CockroachDB license change • Hacker News Board

Re: CockroachDB license change

#51

Post by ensignavenger » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:47 PM UTC

api wrote: post #22

ko_pivot wrote: post #14

As much as this has the vibes of a classic OSS rug pull, as a Cockroach user, I don’t really take it that way. First of all, it was already not open source and secondly, the free to use version was missing key features like follower reads and incremental backups.

Someone creating free software and changing the license on software they created isn't a "rug pull" in any sense of the word. You paid $0 and contributed nothing. What rug is being pulled? A rug pull is when you buy into something and then it's taken away, like when a cryptocurrency token is busted out or you spend money on something and then it's cancelled or nerfed. Don't like it? Write your own distributed fault t…

It is described as a rugpull because of the marketing around it being open source. Coackroach however was never open source, it was BSL licensed. This change does appear to mean that old versions will no longer eventually convert to open source, though.

Thus it would be up to the the BSL promoters and marketers to decide whether or not this is a rugpull. As an open source user and proponent, I don't really care.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#52

Post by cvwright » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:47 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #48

cvwright wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSL code automatically converts to open source at a specified date. So probably several releases since then are now as open source as anything else in the world. And if not, then they will be soon - BSL allows a maximum 5 year delay.

that may be (i haven't read the license) but i'm not persuaded it's relevant if nobody forked it five years ago, they probably aren't going to fork it now if somebody did fork it five years ago, they probably aren't going to try to merge in new source code drops as they convert to open source

Then why do you care? If nobody is going to fork it anyway, what’s the benefit of being open source from the beginning?

Re: CockroachDB license change

#53

Post by andrewmutz » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:48 PM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #28

I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it's quite expensive, "contact us" salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle/landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor. The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if…

It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly it seems that "open source" is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled.

IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#54

Post by kragen » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:49 PM UTC

cvwright wrote: post #33

kragen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

even then you've had five years notice that enshittification was coming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CockroachDB#History

Making $10M ARR companies pay for the software that they use is not enshittification.

i mean, yes? it is? software you can't use without someone else's permission is obviously shittier than open-source software you can fork, even if you're a big company. perhaps especially if you're a big company. and software that sends telemetry to the vendor is obviously shittier than software that doesn't

Re: CockroachDB license change

#55

Post by jwr » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:49 PM UTC

geenat wrote: post #3

Overall I feel like this is a step in the right direction. I do love Cockroach, but the old licensing model was pretty brutal if you required any enterprise features (ex: incremental backup). For reference, some other data stores doing "horizontal scale of writes" ..any others I'm missing ? * MySQL: Vitess, Planetscale, TiDB, MariaDB Spider * Postgres: Citus, YugabyteDB, YDB, Neon * SQLite: mvsqlite, marmot * Documen…

If what you mean by "horizontal scale of writes" is a distributed database, then there is FoundationDB, which is one of the very few databases that offers strict serializability (see https://jepsen.io/consistency). But it isn't quite comparable, because it isn't an easy-to-use shiny tool, rather a database-building toolkit (hence the name).

Re: CockroachDB license change

#56

Post by eatonphil » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:49 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #51

api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone creating free software and changing the license on software they created isn't a "rug pull" in any sense of the word. You paid $0 and contributed nothing. What rug is being pulled? A rug pull is when you buy into something and then it's taken away, like when a cryptocurrency token is busted out or you spend money on something and then it's cancelled or nerfed. Don't like it? Write your own distributed fault t…

It is described as a rugpull because of the marketing around it being open source. Coackroach however was never open source, it was BSL licensed. This change does appear to mean that old versions will no longer eventually convert to open source, though. Thus it would be up to the the BSL promoters and marketers to decide whether or not this is a rugpull. As an open source user and proponent, I don't really care.

> Coackroach however was never open source, it was BSL licensed.

It used to be Apache2. :)

Their blog post announcing this in 2019 happens to now 404:

https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroach...

Re: CockroachDB license change

#57

Post by jzb » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:50 PM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #28

I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it's quite expensive, "contact us" salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle/landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor. The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if…

This is one of the reasons people should hold the line for open source licensing for any infrastructure software: Any licensing scheme that forces a relationship with a single entity / doesn't allow for forking is open to abuse of users and customers at some point.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#58

Post by Thaxll » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:50 PM UTC

aduffy wrote: post #32

tvink wrote: post #4

Free license: > Telemetry Required (excluding ephemeral clusters of 7 days or less) So not free, then. Is there already a popular fork?

Yes, the popular fork is called Postgres. You can find many vendors who will let you run it on one node cheaply. It’s also free to self-host.

PG is nowhere close of What Cockroach does and probably never will.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#59

Post by candiddevmike » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:50 PM UTC

andrewmutz wrote: post #53

AYBABTME wrote: post #28

I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it's quite expensive, "contact us" salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle/landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor. The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if…

It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this. Increasingly it seems that "open source" is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled. IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.

Like other folks have said, anytime you see a CLA, you see the true intentions of the project. A project that will always be FOSS won't have a need for a CLA.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#60

Post by kragen » Thu, Aug 15, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

cvwright wrote: post #52

kragen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that may be (i haven't read the license) but i'm not persuaded it's relevant if nobody forked it five years ago, they probably aren't going to fork it now if somebody did fork it five years ago, they probably aren't going to try to merge in new source code drops as they convert to open source

Then why do you care? If nobody is going to fork it anyway, what’s the benefit of being open source from the beginning?

i don't care that much because i don't use it, and evidently not much of anybody else does either, or there would have been a popular fork. i'm just saying that this is probably not a good time to expect one to pop up