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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#251

Post by jasonkester »

paxys wrote: post #231

While I understand the move (similar to what Redis Labs, MongoDB, Confluent and many others have done recently), as one of the many contributors to these projects not affiliated with any company, it feels like a slap in the face. If such licenses gain prominence then having a healthy open source community for large-scale projects will be a thing of the past. As an outsider, it makes zero sense to be involved in the p…

Hang on. Are you saying that you make a practice of contributing to open source software products of for-profit companies?

Those are companies with plenty of VC money to pay you a salary. Why would you give your work to them for free?

Maybe I misunderstood what you wrote, but then if I had, why would it bother you that a company like this changed its business model to close an unprofitable loophole?

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#252

Post by xref »

capkutay wrote: post #250
alexland wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem reasonable to compare how you feel about open sourcing personal projects to open source software that a company builds and relies on for revenue. Open source is amazing because it allows all of us to share knowledge and build things better than any of us could build individually, and I LOVE that. When a goliath like AWS comes along as abuses OSS to make money off of someone else's work without contributi…

It’s not abuse...it’s using the license exactly as is allowed.

CockroachDB sees it differently, and so changed the license to explicitly describe AWSs behavior as abuse.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#253

Post by tybit »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #205
tybit wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get a lot of credit in my book for keeping it open and not hiding anything behind enterprise / non free components. I think Elasticsearch for example left a bad taste in people’s mouths by adding enterprise only features for something as crucial as security features and mixed their OSS core with it. Basically they’ve kept collateral damage to a minimum as far as I can tell, where as others haven’t.

They're still having enterprise features. The formerly open source core is now using this new non-free (in the sense of FSF or Debian free software guidelines) license, but they are not dropping their enterprise add-on.

That’s disappointing, thanks for the clarification.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#254

Post by Barrin92 »

paxys wrote: post #232
dhuramas wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean we shouldn't revisit our decisions and all your decisions should be set in stone? CockroachDB tried something. It seems to not be working- so they are changing. It's not as if they are doing it retroactively.

Does everyone who has contributed to this project over the years have a say in this decision? My code itself will also be relicensed, whether I like it or not.

You actually have the right to appeal that decision, because you own your contributed code. (unless you already agreed in advance through a Contributor License Agreementt.)

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#255

Post by gingerlime »

raverbashing wrote: post #244
gingerlime wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redis labs doesn’t run on all regions / cloud providers sadly. I’ve asked (begged) them to support GCE in Europe for a while now... even not all AWS regions are supported as far as I’m aware.

Supporting multiple cloud providers is much less trivial than it looks like Even multiple AWS regions is not that simple, as some other comment mentioned, not all services are in all regions (or are available but at a lower reliability level)

I think ElastiCache is available in pretty much all regions https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/red-ug/... and I would say this is the direct "competitor" to Redis Labs?

I'm not saying it's trivial, but if they managed to support it across several AWS (and GCP) regions, then I'm not sure what's stopping them for expanding to others. I would imagine it's more of an ROI issue rather than a technical limitation.

In any case, I don't mean to diss Redis Labs. Quite the contrary. I'm keen to see them expand to other regions so I can use their services.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#256

Post by pratio »

As the link says: The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license

I like the idea and would support initiatives like this. If i really want to use CockroachDB then i'll install and maintain it myself on my own instances. In the long run this would also ensure that if i want to move away from AWS to another provider, i am not locked to an AWS service.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#257

Post by vortico »

paxys wrote: post #234
vortico wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If community patches are licensed under MIT or BSD, all CockroachDB has to do is include those license texts in their proprietary distribution, which is the only requirement by both licenses. Proprietary derivative works are allowed under MIT and BSD.

It's different in this case, since there isn't a separate proprietary distribution. The entire codebase is being relicensed.

That's not how it works. Each commit is a "derivative work" of the last. If today a codebase is licensed under MIT, tomorrow you can change a single line of code, and this produces a brand new work under US and international copyright law. You can license this work under any license, provided you comply with the MIT license of the work that has been derived.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#258

Post by grumpydba »

> The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license.

This is dishonest and deceptive. One other thing you cannot do is use their code and incorporate it in your open source project.

They used to provide an open source parser for postgres' sql syntax. Now it is closed source for 3 years.

I don't mind the license change. Lying however is not a good way to behave with customers or open source communities.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#259

Post by manigandham »

no_wizard wrote: post #203
anderspitman wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're essentially saying if you want to compete with AWS, you have to offer every feature and integration they offer. Good luck to any startup attempting that.

I wonder if a startup opportunity exists to be a B2B only provider that has all the infrastructure trappings of an AWS or Google Cloud, but never selling directly your services on the open market, but instead selling your services contractually to other businesses (in a sense, not sure if my terms are lining up here). If this is a million dollar idea, I'm just going to give it away I guess, so here goes nothing in ex…

It doesn't make sense for the DB vendors to pay someone else to run a white-labeled managed service for them. It's a source of revenue so they would actually want to be paid for the license and get revenue share from the operator running the managed service.

There are several companies that do managed services like Aiven, IBM's Compose, ObjectRocket, etc so it's possible for them to get involved like this... and it looks like ObjectRocket just did that for CockroachDB: https://www.objectrocket.com/managed-cockroachdb/

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#260

Post by throw2016 »

Do bad actors get to hold good actors to the good actors principles? This seems unsustainable and a recipe for disaster, ie tolerating the intolerant whose objective is to gain power and stamp down on dissent and impose their own values.

Similarly If you do not believe in open source can you hold anyone else to account by the principles of open source? And if you are committed to open source do bad actors need to be given the same privileges that are extended to everyone else? Do they get to play the 'principle' card that they themselves do not adhere to?

Cloud providers are profitable and the work of these app developers arguably has a role in their growth and profits. AWS, GCE and others are solving all their business problems. Why should it be so difficult for them to build a mutually beneficial relationship with open source projects? Or the pipeline of projects they can use breaks down.

If they just want to take without adhering to the spirit of open source, then playing the open source card whenever confronted seems too self serving.

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