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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

#431

Post by open0 »

Seirdy wrote: post #222
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…

That's kind of the point. The purpose of MIT/BSD is to enable nonfree derivative works; the purpose of the AGPL is to only allow free derivatives. AGPL maximizes freedom by prohibiting further restriction of it; it's a local maxima of "user freedom" as a function of "developer freedom". If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL.

> If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL.

And this condition is the reason that the answer will be "no" every time to using copyleft. Why would anyone ever choose a piece of software which, however you want to twist words, is actually less free in the sense of what it permits and will have less adoption as a result?

I run some websites without ads used by thousands of people and I never intend to monetize them, but I would still avoid these projects solely due to their licensing.

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

#432

Post by quadrangle »

spoonjim wrote: post #415
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

Arguing over which one is “freedom” is a petty exercise in trying to claim the moral high ground. Instead, it’s more objective and accurate to say that GPL and BSD represent two different ideologies, and that the AGPL is definitely designed to promulgate the “GPL” ideology, so that it’s inability to be incorporated into BSD-licensed software is a feature and not a bug from the perspective of the people who choose to…

I think you misunderstand the GPL ideology (to use your words).

The idealogy is that proprietary software is wrong, bad, unethical. Software freedom should be available to all.

The copyleft terms of the GPL are a tactic a means to defending software freedom. And to that extent, all the incompatibility with other free licenses are indeed a bug a downside, a hampering of freedom in practice. That downside is accepted because of (and only when it is) the judgment that it is a net gain for software freedom anyway because it frustrates the development of non-free software.

There does not exist any ideology that wants incompatibility between free software licenses. It is a price that some feel should be paid sometimes in order to be incompatible with non-free licenses which are the actual problem.

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

#433

Post by toomanybeersies »

sandstrom wrote: post #133
wyoawayd wrote: post #119

There's a lot of weird assumptions in this thread that this is some sort of strike against Amazon/AWS. It's not. AWS's managed grafana is built in partnership with grafana labs, and this license change won't affect it. From Grafana: "AWS is a strategic partner, and given the commercial relationship AWS has with us for AMG, AWS and their AMG customers are not impacted by this change. We hope that other XaaS providers…

It could still be with AWS in mind. After this change, they'll be in a better negotiation position vs. AWS, since AWS can't (as easily) threaten that they'll build their own competing offer.

> AWS can't (as easily) threaten that they'll build their own competing offer

Elasticsearch changed their licence for more or less this reason [1]. So it wouldn't surprise me if Grafana's motivation was to solidify their position against Amazon.

[1] https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS

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

#434

Post by quadrangle »

josephcsible wrote: post #166
jrv wrote: post #158

What I don't like about changes like this is that it makes it impossible to reuse any Grafana/Loki/Tempo pieces or libraries in any more permissively-licensed code without forcing that whole project into the AGPL as well. That doesn't only hinder competitors (which seems to be the legitimate goal), but also hinders interoperability and an open ecosystem evolving where people freely exchange bits and pieces of code to…

IMO, the ideal end-state from a software freedom perspective is that all software becomes AGPL. This change is a step in that direction, not only with the directly affected products, but for the reasons you mentioned, an additional pressure for more things to switch to it. Do you not like that end goal, or do you just think the side effects of the change outweigh the benefits of getting closer to it?

The ideal end-state is simply software freedom for everyone, no more proprietary software — and also no more malicious actions in the world, world peace, and universal love and compassion.

I do sincerely share these ideals, but which paths get us how far with which real-world trade-offs, that's more complex.

For ideal policy, I like this direction: abolishing copyright and patent law and replacing them with (A) mandatory source-release for all published works that need source in order to practically study and modify and (B) prohibition on DRM or other measures that technically limit freedoms.

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

#435

Post by open0 »

rakoo wrote: post #86
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.

> 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.

The line between user and developer is blurry, especially in the context of software that exposes its configuration entirely as some part of its core function.

> The freedom of users is more important than the freedom of developers.

What exactly is this "freedom" that users are benefiting from? Is this the part where we invoke some negative right? That's called "control".

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

#436

Post by angry_octet »

I look forward to a future AGPL, perhaps Absolutist AGPL.

Licencing your code under AAGPL extinguishes your own copyright as the author -- you now only have the same rights as someone triggering the code or a derived work. Triggering is any action which causes the code to run without human intervention.

The AAGPL will finally remove the possibility of crippled 'Community Edition' software.

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

#437

Post by lovasoa »

pavon wrote: post #340
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 G…

Yes, I understood that just distributing grafana and your app together is not a problem, that is bundling. But what if grafana is a part of your app ? If you have a grafana dashboard inside the UI of your own application, this cannot be considered bundling, can it ? The AGPL is clear that if the result of the aggregation "forms a larger product", then you are NOT covered by the bundling clause.

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

#438

Post by CaptainOSS »

toddpersen wrote: post #409

The funny thing to me, which I haven't seen anyone else mention yet, is that way, way back in the old days, Grafana started out as a fork of Kibana. Go take a look at the first commit in the Grafana source: https://github.com/grafana/grafana/commit/75d03fc49ab4f95ee4... Anyone want to guess what the third commit was? That's right, it was an Apache 2 license: https://github.com/grafana/grafana/commits/master?after=2bb…

they talk about Kibana in their Q&A:

https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic...

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

#439

Post by josephcsible »

open0 wrote: post #431
Seirdy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the point. The purpose of MIT/BSD is to enable nonfree derivative works; the purpose of the AGPL is to only allow free derivatives. AGPL maximizes freedom by prohibiting further restriction of it; it's a local maxima of "user freedom" as a function of "developer freedom". If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL.

> If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL. And this condition is the reason that the answer will be "no" every time to using copyleft. Why would anyone ever choose a piece of software which, however you want to twist words, is actually less free in the sense of what it permits and will have less adoption as a result? I run some websites without ads used by thousands of pe…

What do you think the word "free" means exactly, in the context of software freedom?

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

#440

Post by eitland »

angry_octet wrote: post #430
eitland wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you can always just run the AGPL licensed software and as long as you interact with it through the network or the database you won't have to relicense anything. What you cannot do is: 1. change the AGPL software itself and provide it to end users in any form without providing updated sources 2. make a combined product and not provide sources for all of it under AGPL. 3. Also there is nothing to prevent you f…

No, it is the network interaction that is specifically a software release trigger. "Interact" is a term encompassing a broad scope of behaviour -- any network message that causes an API to be called. 1+2 are plain old GPL. 3 is just a basic consequence of owning all the IP, but it isn't possible to release a patch to an AGPL under MIT. AGPL has massively enhanced virality, which is the entire point.

> AGPL has massively enhanced virality, which is the entire point.

Yep, but AFAIK (not a lawyer I have just spent some time trying to figure this out) it doesn't affect other software over the Internet:

Some examples based on Friendica:

- Chrome won't become AGPL licensed by being used to access Friendica

- MariaDB won't become AGPL licensed by being accessed by Friendica

- any changes you make to Friendica must obviously be AGPL (if you let anybody use it)

- if you want to write an extension for Friendica it needs to be AGPL (but if you want you can also release it under another license)

- if you want to put your or someone elses open source or proprietary code into Friendica you must plan to release that code too under the AGPL (of course you can still release it under another license simultaneously but it must be available as AGPL in addition.)

The difference is that not in what it infects but how it spreads - kind of.

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