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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

#481

Post by toddpersen »

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?

Would Torkel have decided to fork Kibana in the first place if it were AGPL?

Would the same level of community have formed around Grafana?

Would it have received as many contributions and support for new backends?

Would Raj have wanted to acquire Torkel + Grafana for the original Raintank company if it were an AGPL project?

Would they have been able to as successfully build and monetize a Grafana Enterprise product with the requirements of AGPL in place?

It seems naive to argue that none of those would have been impacted by a more restrictive license.

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

#482

Post by plorntus »

p1necone wrote: post #462
LukeShu wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This just seems like a blatant violation of the license on grsecuritys part. The license requires them to allow people to share the code. "Technically you could share the code, and then we'll blacklist you" isn't letting people share the code, "technically" their customers can do anything. This sounds like the reasoning of a petulant elementary school kid, not a professional security company.

It sounds pretty reasonable to be honest, youre allowed to share the code and theres no legal reprocussions for doing so but the company should be able to just stop sending you stuff if you do?

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

#483

Post by valyala »

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…

Could you name companies that forced you changing the license from Apache 2 to AGPLv3? It looks like this isn't Amazon because Grafana labs has good partnership with them [1] [2].

The license change can hurt Prometheus ecosystem [3] [4]. It looks like projects such as VictoriaMetrics [5] benefit the most from the Grafana license change. They don't use source code from Grafana projects and have no plans to change Apache 2 license :)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25432729

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25432630

[3] https://twitter.com/juliusvolz/status/1384565189249572866

[4] https://twitter.com/fredbrancz/status/1384571338552184834

[5] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/

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

#484

Post by piokoch »

watermelon0 wrote: post #147
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.

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…

You've started a really interesting discussion, after reading the thread I am no longer surprised why companies are simply banning AGPL-ed software en block.

Dealing with such issues, the risk of being abused by some AGPL-enforcement troll who would try to sue a company because it uses some software that uses some other software that happened to use a driver that talks to API which is served by AGPL-ed application... Just wow.

The sad outcome of this is that decision makers would say: ehh, better use AWS or some commercial software as open source sucks.

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

#486

Post by einpoklum »

toddpersen wrote: post #481
lmm wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Would Torkel have decided to fork Kibana in the first place if it were AGPL? Would the same level of community have formed around Grafana? Would it have received as many contributions and support for new backends? Would Raj have wanted to acquire Torkel + Grafana for the original Raintank company if it were an AGPL project? Would they have been able to as successfully build and monetize a Grafana Enterprise product w…

Are you sure you're not asking questions whose answer depends on one's ideological pre-disposition?

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

#487

Post by angry_octet »

eitland wrote: post #440
angry_octet wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvi…

The practical effect is that all modifications to an AGPL code are likely to be encompassed as soon as you use it on the internet.

Obviously it can't change the license of other products, but other products trigger the virality. For example, Apache calls a module which triggers generating a graph from your custom grafana instance. Your custom code is now AGPL.

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

#488

Post by cygx »

ezrast wrote: post #416
jordigh wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't say you cannot combine it. It's saying what you have to do when you do combine it. It's not a restriction against combining it.

I don't understand the distinction you're drawing. It sounds like you're saying that "cannot be combined with code under a different license" is meaningfully different from "can be combined with code under a different license, so long as you immediately relicense that code so it's not under a different license anymore". What am I missing?

> so long as you immediately relicense that code

Without a copyright transfer agreement in place, only the original author may relicense the code. The permissively licensed parts of the code will stay permissively licensed, but nevertheless may be distributed in combination with copyleft or proprietary code.

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

#489

Post by p_l »

zmmmmm wrote: post #393
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'm going to split hairs the other answers don't: you specify you have modified Postgres. My answer is, it entirely depends if your application is considered a "derivative work" of Postgres. This hinges on a couple of things: - does your application directly include AGPL postgres code in any form (headers, binary, etc etc) to its own source or its own runtime process? - keep in mind, in answering the above, that your…

The postgresql driver might be considered derivative work, and thus required to be AGPL as well, because Postgres does not talk some standard protocol that exists outside of it.

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

#490

Post by p_l »

lmm wrote: post #446
darkwater wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need to release as GPL the code of a program runnning on GNU/Linux? The answer is no. The same applies to software interacting with AGPL Postgres using the postgre protocol. If you are AWS and gives access to customers to modified versions of AGPL Postgresql you AWS must release your patches over Postgresql. IANAL and all that jazz, also I'm not that sure about the typical cloud vendor secret sauce that contro…

> Do you need to release as GPL the code of a program runnning on GNU/Linux? The answer is no. Only because Linux (and perhaps more relevantly glibc) specifically exempts the relevant protocols from the GPL.

Only partially, this is part of the legal mess that is GPL, because if your program is based around standard apis etc. (and not, let's say, deep linux-only stuff and won't work without that ever) then your program is not derivative work.
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