Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3 • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by dec0dedab0de » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

I like the AGPL, but I would like an extra step that forces you to distribute code even you have not modified it. This would be in the case of the original being unavailable for some reason.

Does anyone know how difficult it would be to have the login page for a web app be a different license? The idea being that the only users of the AGPL code are ones that have a valid account. Off the top of my head a reverse proxy, with a completely separate auth app would do the trick, but would be a bit of a pain.

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

#212

Post by justincormack » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

sideeffffect wrote: post #204

If I contribute a code under the new CLA, is Grafana Labs allowed to relicense that contribution under a non-copyleft license, like Apache Public License 2.0, without my further permission? If yes, than it's a really bad bad thing and I hope they change it. CLAs that permit relicensing for a project that already uses permissive license is fine and fair. But doing that on a project with a copyleft license is a bad tas…

The new CLA doesn't seem to allow relicense. The old one [1] allowed relicense under OSI approved licenses.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200311075025/https://grafana.c...

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

#213

Post by bostik » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #103

bostik wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I want to disagree with you on the general principle (and gen220's sibling comment points out several really nice longer-term examples), I will certainly admit that you have a point. Cloud providers eating the margins, investing in streamlined operations and in general making the earlier on-prem consulting work less attractive has had an effect.

But I do note that your examples are from quite a narrow sector. TypeScript, Go and React are all languages. TypeScript is a nice facade over JavaScript, and React is ... well, a very powerful DSL.[ß] Go is very much a Google project, developed perhaps more out in the open than in a traditional open-source sense.

As I understand, TensorFlow was originally an internal Google project, which they at some point decided to open up. It may have had something to do with their TPU cloud offering or not. If we wanted to compare low-level language or domain material, we should probably take a look at something like Boost. People who do C++ tell me that Boost is a pretty good approximation of C++ standards' evolutionary playground. And if we're going for new languages, shouldn't we also include Rust? It was backed and promoted by Mozilla, but how much of its development was driven solely by Mozilla, and how much was done by the interested community at large?

ß: Our frontend team will probably want to roast me for that one, but there isn't much visible JS left in modern React code. Not for my eyes, at least.

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

#214

Post by pvorb » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

HideousKojima wrote: post #202

pvorb wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if my proprietary SaaS only uses Grafana for monitoring but its key purpose is doing something else entirely, I can no longer use Grafana unless I also publish my SaaS under AGPLv3, right? What if I release my own SaaS as AGPLv3? Do others, who rely on it, also have to license their software under AGPLv3? I think this kills many business cases. Am I missing some key point?

>I can no longer use Grafana unless I also publish my SaaS under AGPLv3, right? If you link to it directly from your code then yes, unless you're willing to pay Grafana for a commercial license (assuming they offer one or you can negotiate one with them). If you have Grafana running on your servers but you aren't using the code in your own applications then you're generally fine (the GPL is generally recognized as en…

That was also my understanding of the GPL, but the AGPL is for me to understand.

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

#215

Post by burmanm » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

papito wrote: post #196

josephcsible wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon forking ElasticSearch to keep its old license is a good thing, since ElasticSearch's new license is a proprietary visible-source license. Grafana's new license is still FOSS, so it's really not a fair comparison.

Elastic made a massive blunder by open-sourcing Kibana. SumoLogic just took it and builtnon that. You open-source the underlying technology - not the product built on top of it .

Kibana was open source before they formed the company.

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

#216

Post by bosswipe » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #138

bosswipe wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Proprietary infrastructure = All infrastructure essentially. So you're fine with a license that can't be used for SaaS. So basically you're happy for the commercial internet to be powered by proprietary software - with all that would mean for free software.

That's pretty much the same as AGPL. A tell about OSI's biases is that AGPL and SSPL are basically the same but since Amazon's propaganda engine ramped up against SSPL it was labeled as somehow completely out of bounds.

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

#217

Post by nkassis » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

cardanome wrote: post #162

lacker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few monopolistic corporations having dictatorial power over key technologies is a dystopian nightmare. Those projects have ultimately the interests of the corporations in mind not of the users. Ever wonder why overcomplicated technical solutions are hyped so much? Why does everyone and their dog need to run Kubernetes? Why is it all Maschine Learning instead of good old fashioned methods that would do much better?…

> "Ever wonder why overcomplicated technical solutions are hyped so much? Why does everyone and their dog need to run Kubernetes? Why is it all Maschine Learning instead of good old fashioned methods that would do much better? Well those corporation have just the fitting cloud computing offering! "

Simpler explanation than some nefarious plan. Software engineers love to play with the coolest new thing over working with some proven solution that might have worked well enough. I think these corporation just exploit that with cloud offering. They don't really get to pick what people like (they try but suck at it) but have the money and resources to exploit whatever ends up being the popular new thing anyway.

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

#218

Post by pmontra » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

slabity wrote: post #187

api wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't adequately handle the SaaSification case, which is when someone hosts the software behind a paywall. It only handles the "Tivoization" case when someone ships the software inside a closed source box.

Isn't the purpose of GPLv3 to handle Tivoization and AGPL was made to handle server-side sort of use-cases? If I use AGPL-licensed software in a SaaS type of environment, I still need to release the source-code even if I'm not distributing the software directly, correct?

Correct.

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

#219

Post by jrv » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #207

jrv wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, already thinking about alternatives to Grafana in the long term now...

Why? If your software is already all available under permissive licenses, what does Grafana's new license require of you that you weren't already doing?

Oh nothing for now, and there's likely not going to be a viable alternative around for a while. But long-term, I don't see Grafana as part of the openly sharing ecosystem anymore, as with them being under the AGPL, but most other relevant OSS projects in the space being under permissive licenses, the whole idea of code sharing now goes out of the window (or rather, becomes one-way). I don't like the long-term implications of this for the ecosystem.

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

#220

Post by pvorb » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #207

jrv wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, already thinking about alternatives to Grafana in the long term now...

Why? If your software is already all available under permissive licenses, what does Grafana's new license require of you that you weren't already doing?

Maybe I want to keep my software under a permissive license? AGPL would also infect my code, no? And what if we're talking about proprietary code that doesn't have much to do with Grafana and only uses it for monitoring?