231–240 of 578 posts
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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?
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> 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 comp…
Full disclosure: I'm CTO at VictoriaMetrics [1], we are happy with Apache 2 license and have no plans to change it.
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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 comp…
If you use a GPL library then your main work becomes GPL.
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>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.
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In a large number of cases, this is not an issue at all. Just like we all use GPL-ed kernel and a ton of other stuff. There is also no problem with making AGPL-based services available to customers. The caveat is that when you modify AGPL-based code, you need to make the source of these modifications available, too. For some reason, this scares Amazon a lot. Developers know that and use AGPL when they don't want to b…
If Amazon was really scared of AGPL then MongoDB wouldn't need to relicense.
MongoDB Inc. instead went after much smaller companies, like mLab, holding their future hostage and thus strong-arming them to sell themselves to MongoDB Inc. a short while before they announced the monopolistic license change that would have effectively shut those small companies down anyway.
Frankly, I'm tired of hearing this myth. MongoDB would like you to believe they were David in a fight against Goliath — PR and marketing have always been their strong suit — but they were quite happy playing Goliath themselves while pointing fingers at imaginary Goliaths.
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I have a question regarding AGPL, that I couldn't answer by Googling or reading the license. Let's say that Postgres server is licensed under AGPL, and I modify it to my needs. I have a closed source web application, that is publicly accessible, and uses Postgres for storing data. a) Do I need to publish source code of my version of Postgres? b) Does my application (which relies on Postgres, and my patches) need to a…
Assuming a client has no direct access to the Postgres server, I'd say you neither need to publish your changes to Postgres, nor put the web application under AGPL. Just because your web application uses Postgres as a storage for data, in a way it could also just use SQLite or MariaDB instead, does not make it a "derivative work". #notalawyer
"... and I modify it to my needs ..."
So he has explicitly created derivative work of Postgres, that's not the question at all. The question is whether the conditions of the AGPL for distributing the source would trigger in his case. I would say yes but IANAL.
I don't want to weigh in here with a huge value judgement on whether this is the right decision. However, I do want to say that what they're saying regarding SSPL vs AGPL is totally right. One of the biggest sticking points with SSPL is that it's not even really plausibly open source, and it tries to create restrictions that implicate software that is not even "linked" with the program that is licensed under it, whic…
How is it debated whether AGPL is open source? Who says it isn't?
I applaud this decision. I would like to see all major SaaSS projects be AGPLv3. End users still have freedom to user, modify, and distribute the software. Cloud providers must share contributions. This is how I like it.
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'm sure if I'm wrong I will find out very quickly, this is HN after all.
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> 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. […] It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. Ahem: Grafana Labs Brings In $50M Series B For Open-Source Developer Platform: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/grafana-labs-brings-in-50m-... I compl…
do you think that earning money or having a viable business model is a bad thing? look at our actions since the inception of the company, as well as our "big tent" philosophy; i think they speak for ourselves. we built a sustainable business over the course of 4 years, prior to raising a dollar of VC money. we raised VC money to go even faster. most of our VC money goes to paying our employees. most of our employees…
Grafana Labs and all these other companies have recieved both value add and goodwill free marketing from open source contributions and communities, and I don't see these companies being at all interested in figuring out who/what they've gained value from, beyond the currently existing company, in order to make a profit and benefit the founders and shareholders.
I'm not against AGPL. I'm against the relicensing of software made in good faith against one model of OSS being discontinued and basically forked by the most prominent for-profit company that have hitherto received the significant benefits of both contributions and goodwill that being more freely open source brings.
By relicensing you've probably significantly reduced the number of companies willing to run future versions of your software, and the number of companies willing to build businesses off of extending it and offering that value add, while still potentially contributing changes upstream. You're going to slowly eat away at that good will and the number of people asking for your product internally, since fewer and fewer people will remember the benefit from their last gig.
I could be wrong here, only time will tell, but I honestly don't think this is a move that increases the long term sustainability of your business model. If anything, I think it's going to be detrimental in the long term. Perhaps even in the short term.