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Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

grafana.com

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

#111
Good. If Amazon wants to continue its creep of using open source software to build their empire they need to support the companies that make open source software.

> If Amazon/AWS was not a large monopoly it wouldn't be a problem.

DOJ Needs to split up AWS/Amazon and fine them and use that fine to create competition.

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

#112
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean by "combine". If you are releasing a Linux distro that has as one piece of software Grafana, you'll be fine. If your software is in effect an extension of Grafana, you will need to release source code under AGPLv3. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

Exactly. This is my understanding. Edited: Or pick a fork and live on it forever. Edited: Or write my own Grafana

This conflicts with everything you've said so far on this topic. I don't think you do understand.

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

#113
post #98

1) We distribute Grafana as docker container along with our product to customers. What is the impact for us and our customers? 2) We build Grafana on a platform which is not supported by out of the box. What is the impact for us and our customers?

You'll need to give your customers the source code you used to build Grafana. If your customers are just using it internally, then they have no new obligations. If they're letting customers of their own use it, then they have the same new obligations that you do.

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

#114
post #102

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…

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 th…

The GPL is neither long nor complex. If a company won’t use GPL software because of Microsoft’s efforts, but would use that software under an identical license called something else, I think that company will experience many other difficulties on their journey as well.

For shrink-wrap software, GPL can be an issue. For hosted software, it’s generally not (which is why all the desire to make other licenses, including AGPL).

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

#115
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

I don't value OSI's stamp of approval since they were explicitly founded to coopt FSF's effort and make it more corporate friendly. Obviously corporate lawyers would disagree with me.

A license that allows all typical freedoms except "use the software to start a SaaS using proprietary infrastructure" is fine by me.

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

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Timescale founder) We actually designed the Timescale License to be _less_ restrictive than AGPL. It contains no virality. It just prevents public clouds from offering TimescaleDB-aaS.

The freedom to run the software for any purpose is #1 on the list of software freedoms that would be called open source. No ifs, no buts, no checking whether you qualify - software is free if and only if you can run it for any purpose, everything else comes only after that basic freedom. Various viral conditions only affect the licensing of developer changes (while still not restricting the developers right to make a…

I appreciate this debate, but where do we label the Timescale License as open source?

Incidentally, that clause exists as a clear line for value added products and services. Some companies have a restriction that says, "You can't compete with us." That approach struck us as arbitrarily blurry. We took a clear approach that says DML (inserting, querying data) is permitted, but not DDL (creating tables). Again, this is to clearly restrict TimescaleDB-aaS providers and not other companies building true value added products / services on top (e.g., IoT platforms, SaaS companies).

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

#117
post #45

One of the reasons why I find it hard to contribute to projects that use CLA. Now you don't have any say in this relicensing even when contributed reasonable amount of code.

This has nothing to do with CLAs. The old license was Apache 2, which is compatible with AGPLv3 (although the converse is not true). You'd only need a CLA to relicense if it weren't compatible.

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

#118
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

Another major issue is remixing and license compatibility. AGPL is part of an ecosystem. Anything MIT, BSD, current GPL, etc. will freely mix with AGPL.

Most of the other licenses, I can't use in any of my projects without running into license compatibility issues.

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

#119
There's a lot of weird assumptions in this thread that this is some sort of strike against Amazon/AWS. It's not. AWS's managed grafana is built in partnership with grafana labs, and this license change won't affect it.

From Grafana:

"AWS is a strategic partner, and given the commercial relationship AWS has with us for AMG, AWS and their AMG customers are not impacted by this change. We hope that other XaaS providers follow AWS’s lead in working with open source software companies in similarly sustainable ways."

https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic...

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