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Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

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Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#191

Post by kentrado »

elevenbits wrote: post #187

I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale? Cloud providers have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants, profiting immensely from millions of lines of open…

I have no pity for MongoDB, they chose to license their stuff open source. Which means they should have no problem with people profiting from their work, that's the spirit of FOSS.

Of course, this is just one of the many so called "open source" companies that chose open source because they thought it would get them more users but in reality don't care much about FOSS.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#192

Post by goto11 »

geowwy wrote: post #142
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of companies got lured into using mongodb because it was so developer friendly. It cost nothing and it was easy bring in the back door and alleviated the need for thought. Then their sales people started coming around and asking for insane sums of money (like $10,000 per instance per year plus 100% markup on hardware to run in AWS - support is extra). They were worried about amazon and others offering a better…

> If it had been SQL it would have been easy to drop in another database. Not true at all. Way too many organisations are locked into Oracle just because it's too hard to switch to something cheaper.

Relational/SQL databases still follow the same fundamental data model and query language, despite the differences in SQL syntax. I will argue migration is still easier. Just avoid stored procedures which complex logic, since these are essentially proprietary programming languages.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#193

Post by bad_user »

elevenbits wrote: post #187

I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale? Cloud providers have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants, profiting immensely from millions of lines of open…

We live in the world where we can see a bait and switch for what it is.

MongoDB was advertised as being Open Source and Free Software, distributed under an OSI-compliant and FSF-compliant license. Now they are trying to eat their cake and have it too.

> "then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale?"

Because that's not what open source is about. Open source is about contributing to the commons, such that your competitors can make a profit from your work.

If your competitors aren't able to do that, then the software is not open source. Period. And in this case, we should point out that MongoDB Inc by owning the copyright doesn't have to play by the same rules, they aren't beholden to the same rules as everyone else.

> "If MongoDB Inc can't compete in the enterprise cloud market simply because they are not AWS (as mentioned by threeseed), what should their business model be?"

Why the fuck should we care what their business model would be? That's for them to figure out.

But if they sell something as open source and they close source it, then we, the schmucks that bought into it, will point out that MongoDB is no longer open source and treat it as a proprietary piece that comes with the caveats of proprietary software, like lock in, etc.

So I hope somebody forks MongoDB from the version when it was open source.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#194

Post by inimino »

Thorrez wrote: post #132
inimino wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't it be both?

I guess it could be both, but I consider them to be two completely separate issues, and referring to them together as "the mongoDB trap" without any further clarification is quite confusing to me. It could easily lead to misunderstanding, and people "answering" the question with only partial answers. Additionally I'm curious how the license is harming companies, as I mentioned in this comment: https://news.ycombinato…

The company made a terrible product so it is no surprise if they are a terrible company too. That's the trap: using a terrible product made by a terrible company.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#195

Post by DangitBobby »

mbreese wrote: post #140
nevi-me wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that those support functions' lack of understanding of realms outside of AWS shouldn't be the sole motivator for not using a technology. What happens if a company that uses Software A has good motivation to use B, but their support functions don't understand B? Aren't the support functions supposed to improve by seeking to understand B, even at the initial inconvenience of time and resources?

I certainly don’t disagree with you on principle. It’s just a bad example in this specific case because A is roughly equivalent to B in this case. Also, Amazon doesn’t have the same reputation as Google for killing products, so it’s a pretty safe bet. And AWS will be around for quite a long time. The financial stability of MongoDB (the company) isn’t as guaranteed. Maybe the parent’s company’s processes did work in t…

Does Google have a reputation for killing Enterprise products? I thought it was just consumer products that they offer for "free" that are subject to getting the axe.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#196

Post by tannhaeuser »

elevenbits wrote: post #187

I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale? Cloud providers have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants, profiting immensely from millions of lines of open…

> What sort of twisted world are we living in?

One in which OSI obviously is paid by cloud vendors to denounce alternative licenses, lobbies for developers to be treated like kattle open for abuse, yet portrays themselves as representing developers, and bogusly claims ownership of the term "Open Source", contributing to monopolization and the weaponization of developer's work for surveillance a la Android.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#197

Post by grumpydba »

elevenbits wrote: post #187

I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale? Cloud providers have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants, profiting immensely from millions of lines of open…

> I'm astonished at all the comments that vilify MongoDB Inc and then talk about moving to AWS's MongoDB clone. What sort of twisted world are we living in where a company makes a service, tries to sell the service, and then are lambasted when they try to prevent a competitor from copying it wholesale?

The bait and switch strategy is deceptive. It's aim is to milk customers to give some money back the the VCs. But this license minefield is user-hostile.

Users don't like companies exhibiting hostile behavior towards them. Simple.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#198

Post by DangitBobby »

nevi-me wrote: post #110

I understand the removal of non-OSS-compliant software from core distributions, and see little controversy in that, as it's the risk of changing a license. What I don't understand is the many people who are talking about AWS' replacement being a solution for people migrating from MongoDB. From the comments, it seems: - it's expensive to use. Someone spent $15 for 2KB data over 3 days [ https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

If people accept that what MongoDB did with its license is acceptable because the OSS model failed for them, then the viability and future of the OSS model might come into question.

People tend to come to believe something organically and then later cherry-pick facts and observations that back those beliefs up. So even if MongoDB did what it had to do, or did what would otherwise be morally defensible in the most popular moral frameworks (as I personally believe to be the case), people who have a personal or emotional stake in the future of OSS will be looking outwardly for a villain. If it failed, it must be a failure of someone who crossed OSS. MongoDB seems the only choice for a villain in that regard.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#199

Post by DangitBobby »

cycloptic wrote: post #127
threeseed wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most businesses make a profit by offering some unique product or service. With the GPL someone could take your unique product, make it their product, undercut you on price and then put you out of business. GPL is unquestionably great for consumers. Not so great for commercial businesses.

If someone can undercut you so easily then your products are overpriced. I would not say this is "not so great for commercial businesses" just because the GPL does not make an effort to prop up phony business models.

Or they can undercut you because you made your core competency freely available. It cost you a great deal of time and money to make, and it cost then nearly nothing to use. However, while you were pouring time and labor into developing the product, they were doing the same with infrastructure that could support managed offerings of your product and products like yours (without necessarily ever having to do any real innovation or takin on any risk themselves!). Voila, you were undercut without being overpriced.

Re: Homebrew removes MongoDB from core formulas

#200

Post by DangitBobby »

tedivm wrote: post #162
trpc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is totally beyond me. So a company making a profit from a product made by another company by just hosting it is not exploitation? Does this happen in any industry? A company that makes product for free and another takes it as is and sells it is not an exploitation?

It isn't exploitation because it is literally part of the definition of open source that other people can use and profit off of the work. Linux has made more than one company rich- do we think Red Hat is exploiting Linux? It's also unfair to pretend that companies who are setting up managed services are universally not contributing back- by open sourcing their code MongoDB has been able to benefit off of the issues t…

If someone were promoting a cause--say a business just trying to get the word out there about their new offering--were sitting at a table with a box that said "free mugs", would you consider it exploitative to take the entire box of free mugs, scrub off the company's logo, and begin selling them to people? Would you at least say that it's kind of scummy, or at the very least ethically questionable?

Being technically within the bounds of your agreement and being exploitative are not even close to mutually exclusive.

>It's also unfair to pretend that companies who are setting up managed services are universally not contributing back- by open sourcing their code MongoDB has been able to benefit off of the issues that these other companies have found, often without having to do more than review a pull request.

It's also unfair to pretend that you know for certain that the benefit of this exchange was significantly in favor of MongoDB compared to the detriment they experienced from having their work repurposed.

It is not a good defense of OSS to say that this is working as intended.

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