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We Are Changing the License for Akka

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Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#91

Post by camgunz »

ramchip wrote: post #65
braingenious wrote: post #35

I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It seems like people come out of the woodworks acting like they have been personally affronted by this, or that this is somehow directly affecting their lives. Is everybody here (planning on?) using this software to build companies with more than $25 million in revenue… and they can’t use something else with a more permissible licens…

It's a problem for people who use Akka already, not those who won't adopt it. The choices are to rewrite the service, pay a massive licensing cost ($2k _per core_!), or live with 3-year old releases with no security updates. It's very disruptive.

I hear you, but this was always the deal. If anyone ever said, "and we can use this for free forever and it will be updated for us for free forever" they were wrong.

Akka devs are 100% within their rights to set the terms of use for their product and thus their work. There was no bait and switch here. This is just how licensing works.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#92

Post by ramchip »

threeseed wrote: post #53
capableweb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

$2k once per year is irrelevant for enterprise, but not $2k per core. With bigger deployments that's more than the entire dev team's salaries.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#93

Post by camgunz »

kryptiskt wrote: post #67
braingenious wrote: post #35

I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It seems like people come out of the woodworks acting like they have been personally affronted by this, or that this is somehow directly affecting their lives. Is everybody here (planning on?) using this software to build companies with more than $25 million in revenue… and they can’t use something else with a more permissible licens…

Bait and switch is never nice, whether Google does it or putative open source projects. A lot of developers work for companies that has more than $25M in revenue, and now a ton of them is going to get shit from management because they added this cuckoo egg dependency back when it used an open source license. I have no problem with companies using whatever license, I do have trouble with them getting traction being op…

> I don't use Akka, but I feel the pain of the people who did that and now has to tear the thing out.

Did you feel their elation at being able to use Akka for free? They can, as long as they stay on the Apache versions.

> Bait and switch is never nice

I don't see any bait and switch here. If you can find Akka devs saying "we'll let you use this for free forever and we'll keep updating it for free forever" then I'll eat it, but until then, this is just how software licensing works.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#94

Post by that_guy_iain »

tasubotadas wrote: post #32

I would argue that akka is successful because of the permissive licence. Now that that's changed, it will create growing space for other projects.

I would say it helped with early adoption. But at this point, it's got quite a bit of adoption. It's proven and for companies making over $25 million a year a proven piece of tech is generally more likely to be used than an unproven one.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#95

Post by KingOfCoders »

arinlen wrote: post #85
KingOfCoders wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once working for a company who had stellar growth to $100M+ revenue and millions of users, started with a "open source" framework for distributed caching, needed to buy the enterprise version for support, the vendor got bought up by a large evil enterprise and the licensing costs got 10x without pre-warning, and it was a very complicated task to get that core technology pulled (mostly because it was too complic…

> I would be very careful to use "open source" technology from companies that depend on sales from this piece of technology. I feel your comment is a gross misrepresentation of the problems posed by replacing a FLOSS license like Apache with a proprietary one. Software that was released yesterday under a license like Apache will remain FLOSS today, and usable under the exact same terms. Subsequent releases won't, but…

I've used many open source projects in the past, several of them had critical bugs, that did not get fixed (e.g. either the core developer abandoned it, or the BDFL said WONTFIX). A software without someone fixing the problems is - YMMV - too risky to use. And fixing a bug on your own in something complex and complicated like Akka without breaking things is no easy task (essentially creating and maintaining your own fork).

To me chosing an open source framework to base my future on the framework needs a healthy community of committers.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#96

Post by that_guy_iain »

miragecraft wrote: post #78

I’m actually a big fan of the BSL license, as if it gains popularity for commercial software there would be a lot less risk of vendor lock-in like with Adobe and Autodesk. I don’t mind paying for good software, but too many companies abuse their market position once they get big.

Yea, this is the licensing I think we should have in place of many open source licesenses. I'm going to be using it with my commerical software very soon.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#97

Post by ohgodplsno »

kryptiskt wrote: post #67
braingenious wrote: post #35

I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It seems like people come out of the woodworks acting like they have been personally affronted by this, or that this is somehow directly affecting their lives. Is everybody here (planning on?) using this software to build companies with more than $25 million in revenue… and they can’t use something else with a more permissible licens…

Bait and switch is never nice, whether Google does it or putative open source projects. A lot of developers work for companies that has more than $25M in revenue, and now a ton of them is going to get shit from management because they added this cuckoo egg dependency back when it used an open source license. I have no problem with companies using whatever license, I do have trouble with them getting traction being op…

>A lot of developers work for companies that has more than $25M in revenue, and now a ton of them is going to get shit from management because they added this cuckoo egg dependency back when it used an open source license.

No, they're just going to not bump Akka until they can either find a replacement, or accept a new version with a new license. You do not need to bump it every month, you can live with half a year of not patching it while you make your decision.

Additionally, your company is making 25 million in revenue, they can afford the extremely minimal cost. Not accepting that cost shows the company for what it is, a bunch of leeches.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#98

Post by capableweb »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #83
capableweb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? If I contributed to the project, I did so under the premise of the LICENSE that was active when I contributed. If I didn't like OSS, I wouldn't have contributed to a OSS project. Them changing the license is a middle-finger to me as a contributor. > Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions…

[flagged]

Writing Open Source is one hobby, I have plenty of other ones in addition to that one, none of which involve computers or IT.

It says a lot about how well you have thought through your argument that only kids do open source when you directly move on to personal attacks rather than trying to explain yourself better.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#99

Post by pas »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #74
xanathar wrote: post #11

> 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…

"Like, when somebody releases something open source," ... to get traction and own the market (and sometimes, don't know here, get free work) as a business strategy, not for the greater good.

what's the greater good anyway? back to nomadic live off the land no money no capitalism?

can a business strategy align with some version of the greater good?

how much alignment is needed?

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#100

Post by ramchip »

camgunz wrote: post #91
ramchip wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem for people who use Akka already, not those who won't adopt it. The choices are to rewrite the service, pay a massive licensing cost ($2k _per core_!), or live with 3-year old releases with no security updates. It's very disruptive.

I hear you, but this was always the deal. If anyone ever said, "and we can use this for free forever and it will be updated for us for free forever" they were wrong. Akka devs are 100% within their rights to set the terms of use for their product and thus their work. There was no bait and switch here. This is just how licensing works.

I agree. It's still a very disruptive change for enterprise Akka users.
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