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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

#261

Post by belorn »

bonetruck wrote: post #59

I wonder how many companies will choose to kill off Grafana use as a result of this change. Two companies I've worked for have simply banned the use of anything having a GPL type license.

Out of curiosity, what kind of markets are those two companies in and how much competition exist.

Using open source libraries is, among other things, a cost saving measure. It allows a company to focus their expertise on what they are good at, without having to spend time and resources on reinventing wheels. Banning tools that enable a company to produce products faster, cheaper and (sometimes) more stable and secure can have a major impact when the competition does not limit themselves in the same way. However if the market is dominated by a monopoly or is very slow, then increased costs and delays might not have much of an impact.

As an example of such company, Google's revenue would not be impacted by a single percent if they suddenly needed to hire 200 more programmers for android. Delay next version with 2 months and the impact for android market share would unlikely be statistically verifiable.

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

#262

Post by twic »

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.

You get it. Making lots of money cannot be a result of open source. But open source can be a result of making lots of money.

The ultimate fate of the wave of companies switching to AGPL and similar licenses now will be the proof (or disproof!) of this.

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

#263

Post by swyx »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #254
swyx wrote: 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?

I don't care so much about the AGPL specifically, but it's a single known license, rather than every time I find a new project having to find out what "interesting" license they cooked up this time.

yes but afaict SSPL was kiiinda becoming a de facto "f off AWS" license that was generally becoming standard. thats all any of these vendors want, they're not coming up with new licenses just for shits and giggles.

standards evolve over time, it was entirely possible that Grafana could have thrown its weight behind SSPL and helped legitimize it more.

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

#264

Post by sneak »

blendergeek wrote: post #38

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.

I view the AGPL as a nonfree license; I think more permissive licenses are better, because I believe in software freedom. Companies are right to avoid the AGPL.

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

#265

Post by cryptonector »

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…

Open source is a business tool. There are many business models where open source can be useful. PG has such a vibrant user _and_ developer community that it pays to be a freelancer in that community and there's room for lots to play. SQLite3 is very much the opposite: it has _no_ developer community outside the core team, but the business model is the SQLite Consortium, which pays for the core team, and the closed-source test suite whose existence prevents hard forks.

It makes sense to use attractive-to-end-users licensing at first and later switch to a license that helps lock in support bucks. Call it bait-n-switch if you like, but even the SQLite folks did it, only they didn't do it with the _license_ but with the _test suite_ -- either way they made it really difficult to play in their space and/or fork.

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

#266

Post by djb_hackernews »

gpanders wrote: post #260
zokier wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with AGPL is that you need to think about it, even if you just run the software and are not distributing it. Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. This is in stark contrast to all other mainstream licenses where in general you don't need to think about the license at all if you are not distributing the software, which makes very worry free experience.

> Or rather AGPL forces you to distribute the software you run. No it does not. Using AGPL software does not suddenly make your own software a derived work.

Tell that to the lawyers who are paid lots of money to be risk adverse. As others point out, the law operates on precedent, no lawyer wants their decision to be the one that makes their employer a test piece.

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

#267

Post by caniszczyk »

dcow wrote: post #186
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…

Also, the CNCF is essentially Google by another name.

that for sure is false... Google helped start CNCF but now plays a small part in its governance, they are just one board member like the 30+ others... they have no special voting rights...

https://www.cncf.io/people/governing-board/

they still do quite a lot of heavy lifting though in contributing to a variety of CNCF projects if you look at the numbers: https://all.devstats.cncf.io/d/5/companies-table?orgId=1

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

#268

Post by jpalomaki »

josephcsible wrote: post #156
jpalomaki wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this actually work towards your employees or 3rd party personnel (for example consultants) getting access to the tools - would you have to make the source code available for them and allow them to distribute the code?

A company giving its own employees access to software for work use only doesn't count as distribution, but giving it to contractors can: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#InternalDistribu...

AGPL uses the wording "all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network".

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

#269

Post by edoceo »

ethbr0 wrote: post #188
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I'd be surprised if Kubernetes wasn't dead in 20 years.

Imho, K8s eventually evolves into an OS for running K8s, then gets productized on {non-x86-64}

not looking forward to the k8s-arm-soc enabled bootloader (tightly integrated to systemd of course) to run k8s-os to run k8s-system to run docker.

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

#270

Post by sneak »

josephcsible wrote: post #40
jchw wrote: post #7

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 feel that the AGPL actually reduces the software freedom in a misguided attempt to close the ASP "loophole", as if offering an API from a private fork is something to be prevented.

I am a proponent of software freedom, and resultantly I view the AGPL as nonfree.

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