The commercial license is $2k per vCPU LMAO, aka an 8 core node would cost $16k annually to operate. This is about to be an absolute shit storm, don’t see how this will make a lick of financial sense for corporations to pay this.
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We Are Changing the License for Akka
51–60 of 360 posts
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#52A lot of “open source means I get to use the software for free and tell the authors what to do, forever, while not contributing a thing in return” in this thread.
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Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need to know the price then I doubt you are Akka's target customer.
What? Their target customer should be the one who has to pay, otherwise they are gonna focus on acquiring customers that won't pay? How does that make sense?
It means that they are targeting enterprise customers.
And for them the price is irrelevant if it solves their problem.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#54> Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with…
What promise are they not keeping? The existing versions are still available as open-source. The Apache license does not require them to continue to release subsequent versions under the same license. The GPL does, but by not releasing under the GPL in the first place, they were clearly not making that promise.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#55Isn't Akka an important component in various Scala projects like Apache Spark? What are they supposed to do?
Other libraries depending on Akka shouldn't have to change, as they are merely published as "libraries", not deployed to "production". Libraries generally never have "annual revenues more than US $25m", so it should be free for them to use the code as well. Realistically though, they force you to contact them to get a "Additional Use Grant" in case you want to use Akka for other open source projects: > I use Akka for…
I guess that depends if other libraries are fine with only having commercial users willing to pay that much for using Akka. (E.g. since GP mentioned Spark, doesn't that have quite a commercial ecosystem around it that probably won't be happy to suddenly pay thousands per node extra?)
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because it’s a bait and switch. They attracted a bunch of people to use and contribute to their software because it’s open source. Almost all of them do not have the capacity to maintain their own individual fork of the software. It’s like if you decided to carpool with someone and halfway through they parked the car at the side of the road and switch into another car, leaving you with the original one. I mean, h…
Anybody using a current version or older under an Apache license can continue to do so, as far as I can tell. Nobody using a free version of any software should expect some benelovent 3rd party to continue fixing bugs and making improvements for free, even if you enjoyed that privilege before.
True, but this misses the point about why a lot of people bother to contribute to OSS in the first place.
A thriving OSS project is more than just the software, it's a community. People contribute features and bug fixes upstream so that everyone else can benefit, because in return they also get the benefit of others contributions. It's a body of collective endeavour. There's a social contract.
Taking an established, OSS project and closing it destroys that community. Sure, it's legal, and everyone can continue to use the version they're currently on, but something dies, and trust is broken.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#57It seems like Lightbend have decided themselves to redefine what "Open Source" means for them, a slight warning sign of whats to come. > Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, [...] This situation is not sustainable and one in which everyone eventually loses. > So what does sustainable open source look like? I believe it’s where everyone—users and developers—contributes and are in it to…
It is open source for me as I will never earn more than US $25 million in annual revenue. If I ever do, I will gladly pay them.
I disagree with the idea that the only correct definition of open source is the one that favors big tech monopolists.
Times have changed compared to when the open source movement started. Not many people would have imagined that the monopolists would weaponize open source like they do now. They are not the first company to adapt their license to the changing circumstances, see Elastic.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because it’s a bait and switch. They attracted a bunch of people to use and contribute to their software because it’s open source. Almost all of them do not have the capacity to maintain their own individual fork of the software. It’s like if you decided to carpool with someone and halfway through they parked the car at the side of the road and switch into another car, leaving you with the original one. I mean, h…
Anybody using a current version or older under an Apache license can continue to do so, as far as I can tell. Nobody using a free version of any software should expect some benelovent 3rd party to continue fixing bugs and making improvements for free, even if you enjoyed that privilege before.
Your point is valid, but isn’t what I was getting at, because it’s largely equivalent to a maintainer just dividing yo wind down contributions to some software they made. This is something we generally consider to ok, although some exceptions exist.*
Here, the project is actually taking part of the community with it, fracturing contributions and the people who work on it. Going back to the car example, it’s like you have a couple of people carpooling and you each take turns buying snacks to share so you’re not hungry during the trip. Now the two people will go in the new car, or their own vehicles, and now you have to buy snacks entirely by yourself, there’s no pooling anymore. This is stretching the analogy a little bit, because you can copy software and not snacks, but a lot of people contribute to open source because, well, if everyone contributes a bit they all benefit from the community pool of code in the future. If I submitted code to this project while it was open source and now to my access to the shared benefits of an open source project is gone, because I have to use the old code pre-relicense, then I’d be kind of upset.
*Name squatting, actively attempting to advertise an unmaintained project, other forms of essentially false advertising nonwithstanding
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, because it’s a bait and switch. They attracted a bunch of people to use and contribute to their software because it’s open source. Almost all of them do not have the capacity to maintain their own individual fork of the software. It’s like if you decided to carpool with someone and halfway through they parked the car at the side of the road and switch into another car, leaving you with the original one. I mean, h…
Anybody using a current version or older under an Apache license can continue to do so, as far as I can tell. Nobody using a free version of any software should expect some benelovent 3rd party to continue fixing bugs and making improvements for free, even if you enjoyed that privilege before.
This is very cynical view. Why would you expect a community to form around product led by a leadership with such an attitude?
Changing license mid-flight is an attempt to reap benefits from existing community, but not providing the benefits the old license provided.
Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, after 3 years it reverts to the Apache License. I don't think there is much reason for a fork. It is like Ghostscript has always done. I can understand the change might feel a bit sour, but wanting to drive them out of business is a bit much I think. Also, this software sounds like it is mostly used by big companies, they can pay up to keep this software going.
Or the three year statement is to discourage a fork and in three years' time they'll reconsider that part and keep it closed.
The reversion to Apache is part of the BSL license, including the specific timeline of the reversion. So although they could decide later on to change the license again (for example, making it completely proprietary), all of the code released under the BSL will eventually become open source.