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Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

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Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#101

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

josephcsible wrote: post #94
asim wrote: post #3

All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. This is not some nefarious plan to screw over the community. It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these proj…

This seems to lump relicensing to better FOSS licenses like AGPL in with relicensing to bad non-FOSS licenses like the Commons Clause, SSPL, BSL, Redis Source Available License, and Anti-996 License. You're right about the former, but the latter is screwing over the community.

Serious question: How is the community impacted by SSPl, BSL, etc? The average end-user who makes no modifications and is not reselling as-a-service is fine, there is no additional burden with either AGPL or the non-OSI-compliant licenses.

How does the AGPL screw over the community less than the other licenses? AGPL is problematic for a slew of reasons, lots of corporations (whether or not you agree that for-profit enterprises make up the bulk of the "community" is a separate discussion) disallow it entirely (mostly thanks to Google's precedent).

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#102

Post by api »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24
asim wrote: post #3

All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. This is not some nefarious plan to screw over the community. It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these proj…

> Hopefully over time rather than having everyone choose their own licenses we end up with some form of standardisation. Yes; if you're going to do this, then using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license. > If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these projects would slowly rot. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything but hard-copyleft is doomed to d…

Problem: the letters "G, P, L" are toxic to a huge number of companies. This has nothing to do with the controversy around Stallman. It's because Microsoft spent over a billion dollars in the 1990s mis-educating the market that GPL software is "viral" and if present can "infect" non-GPL software with the GPL license.

The problem would go away if you renamed the license to something else. It's that stupid.

A lot of the flavor of the week licenses exist for this reason, as well as to address some of the weak corner cases of the AGPL.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#103

Post by lacker »

bostik wrote: post #53
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully over time rather than having everyone choose their own licenses we end up with some form of standardisation. Yes; if you're going to do this, then using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license. > If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these projects would slowly rot. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything but hard-copyleft is doomed to d…

Your choice of counterexamples highlights an important aspect. Three of the four are in fact outliers: Kubernetes and Android are both financially backed by Google. Android as a strategic advantage across a global market, Kubernetes as a plumbing layer enabling more businesses operate logically like Google. Sure, it's a CNCF product since 2016 or so, but it still enjoys Google's backing. Postgres? They have a very sp…

Three of the four are in fact outliers: Kubernetes and Android are both financially backed by Google.

Is that really "outlier" behavior? More and more important open source projects are prominently backed by a single large tech company. React, TensorFlow, TypeScript, Go, etc.

If you just look at the last decade, there has been more important work done as "single-sponsor open source" than under the GPL.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#104

Post by api »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24
asim wrote: post #3

All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. This is not some nefarious plan to screw over the community. It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these proj…

> Hopefully over time rather than having everyone choose their own licenses we end up with some form of standardisation. Yes; if you're going to do this, then using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license. > If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these projects would slowly rot. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything but hard-copyleft is doomed to d…

Anything not hard-copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or source-available (BSL etc.) is going to be embraced, extended, and SaaSified / paywalled. Eventually the open version might get abandoned since its authors will get tired of providing free labor to billion dollar cloud companies.

I don't think you'll see a lot of major projects under super-liberal licenses in the future. You will see such licenses for libraries and other components.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#105

Post by jabiko »

peterbonney wrote: post #65
jabiko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no Idea. Realistically its probably not the license cost but the one time and the perpetual operational overhead associated with the license that's going to be the problem.

That makes zero business sense. Your first post is about the one time and perpetual operational overhead associated with operating under the prior FOSS license (yes, you’re saying it’s the new license that’s a problem, but since the situation arose while operating under the prior conditions then implicitly those conditions carried this very overhead). Operating under any license carried an overhead, unless you simply…

> Your first post is about the one time and perpetual operational overhead associated with operating under the prior FOSS license

My first post is about the fact that even though the planned use case would be 100% compliant to the AGPLv3 license the fear that is associated with that license could prevent such use.

> That makes zero business sense

Purchasing a license in that case while not strictly necessary might be seen as an insurance. So that makes business sense.

In the end though I highly doubt that's whats going to happen. The most likely outcome is that we just get told to get rid of Grafana and use something else.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#106

Post by lovasoa »

nopzor wrote: post #67
jononor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Q&A suggests that "unmodified" distributions are not an issue. But if I distribute dashboards, custom configurations, etc - is that a "modification" ?

nope, that wouldn't be a modification to the AGPL-licensed grafana. you are free to do that. plus, dashboards and configuration are inherently ("source available"), so even if one were to consider them to be modifications (which they're not), you are already distributing them in source form ;-) [note: am co-founder/ceo of grafana labs]

The AGPL license states

> A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.

Doesn't a product that offers grafana-powered dashboards "form a larger program" ?

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#107

Post by johannes1234321 »

swyx wrote: post #95
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully over time rather than having everyone choose their own licenses we end up with some form of standardisation. Yes; if you're going to do this, then using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license. > If the core companies maintaining them did not do this they would eventually die and these projects would slowly rot. It sounds like you're suggesting that anything but hard-copyleft is doomed to d…

> using AGPL is so much better than flavor-of-the-week license license noob here - can you elaborate on why exactly it is so much better?

AGPL is a license qualifying the criteria of OSI's OpenSource definition and FSF's Free Software definition.

A key point there is that a user can use the software quite freely without restrictions only with the caveat that modifications have to be made available to users. (AGPL is slighqtly more complex)

Many of the "modern" licenses allow to look at code, but prevent distribution and/or modification and/or usage. They typically aim for any "proper" usage requiring a commercial license and not giving the guarantee that code can be fixed in case the original vendor stops working on it.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#108

Post by mtmail »

tlynchpin wrote: post #62

RIP grafana ^^ this is not a good contribution to HN, not much substance. (edit) Many people who use Grafana will see this news and will stop planning on using Grafana and start planning on doing something else. That has nothing to do with Grafana, that is a common reaction to AGPL. In theory, AGPL is fine under circumstances blahblahblah. In common practice in commercial settings (in my experience), GPL is poison an…

I'd say a SaaS competitor build on top of graphana is more affected https://www.hostedgraphite.com/

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#110

Post by devmor »

Macha wrote: post #90
devmor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are not offering a product built on top of Grafana as a network-available service, then there is no difference between the new license and the previous GPL3 license for you whatsoever. If you are, then your obligation would change to specifically making only that work which builds on top of the Grafana code available to others for free, along with the AGPL3-licensed Grafana code. You are not required to licens…

The previous license was Apache 2.0, not GPLv3

My mistake, regardless, Apache2.0 is GPL3 compat.
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