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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

#531

Post by jononor »

nopzor wrote: post #67
jononor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Q&A suggests that "unmodified" distributions are not an issue. But if I distribute dashboards, custom configurations, etc - is that a "modification" ?

nope, that wouldn't be a modification to the AGPL-licensed grafana. you are free to do that. plus, dashboards and configuration are inherently ("source available"), so even if one were to consider them to be modifications (which they're not), you are already distributing them in source form ;-) [note: am co-founder/ceo of grafana labs]

Thank you for responding. What about the case where Grafana is embedded into an application, potentially even with a custom Grafana data source. That might be more of a problematic case?

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

#532

Post by josephcsible »

rocqua wrote: post #494
q3k wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An AGPL license comes with more obligations for the one publishing the code, and for others re-using that code. Against that are more rights for the users of the final code. GPL is predicated on advocating for users' rights over developers. But that comes at the right of developers to re-use as they want. Which one is more free is very much a matter of perspective. Claims that GPL is a more free license because it is…

The only additional obligation that the AGPL requires is that you not restrict to others the freedoms that it grants to you.

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

#533

Post by josephcsible »

quadrangle wrote: post #434
josephcsible wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) manda…

I like your ideal policy, but I don't see a way we can move closer to it on our own, unlike the everything-is-AGPL end state.

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

#534

Post by jblwps »

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…

> 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

They're not making everything AGPL and seem to be aware of the kind of thing you're talking about. From TFA (emphasis mine):

> Going forward, we will be relicensing our core open source projects (Grafana, Grafana Loki, and Grafana Tempo) from the Apache License 2.0 to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3. Plugins, agents, and certain libraries will remain Apache-licensed. You can find information in GitHub about what is being relicensed for Grafana, Loki, and Tempo.

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

#535

Post by cevian »

foerbert wrote: post #424
cevian wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only makes sense if you agree with the open source foundation definition of restrictive. I don't. I think the ability to freely link to whatever other software is much more important to most people than the ability to run a *aaS. We never made any claims about open source only our opinion about what restrictive means to us.

That's fine. I wasn't taking a position. I was explaining why people were using Open Source as a comparison. There were also no claims about whatever definition of restrictive you were using. It was just a short statement that the Timescale license was designed to be less restrictive than the AGPL. You can't really be that surprised when somebody comes along and starts judging it by Open Source standards after that,…

That's fair but I was more replying to the OP that said "but it shouldn't be called an Open Source license". The point is we don't call our license Open Source.

Comparisons to Open Source and discussions of the pros and cons of both approaches are, of course, fair.

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

#536

Post by cevian »

detaro wrote: post #524
DetroitThrow wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That only makes sense if you agree with the open source foundation definition of restrictive. I think Timescale employees should remember to preface "This is our belief on the definition of restrictive" when describing the license as more open than open source licenses, given much of the community might disagree (sometimes vehemently) about that take.

Or scope it as "less restrictive for most users" or something along those lines.

That may indeed have been more accurate. But this is a HN comment thread after all, we can't capture all subtleties of a very complex debate. :)

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

#537

Post by akulkarni »

rattray wrote: post #527
akulkarni wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do offer an Apache 2 only binary of TimescaleDB which includes our open source core (and excludes the Timescale Licensed features). In fact, many companies (Azure, Digital Ocean, Ali Baba, etc) offer this Apache 2 version to their customers.

Oh cool! I see this is addressed in your FAQ: > TimescaleDB is a relational database for time-series, with some features licensed under the Apache 2.0 License but many of the features you know and love are licensed via the Timescale License (including continuous aggregates, compression, data retention policies, actions, multi-node, and more). The "Apache 2.0" version of TimescaleDB offered by Microsoft, Digital Ocean…

Thank you :-)

Re: Apache 2.0 only version, it is on our Github readme (but yes, probably could be made more prominent):

  Apache-2 licensed binaries can be built by passing -DAPACHE_ONLY=1 to bootstrap.
https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb

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

#538

Post by akulkarni »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #523
cevian wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only makes sense if you agree with the open source foundation definition of restrictive. I don't. I think the ability to freely link to whatever other software is much more important to most people than the ability to run a *aaS. We never made any claims about open source only our opinion about what restrictive means to us.

>That only makes sense if you agree with the open source foundation definition of restrictive. I think Timescale employees should remember to preface "This is our belief on the definition of restrictive" when describing the license as more open than open source licenses, given much of the community might disagree (sometimes vehemently) about that take.

Totally fair. My initial comment was a little rushed. :-)

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

#539

Post by ezrast »

tremon wrote: post #510
ezrast wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ok, quoting section 5c: c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permiss…

> so what are you arguing exactly?

I have an MIT-licensed project called A, currently at version A1. You have an AGPL-licensed project called B. I take some code from B and incorporate it into version A2 of project A. I want to distribute A2 to A's community.

I don't have to relicense A1 to do this, but I do have to distribute A2, and all subsequent versions of A, under the AGPL, effectively "changing the license" of my project.

I realize this usage is informal - licenses cover code, not projects - but jrv's point upthread was that projects do not want to change their working license, which led me to read jordigh's response as somehow asserting that the AGPL was not viral. It's a non sequitur otherwise.

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

#540

Post by jblwps »

cryptonector wrote: post #274
twic wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get it. Making lots of money cannot be a result of open source. But open source can be a result of making lots of money. The ultimate fate of the wave of companies switching to AGPL and similar licenses now will be the proof (or disproof!) of this.

Sometimes open source helps. SQLite3 is a good example. Being open source (and very good) helped it become one of the -if not the- single most-used pieces of software in the world, but having a closed-source 100% branch coverage test suite helped establish a monopoly on development of SQLite3 and prevented hard forks. End result: big tech had to sign up for the SQLite Consortium. It's... not a unicorn, and I've not i…

Nitpick: SQLite is public domain[0], which is not open source[1].

[0] https://sqlite.org/purchase/license

[1] https://opensource.org/node/878

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