior to PostgreSQL. Sure, they do not have follower-reads, but neither does PG (which does not even have AS OF SYSTEM TIME, a prerequisite), and it is only beneficial with multi-DC.

Reads are still distributed by range, so there is no particular negative compared to Postgres.

Why was Follower-Reads a dealbreaker?

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#118

Post by mindcrime »

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…

Making a project that was Open Source, not Open Source anymore, is hardly a "good move". I mean, it might be a good financial move for Cockroach and their VC's, but I have a hard time seeing it as good for the world in general.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#119

Post by gtirloni »

stingraycharles wrote: post #110

It’s interesting to see the mindset over here at HN change over the year. I recall when MongoDB introduced their “commons clause”, RedisLabs did the relicensing and ElasticSearch doing the dual license open source code, there was quite some outrage over here. I guess everyone is accepting that these clouds are in fact major threats to these projects, as providing these databases as a service is pretty much the only r…

Discussion fatigue is a thing.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#120

Post by bdarnell »

gtirloni wrote: post #99
staticassertion wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this undermine their efforts? It seems totally reasonable to say "You can't just sell a hosted version of this yourself". Anyone who was planning to use Cockroach still can, it even seems that you could be a CockroachDB shop that provides consulting services, so long as you don't manage and host it.

Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs. While they are experts in the technology they've created, offering a managed service is much more than just having awesome developers. Not to mention some companies have other restrictions (on premises, local presence, etc, etc, etc). For a customer, unless I'm completely sold on their technology and really n…

> if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs.

Cockroach Labs is not your only option; you can also use other providers that have a license agreement with us. Our first partner in this area is ObjectRocket: https://www.objectrocket.com/blog/cockroachdb/introducing_co...

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