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

471–480 of 578 posts

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

#471

Post by jcelerier »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #182
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…

IANAL, but as I understand it: a) Yes, if Postgres is exposed to users for some reason. Your changes to Postgres are a derivative work of the original, and thus covered under the AGPL. b) No. Your application is not a derivative work of Postgres, any more than it's a derivative work of whatever OS you're using.

Actually the GPL has special wording to exclude system libraries and headers from the "derivative work" - since the AGPL does not have something similar (why would it?) one would assume that the derivative work of Postgres includes your app, even if you only communicate with Postgres via http requests going through three levels of indirection

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

#472

Post by matkoniecz »

jeffbee wrote: post #286
gpanders wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely FUD. https://drewdevault.com/2020/07/27/Anti-AGPL-propaganda.html

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!

> AGPL virality is overbroad

Going against interest of Google (and similar companies) is one of main points of AGPL, so this indicated that it works as intended!

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

#473

Post by globular-toast »

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…

What do you mean? Any free software licence allows forks, including AGPL.

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

#474

Post by riffraff »

devmor wrote: post #49
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 debatable whether AGPL is open source? Who is debating this? AGPL is so open source that it legally forces open source if you try to close it. Anyone debating that it's not has a screw loose.

GP said SSPL is debatably not open source, not AGPL.

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

#475

Post by ms4720 »

lmm wrote: post #467
hitekker wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant section copypasted below: > If Kibana had been an AGPL project, would Grafana even exist? Are we being hypocritical? > I asked Torkel, and he said that If Kibana had been an AGPL project, Grafana would likely have been AGPL from day one. > This is of course a hypothetical question, so it’s difficult to determine how that would have affected subsequent business decisions the company might have made. > Making…

> IMHO, his answer doesn't address the GP’s point; that the original, permissive license inherited from Kibana arguably enabled the growth & survival of Grafana. Why's that? If Kibana had been AGPL and Grafana had been AGPL from day 1, how would the growth and survival of Grafana have been any different?

Many companies ban agpl code, this came from legal and is taken seriously by business. Ops guy says it won't touch anything else, business says don care no.

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

#476

Post by ms4720 »

josephcsible wrote: post #439
open0 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Without cost or encumbrance, just like I would expect for a physical free book. The book would not be free if I paid nothing for it and now the author has the right to sleep on my couch legally.

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

#477

Post by catlifeonmars »

188201 wrote: post #31
jabiko wrote: post #9

Even though we use Grafana only internally and there would be no problem with AGPLv3 in theory I see big meetings with legal coming up which might result in us not being able to use it anymore. I could image that its the same with other corporations. In the end that might hurt the popularity of Grafana quite a lot.

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…

In my experience a lot of legal departments will block off entire classes of licenses just to be on the safe side.

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

#478

Post by ignaloidas »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #433
sandstrom wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Elasticsearch changed their licence for more or less this reason

And look how it's going for them. AWS very nicely forked elsasticsearch and now has the fork that seems to be gathering quite a bit of momentum. I doubt that AWS was even considering talking with them after they announced the license change.

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

#479

Post by toddpersen »

CaptainOSS wrote: post #464
hitekker wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant section copypasted below: > If Kibana had been an AGPL project, would Grafana even exist? Are we being hypocritical? > I asked Torkel, and he said that If Kibana had been an AGPL project, Grafana would likely have been AGPL from day one. > This is of course a hypothetical question, so it’s difficult to determine how that would have affected subsequent business decisions the company might have made. > Making…

But the point is that they acknowledge that they forked Kibana and why. It’s no different than if someone forks Apache code to form a proprietary software company. The permissive license contributed to the success of many companies. They further acknowledge that Apache based Grafana can be forked too, but they’re betting on themselves to continue to succeed long term by focusing on good software, branding and communi…

You're right - I hadn't seen that in the Q&A, so I appreciate you pointing it out.

Listen, at the end of the day, it's their legal right to choose the licensing strategy that they think is right for their business, shareholders, employees, customers, peace of mind, etc. I feel like asking if it's hypocritical is a bit of a straw man, though. It's not hypocritical per se - I just feel that it's a bit disingenuous to say "hey, we have this large, successful business to protect" without also openly acknowledging that it may never have existed without the tailwinds of an era where the open source community embraced permissive licenses. Simply dismissing the question as "hypothetical" is what I take issue with.

Also, I see your shiny, new account and feel it's likely that you are really just here to defend Grafana. I get it. I don't think this change is a bad idea, necessarily. I just want some of these licensing shenanigans to be more brutally honest.

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

#480

Post by q3k »

ms4720 wrote: post #476
josephcsible wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Without cost or encumbrance, just like I would expect for a physical free book. The book would not be free if I paid nothing for it and now the author has the right to sleep on my couch legally.

An AGPL license gives you more freedoms than the personal use rights you get from having bought/gotten a book, though.
Post reply on HN