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

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

#321

Post by LukeShu » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

kevincox wrote: post #131

rakoo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloud providers must share contributions To be really strict: AGPL only mandates that contributions be shared with the user. The freedom of users is more important than the freedom of developers. Of course an upstream maintainer can be a user and get the contributions.

They have to be shared to the user under the same license. So any user could publish the changes publicly.

Sure, but there might be out-of-band reasons for users to not do that.

For instance, grsecurity will sell you a security-hardening-patched Linux kernel. You, as the user/customer, have the right to take those GPL patches, and share them publicly. But if you do so, grsecurity will blacklist you as a customer, and you won't be able to get any more patches from them.

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

#322

Post by yawaramin » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #259

nopzor wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> do you think that earning money or having a viable business model is a bad thing? Nope, but I kinda thought the whole idea behind open source is that no one company or group of companies/licensees gets privileged access to or control over the software, including any company that happens to have the same name as the piece of software. I realize that “open source” and “free software” and other related labels mean man…

> I kinda thought the whole idea behind open source is that no one company or group of companies/licensees gets privileged access to or control over the software, including any company that happens to have the same name as the piece of software.

That is not, at all, the idea behind open source. The idea behind open source is, basically, 'you are free to do whatever you like with the source code, as long as you credit us for our work and don't hold us responsible for any effects of using the work'. That's it. There is nothing about companies, corporations, licensees, who has control, who has what name, etc. All of that is irrelevant to open source at its core.

It's true that many people add on an open governance model (e.g. Rust) and mistakenly think that that is part of open source. It's not though.

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

#323

Post by shawnz » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #101

josephcsible wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Blocking competition among providers of your app as a service is a burden for users. Users would benefit from being allowed to use the provider which best meets their needs, rather than being forced to use the provider who happens to be allied with the copyright owner.

AGPL tries to ensure that third-party providers are at least sharing their development efforts to the same extent that those efforts were shared with them. AGPL doesn't try to give anyone an unfair advantage at providing the software as a service, not even the copyright owner.

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

#324

Post by sneak » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

pritambaral wrote: post #312

sneak wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I download some open source free software, and modify it so it does something differently on my computer, simply running "systemctl start httpd" should not potentially bring down the machinery of state copyright enforcement against me for not publishing my private patches. Freedom includes freedom to have privacy. Not distributing any software, my privacy should not be violated. Running an ASP off a private fork i…

> Freedom includes freedom to have privacy. You have that. The AGPL provides rights to _users_ of your software; that's it, no one else. If _you don't provide_ the modified software to someone, they can't demand your private patches. No one can "bring down the machinery of state copyright enforcement" against you, unless you interact with them first and provide them your modified software and they use it. And even wh…

Yeah, and running a business on my own computer by providing API services to someone is not distribution of software. Running an API business shouldn't force me to distribute anything to anyone.

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

#325

Post by sneak » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

LambdaComplex wrote: post #281

sneak wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You believe in freedom for who, exactly? Freedom for the users of software? Or freedom for corporations who benefit from denying access to the source code of that software? The Free Software Foundation exists to protect the former at the expense of the latter.

You are dragging anti-corporate ideology into a very simple matter.

Corporations are sometimes users, and individual people often benefit from denying access to the source code of software that is used to provide a service.

Providing a service is fundamentally different from providing software.

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

#326

Post by josephcsible » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #324

pritambaral wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom includes freedom to have privacy. You have that. The AGPL provides rights to _users_ of your software; that's it, no one else. If _you don't provide_ the modified software to someone, they can't demand your private patches. No one can "bring down the machinery of state copyright enforcement" against you, unless you interact with them first and provide them your modified software and they use it. And even wh…

Yeah, and running a business on my own computer by providing API services to someone is not distribution of software. Running an API business shouldn't force me to distribute anything to anyone.

Consider "Service as a Software Substitute": https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

Do you consider it a problem? If not, why not? If so, what other than the AGPL do you propose to fix it?

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

#327

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #301

jeffbee wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand you have a large department of battle-hardened IP lawyers who say that AGPL virality is overbroad and poorly defined, and on the other hand you have a FOSS advocate who says it's fine, so I guess we'll never know for sure!

The FSF and other similar organizations have lawyers too. What do you think their opinion is?

The FSF is not generally a party to the license, so it makes no difference what they think.

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

#328

Post by LukeShu » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #307

pvorb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The only difference between GPL3 and AGPL3 is what constitutes distribution. With GPL3 you have to provide source to anyone you provide binaries. With AGPL3 you also have to provide source to anyone who uses the software remotely (eg a web app). Everything else, including the scope of what must be included in the source (modifications, linked software, but not software that talks over IPC, etc), is identical between…

To expand on that, you have to offer to provide the source to "all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network". If you're using Grafana for monitoring your SaaSS app, then your users aren't interacting with Grafana, so you're fine.

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

#329

Post by shawnz » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

nopzor wrote: post #197

mqus wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. AGPL is nice and all but for contributors this does not really matter at all because of the CLAs. I will never contribute to projects which reserve the right to relicense, e.g. take ownership over my contributions, however small or big they are. I think companies will do the same. If they would remove the CLAs, they would signal to companies and contributors that they are serious in providing an open ecosyst…

thanks for saying the AGPL is nice; we think it strikes the right balance. but, i'm curious to understand your perspective here. do you mean to say that you'd never contribute to an apache licensed project? anything that is apache licensed can be relicensed by the project, even if there isn't a CLA [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]

I think they are saying that they don't want to give the project owner permission to relicense their contributions to an incompatible license. Relicensing to a compatible license should be no problem.

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

#330

Post by formerly_proven » Tue, Apr 20, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #101

josephcsible wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I don't see how AGPL is really problematic in any way for something like Grafana.

Most people, and companies, that use this will just run an unmodified Grafana container, maybe with some plugins (not of their own). AGPL doesn't come into play here (the software is not modified).

This change would really only impact a company that takes Grafana, puts a bunch of patches on top of it and wants to offer that as a SaaS. Those guys could still even do that, they'd just have to publish their patches. Or, quite possibly, just pay for a commercial license - a lot of GPL/AGPL software is actually dual-licensed, with more ore less "dowhateveryawant"-style, paid licenses.

All of this sounds fair to me.