Relicensing CockroachDB • Hacker News Board

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#271

Post by asymmetric » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

growse wrote: post #269

cabalamat wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should have thought about that They have thought about it! That's why they are using the BSL. I note that they are using a time-delayed open source approach (after 3 years it becomes open source) which I understand Stallman has endorsed in the past.

They're using the BSL now . If they cared about revenue protection, they shouldn't have opened it in the first place. Starting an open source project, taking contributions from the community and getting popularity and traction because you're open source, and then closing it again because you're so popular Amazon might "steal" your revenue? That's just abusing the community.

I can see where you’re coming from, but the work of the community is still (and forever) under the license that was in place when they contributed.

Someone could fork CoackroachDB and continue working on the open source license.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#272

Post by asymmetric » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

xref wrote: post #252

capkutay wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You two are agreeing.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#273

Post by pakshi » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

zinlencer wrote: post #193

When will CockroachDB release their managed service? Can't find any clear pricing nor a registration form on their website.

(Cockroach Labs employee here)

CockroachDB managed service is available today - you can sign up on the website and we'll get in touch with you https://www.cockroachlabs.com/get-cockroachdb/ We will release a self-service offering where you can set up a managed cluster without having to talk to us later in the year. Re: pricing, we have different packages based on # of nodes, and size of node (storage, vpcu etc.) and happy to share that in a call.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#274

Post by mixedCase » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #222

mixedCase wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon has Aurora, which has MySQL and Postgres compatibility Which lags behind upstream in versioning and has its own quirks. Or Redshift, which is still stuck in Postgres 8 and absolutely has its own quirks.

> Which lags behind upstream in versioning and has its own quirks. No doubt re-implentation will lag and will not be perfect (either buggy, or not buggy enough to match reference). The big question: is it AWS users shopping for DBs, or MySQL/Postgres/CockroachDB users shopping for *aaS services? I suspect the former outnumber the latter, and they will likely tolerate being behind the bleeding edge.

I think it's still the majority of developers that first deal with databases outside a cloud environment and then want a managed version of it in their environment (which btw, Amazon does offer in RDS Postgres/MySQl, but it's their forks that have these problems).

And being behind the bleeding edge is problematic at least these days that databases are incorporating great features, but the bigger problem is incompatibility and subtle differences. Those are the truly annoying issues.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#275

Post by brianpgordon » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

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…

Wait, Cockroach Labs accepts external code contributions? How are they able to pull the rug out from under you and relicense the code without your consent? Did you sign a CLA giving away your rights?

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#276

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

> 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

No, such a requirement makes it not OSS.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#277

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

alfonsodev wrote: post #93

nradov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put any license on your software that you want, but a license that required revenue sharing wouldn't really count as "open source".

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....

> 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 [

Open Source and Free Software are, as your link points out from the latter side, divergent ideologies, but they aren't substantively different in terms of concrete meaning when it comes to licensing. It is absolutely not the case that “many things” are Open Source but not Free Software, though many projects producing software which is both Free and Open Source adhere to only one of those ideologies, at least as the projects dominant ideology.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#278

Post by ThinkBeat » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

j88439h84 wrote: post #46

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…

Is there a way to encourage AWS/GCP to contract major project maintainers for support? For example, could GCP set up a platform where maintainers of Postgres, Redis, ..., could sign up to be paid monthly, and perhaps to prioritize GCP issues when doing maintenance? This would have the benefit of allowing GCP to continue offering all the open source databases, which is great for gaining customers who already use these…

They could hire them.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#279

Post by kelnos » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #182

mcms wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the world in general, indeed, it is better than having a dead or hardly-maintained project (which needs financial incentives from project owners). Don't you agree?

I don't really think increasing the world's stock of proprietary software is something to laud. Still, with their "switch to Apache after 3 years", I guess that this is still, on balance, better than nothing. What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me. But they have the right to lic…

> What I reject is the idea that the only choices are "make this kind of switch" OR "having a dead or hardly-maintained project". Sounds a bit "fallacy of the excluded middle" to me.

In general, that's of course obviously true. For software like this, that's geared toward use by businesses and SaaS applications, I agree with Cockroach Labs. Their hosted solution doesn't stand a chance if AWS decides to do a hosted version of CockroachDB, and they won't see a penny of that revenue. Since contributions outside of employees of Cockroach Labs are pretty minimal, it's a textbook recipe for eventual project death.

> But they have the right to license their thing however they want, so what right do any of us really have to complain.

Correct. And yet that doesn't seem to stop some people...

> I just find it frustrating to see people retreating from an Open Source position given my own deeply rooted ideological bias towards F/OSS.

I get that, and at some time in the past I probably agreed with you. At this point I'm too cynical to believe that Free Software can succeed solely on its merits. The economics just don't work out, especially when you're in a part of the industry with a lot of competition.

And regardless, the new licensing terms are (in practical terms) identical to Apache for the vast majority of people who already use or might use CockroachDB. All they're restricting is the ability to create a Cockroach DB hosting business, and if you really want to do that, my moral position is that you should be financially contributing back to the DB anyway; otherwise you're taking freeloading to an extreme degree there.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#280

Post by anderspitman » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

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…

I wonder how this would compare to what IFTTT or Zapier does.