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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

#331

Post by TeMPOraL »

yawaramin wrote: post #309
TeMPOraL wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but React is a language now? In a way, it is. Whenever you write some module in your project, you're effectively designing a language. Every function you add is a new verb, every type you define is a new noun[0] - and the relationships between them form the grammar. It may sound trivial, but I think it's an important and underappreciated point. Modularizing and abstracting is done by building languages on top of ot…

That's not what was asked. The query was, 'Is React a language now', i.e. specifically React, not just a general query like 'In general, is programming a process of designing little custom languages to solve problems'.

So to answer explicitly: in many ways, yes it is.

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

#332

Post by sneak »

josephcsible wrote: post #326
sneak wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, I don't consider it a problem at all. Nothing is being used improperly or against the spirit of free software when software freedom is exercised (by a service provider) - that's the whole point.

I really think the whole AGPL is simply sour grapes, because most GPL-using businesses have not figured out how to become profitable. ("open source is not a business model.") The anti-corporate, anti-business types see people exercising their software freedoms and using free software to make money, and think it's a problem that needs to be stopped.

It's interesting that TPTB have ruled such "ethical source" licenses as nonfree - you're not allowed to restrict Freedom 0 to say that users aren't allowed to, say, use the software to produce bombs. That's not a free software license.

Using it to generate revenue however, is seen as a "loophole" to be "closed".

I don't see a license that forbids the generation of revenue by selling access to a service API using a private fork as any less nonfree than one that forbids the production of bombs.

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

#333

Post by tshaddox »

yawaramin wrote: post #322
tshaddox wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> There is nothing about companies, corporations, licensees, who has control, who has what name, etc.

That’s exactly what I said.

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

#334

Post by gqewogpdqa »

gen220 wrote: post #296
nine_k wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not mean to say that open-source software (broadly, MIT-licensed) and free software (broadly, GPL-licensed) don't do well! They do, and I'm happy about it. Some have commercial entities around them, but most don't. What I was trying to say is that FOSS was never about capturing commercial value, and always about capturing the value of the freedom to inspect, share, and tweak. In this regard, going AGPL is prefe…

Ah yeah! We totally agree! I was finding it hard to respond to your comment initially because I didn’t know which point you were trying to make, mentioning Android and K8s. I totally agree that the “we are now AGPL” route is preferable. FWIW MongoDB was already AGPL, but that wasn’t enough for them I guess, they wanted more money. Old HN thread on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18229452

Why the toxicity? AGPL was deemed by many to not be clear about what it was trying to accomplish. As I read in the various exchanges and articles around the time SSPL came out, I think they were just trying to clarify AGPL, not getting any more restrictive than AGPLs intent. And how would moving from a license that said you couldn't run a service bureau for free to something that says more clearly that you can't run a service bureau for free make MongoDB more money?

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

#335

Post by alexeldeib »

lunfard00 wrote: post #313
the_duke wrote: post #5

"Amazon Announces Grafana Fork , Promises Amazing Things for the Community" (2021/05/08) [1] On a more serious note: there is a bit of a trend in the licensing world. Mongo or ElasticSearch changes, or cool new projects like redpanda [2] launching with BSL. Open source is still a very young business model. One that has provided a tremendous amount of value over the past decades, but we still need to figure out how to…

Amazon is the biggest leecher in the industry. They haven't open-sourced any meaningful project back to the community and they even prevent its employees to work in any of them[1] on their free-time. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/3axbeh/i...

I think firecracker is pretty meaningful.

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

#336

Post by simion314 »

dkarras wrote: post #165
api wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Curious about how the GPL is not viral... Unless you go through the hoops of making sure GPL code is sectioned (through a shared library or whatever) in your codebase, then your software becomes GPL, no? I mean sometimes you can avoid it so that the GPL project stands at an arms length to your own code but it is not always trivial. You just don't get to include the code in your project and not get "infected". The fac…

I think you are wrong here, if I have 2 files, first is GPL and the second is proprietary and you steal them from me and use them then what license is your code now ?

The correct answer is that your code stealing is not transforming the product into GPL or into my proprietary license. If I catch and ask for money from you you have more options with the GPL code then with my proprietary code. With the GPL code you can just GPL your code changes, maybe the entire product but you are not forced to pay me anything. With the proprietary license though you don't have the option and I can make you pay.

So if you like that much the "infectious" word, you should add an "optional" modifier , you can always not GPL your changes, remove the "stolen" code , pay damages? (not sure if this ever happened).

What I observer the issues with GPL like software is lazy developers and companies that would like to "npm install" solutions and skip doing the work.

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

#337

Post by __david__ »

dkarras wrote: post #165
api wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Curious about how the GPL is not viral... Unless you go through the hoops of making sure GPL code is sectioned (through a shared library or whatever) in your codebase, then your software becomes GPL, no? I mean sometimes you can avoid it so that the GPL project stands at an arms length to your own code but it is not always trivial. You just don't get to include the code in your project and not get "infected". The fac…

Your software never "becomes" GPL, no matter what. That's the problem with the "viral" label, it's somewhat of a misnomer that implies that anything that comes into contact with it gets infected and suddenly all your private IP _has_ to be released and anyone can just take it an fork it.

In reality, your proprietary code can only be GPLed if you explicitly release it under that license.

What people are confusing is that it is a violation of the GPL to release binary code that links (statically or dynamically[1]) with GPL-ed code without also releasing that code under a compatible license. This is where the "viral" label comes into play, since the easiest way to link against GPL code is to just make your code GPL as well. But it _does not_ mean that if you mess up and release a binary blob with GPL code in it that you've given up all rights to the non-GPL parts.

[1] LGPL allows dynamic linking, plain GPL doesn't distinguish.

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

#338

Post by LambdaComplex »

sneak wrote: post #325
LambdaComplex wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> individual people often benefit from denying access to the source code of software that is used to provide a service

To the detriment of the users of that service--which are the people that the FSF aims to protect.

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

#339

Post by Jarwain »

eitland wrote: post #160
watermelon0 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've tried really hard to understand this a few times and yesterday or early today or something I found an interesting thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11354475 reitanqild seems to misunderstand and the other posters fill in with more information. If the information in that thread is correct and I read it correctly it is totally fine to use an AGPL server that touches connects to a lot of stuff, it w…

Would an extension like citus or timescaledb or opengis be considered a combined work for AGPL purposes?

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

#340

Post by pavon »

lovasoa wrote: post #121

The announcement seems to say that products that include an unmodified version grafana can still be proprietary, and only modifications to grafana itself will have to be published. However, the AGPL itself is quite clear that if you distribute a larger work based on an AGPL software, the whole larger work has to be distributed under the same license. Would you still be confident shipping a proprietary product that in…

The GPL and AGPL are clear that bundling does not constitute a derivative work, and does not require you to license the bundled works under the GPL/APL.

> Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html#section5

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

If you write a custom plugin for Grafana, then that plugin will likely need to be distributed under the AGPL (depending on Grafana's plugin architecture), but not your entire app.

I would be completely confident in bundling in this manner. The AGPL3 and GPL3 have identical wording on this matter, and it has been a well understood aspect of the GPL for decades.

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