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We Are Changing the License for Akka

lightbend.com

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Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#321

Post by avalys »

capableweb wrote: post #84
avalys wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You contributed under the Apache “LICENSE”, which allows them to do exactly what they did. This is hardly a subtle detail, it’s one of the major characteristics of the Apache license. If you did not like this, you could have chosen to only contribute to projects whose licenses do not permit this, e.g. those licensed under GPL. Were you unaware of this?

Of course they are allowed to change the license to whatever they want, or start adding bugs on purpose to the software if they so wish, anything is possible with the various copyleft licenses. It's legal, yes. If it's nice towards contributors of past versions, is another thing.

No, that's exactly my point, Apache is _not_ a copyleft license.

Under the GPL, you cannot change the license in a subsequent version. You must continue to license any derivative works, including subsequent versions, under the GPL. If someone wants to ensure that the projects they're contributing to remain open-source, they should limit their contributions to GPL projects!

The Apache license does not require you to license derivative works under the same license.

This is why people have strong opinions about different licenses, because some of them provide stronger guarantees than others. If someone ignored these "details" and is now disappointed that they didn't understand what it meant, I don't think that's anyone's fault but their own.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#322

Post by scary-size »

IshKebab wrote: post #299
scary-size wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Akka was a huge selling point for Scala. It's a huge loss for the ecosystem. Akka isn't "just" a library, it's a programming model. A lot of software is built around that model and it's going to be a painful effort to get rid of it. It made itself irreplaceable and now they're pulling the plug.

It isn't lost though is it? Just slightly delayed. Honestly this seems like the lightest possible "our developers need to eat" solution out there. More relaxed than GPL or AGPL or open core. If you're against this then honestly I think you're an unrealistic radical who can be safely ignored.

You're right, my statement came from a lot of frustration. I still think it's a hit for the Scala ecosystem.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#323

Post by froh »

arinlen wrote: post #75
nine_k wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they clearly state that the fresh versions are not open source, they are "source available". After 3 years since release the code automatically gets relicensed under Apache 2.0 and becomes open source. This is a nice provision that prevents the code from being completely lost if the company loses interest in it.

> I think they clearly state that the fresh versions are not open source, they are "source available". To me it reads like they chose to switch to a proprietary license but don't want to be subjected to the natural consequences of betraying the trust of their userbase.

isn't their point the breach of trust of large (>25mio revenue) business users of their software to not contribute financially to the developer staff (subscription)?

open source creators are systematically abused by large companies who free ride despite being able to financially contribute, and they just don't because they can.

"why give the creator a fair share if you can keep them alive with a few graceful breadcrumbs" seems to be such corporations way of thinking, highly profitable formally but the FOSS creators.

thus an agpl, thus the new Akka license.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#324

Post by graphex »

xtracto wrote: post #318
graphex wrote: post #317

I contributed a bit to Akka over the years, both in terms of commits (nothing huge but a few here and there) and in terms of community building. I introduced a number of developers to the Actor Model and did several presentations on how cool Akka Streams was, to several hundred people. I'm not "akka royalty" but I _was_ an Akka proponent. I definitely consider this a big middle finger and am pretty sad about what I a…

Shit, the poison pill and CVE SOC2/SOX/PCI issues are super insightful. I hadn't thought of that . Great comment.

The insane cost of licensing, and the speed of this change makes it plain in my mind that Akka is a ransom note with the first CVE that is discovered, and a poison pill for any smaller company hoping to get investment or acquisition. These seem like the actions of private equity trying to get a quick buck prior to liquidation. I think Bonér should be ashamed of himself.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#325

Post by hocuspocus »

SouthShoreShip wrote: post #168
hocuspocus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Akka is an ecosystem on its own. There's no Akka in Spark, Flink, Kafka, nor at the other end of the Scala spectrum, in FP libraries in the Typelevel or Zio ecosystems. Akka is a part of Play though, which has been abandoned by Lightbend.

What do you mean no Akka in Flink ? https://github.com/apache/flink/blob/master/flink-rpc/flink-...

Thanks, I stand corrected.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#326

Post by piaste »

dllthomas wrote: post #195
piaste wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud giants have gigantic moats in terms of infrastructure, marketing, process, and so on. Traditionally, one of the best paths for an upstart company to challenge an established giant was to develop superior technology. Indeed, this is how some of the cloud giants themselves got their start against the dinosaurs of the day. But in a tech culture where open source is not just common but expected , this path is s…

> Ultimately, it's a twist on the old "commodify your competition". I think you're thinking of "commodify your complement"? Commodifying your competition would seem to be a bad thing, as prices drop for something that substitutes for what you're selling. Might work in particular luxury/Veblen goods, but seems likely to be less of a thing? (and certainly a different thing than "commodify your complement")

You are quite correct, sorry for the typo.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#328

Post by galaxyLogic »

cheriot wrote: post #305
galaxyLogic wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not changing the terms for the users of the current version of AKKA. You will be free to use your current version with whatever terms you already have. You can fork the current version, that's the whole idea of Open Source. But you cannot take away the rights of the AKKA team to create their commercial "fork" either. That much was clear from the beginning I assume. License does what it says it does, it doesn't…

I'm not talking about legal rights. Surely they've managed the contributor agreement to make this option possible. However, they also built a community around open source software and there's more to that relationship than legalities. > AKKA coming out with a commercial license does not make things worse for you If I had invested my career in becoming an advocate for their product I'd now be worse off. It can't be in…

If you had invested your career in AKKA I would feel your pain and disappointment, and the feeling of being cheated with lofty talk about open source.

But you might still have a strong career in supporting customers who use the commercial version of AKKA, they are the ones who could pay your salary. And you could fork it, and be the leader of that community. Until perhaps you decided to make a commercial fork as well. :-)

I think it is in a way a good sign when an open-source project creates a commercial fork of itself, it shows there are paying customers for the software, it validates its existence.

And I think it shows these guys believe in their product.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#329

Post by FromTheSteppe »

Floegipoky wrote: post #269

Man, this is so disappointing. Sure, there are probably businesses out there whose entire livelihood is built on akka, and I get that the creators might be upset that they're not contributing to the project. But there are a lot of other businesses out there where this might be a great solution for a very small part of the problem space, and they are just never going to use this tech now. A few years ago I used akka a…

The biggest and most battle tested implementation is certainly Erlang OTP and not Akka. I'm actually happy more attention will be given to ol' boring Erlang now.

Re: We Are Changing the License for Akka

#330

Post by kat_rebelo »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #68
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…

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…

Infinispan and Red Hat being bought by IBM?
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