Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

grafana.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 578 posts

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

#371

Post by sneak »

josephcsible wrote: post #369
sneak wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote: > forbids the generation of revenue by selling access to a service API using a private fork That's the thing - "software freedom" is being applied to software that you have no reasonable expectation of having access to: 1) you didn't write it 2) it hasn't been provided to you 3) it's running on someone else's computer There is no reasonable basis for claiming that you have the "freedom" to access information…

I disagree that "it hasn't been provided to you". Imagine a regular desktop program that you can only use through RDP or VNC. Is that not provided to the user either?

No, only the outputs of the software are provided. The software remains wholly within the confines of the computer executing it.

There's a clear distinction between sending someone a file that represents computer software (source or object code) (a product) and sending someone the output of a calculation you have been requested to perform (a service).

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

#372

Post by sneak »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #370
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.

"Companies are right to avoid the AGPL" This was never an issue until Google was pinched on it five or six years ago and started a massive campaign to get the OSS movement to disfavor the AGPL. Google uses tons of GPL software that they don't pay for (Linux, Java, etc.) but once it became exterior-facing and the license applied to their software, then rather than pay to license the software, the world's fifth most va…

> Google uses tons of GPL software that they don't pay for (Linux, Java, etc.) but once it became exterior-facing and the license applied to their software, then rather than pay to license the software, the world's fifth most valuable company decided they'd rather stiff the developers by a campaign to convince other companies of what you just posted.

The free in free software is often cited as being "free as in freedom", but it's important to remember that it's also and simultaneously "free as in beer".

Google, along with everyone else, uses tons of GPL software that they don't pay for - because the point of free software is that you're free to use it. They're not "stiff[ing] the developers" as you claim, because the software is available for all to use for free.

You can't have it both ways: either you're free to use the software for any purpose, or by using the software you owe somebody something. Pick one. I choose the former.

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

#373

Post by sneak »

LambdaComplex wrote: post #338
sneak wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a very simplistic and, I think inaccurate view of the matter.

My customers, for example, to whom I provide service, are not infringed upon in any way because I use private forks of GPL software in the provision of my services.

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

#374

Post by goodpoint »

m4rtink wrote: post #343
josephcsible wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the substance of what you said, but I'm going to nitpick a bit of wording: what you call "developer freedom" isn't freedom at all, and is more rightly called power. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

Well, GPL is about freedom for the users , not necessarily for the developers.

Every developer is also an user.

And "user" freedom is more important because we use tenths of millions of SLOC and do development work on a small fraction.

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

#375

Post by sdesol »

nopzor wrote: post #192
judofyr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Here is an analysis of the investment that grafana labs is putting into grafana:

https://public-001.gitsense.com/insights/github/repos?r=gith...

Switch to the impacts view and sort by "days active". I think it is safe to say, any developer with days active >= 25% is a grafana labs employee or somebody that really loves to contribute to grafana because they are being paid to.

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

#376

Post by LambdaComplex »

sneak wrote: post #373
LambdaComplex wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a very simplistic and, I think inaccurate view of the matter. My customers, for example, to whom I provide service, are not infringed upon in any way because I use private forks of GPL software in the provision of my services.

> My customers, for example, to whom I provide service, are not infringed upon in any way

The issue is that I—and, more importantly, your customers—must simply take your word for it, since we're unable to confirm or deny it for ourselves if you don't make the source available.

When dealing with large corporations, taking such statements at face value is pretty foolish.

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

#377

Post by CRConrad »

sneak wrote: post #373
LambdaComplex wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a very simplistic and, I think inaccurate view of the matter. My customers, for example, to whom I provide service, are not infringed upon in any way because I use private forks of GPL software in the provision of my services.

They will be when you go out of business and disappear, and they can't compile that same service to run on their own replacement server because you've withheld the source to your modification.

You might not want to admit to yourself that your business model is based on infringing on the freedoms of these users of GPL software, but that's exactly what it is.

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

#378

Post by ocdtrekkie »

josephcsible wrote: post #318
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that differs between SSPL and the AGPL in terms of being open source or not is that one particular group of people has decided one is Open Source(TM) and one is not.

> one particular group of people I assume you mean the OSI. But it's not just them with a problem with the SSPL. Debian and Fedora both reject it too, independently, for being non-free.

But it is free. It solely conveys an expectation that you also release related tooling for free as well. If it's not a free license, the AGPL isn't either.

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

#379

Post by ezrast »

jordigh wrote: post #249
jrv wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds nice in theory, but the reality is also that a lot of more permissively licensed (BSD / Apache) projects now cannot use (most) parts of Grafana / Loki / Tempo anymore, since realistically they won't be able to or want to switch to the AGPL as well (because of all the pain that would incur on others, in turn). That means that basically the whole free code sharing idea goes out of the window, at least in on…

> projects now cannot use They can, they just don't want to because they want to ensure other people can produce non-free work. Remove the desire to produce non-free work and you can perfectly legally put copylefted code into weakly-licensed free code. Weak licenses don't forbid this. Copyleft licenses don't forbid this. There's no need for anyone to change the license or copyright to combine weak licenses with copyl…

On the contrary, AGPL (and GPL) cannot be combined with any other license. See section 5c: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

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

#380

Post by rlpb »

btown wrote: post #61
188201 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's misunderstanding of AGPL. For internal use, AGPL does not require to share the proprietary part. If a company develop an proprietary UI and use Loki as backend, this is not serving Loki directly to customer, so that does not require company to release their code. It is similar to GPL. Dynamic linking to a GPL software does not require the developer releasing their code. Only provider serving Loki insta…

I think this is a misunderstanding of how vague the AGPL actually is. The key clause is "your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version." Would putting AGPL software behind a reverse proxy change the fact that you're a user interacting with it r…

This kind of hand-wringing is what the naysayers were doing with GPL software in the 90s. That the GPL would never fly in business because lawyers would get hung up in "what if" interpretations that were never the intent or spirit of the GPL in the first place.

It turned out alright.

Post reply on HN