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CockroachDB license change

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB license change

#141

Post by ziddoap »

candiddevmike wrote: post #59
andrewmutz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For those of us not in-the-know about licensing acronyms.

CLA = Contributor License Agreement

Re: CockroachDB license change

#142

Post by ezekg »

scblock wrote: post #134
ezekg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dancing around the "so it's not open source" by not clearly saying "correct, it's no longer open source". CockroachDB hasn't been open source for over 5 years: https://web.archive.org/web/20190604173131/https://www.cockr...

Yet it's one of the top questions on their announcement page and they won't clearly answer it.

Likely because most people think "source available on GitHub" = "open source", so they're just answering the low-hanging-fruit even if the question is technically incorrect. They don't claim to be open source anywhere, and I haven't seen them claiming to be open source since they relicensed to the BUSL over 5 years ago. I don't think there's malice here.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#143

Post by evantbyrne »

graemep wrote: post #126
JohnDeHope wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we will have to replace "open source" with "spec driven". As you point out, open source can be just as bad as closed source, given future changes in direction by the project team. But "spec driven" means that anybody can come along and compete, and you can switch to them, regardless of how the original developers feel about it.

Is it not more about who does the development? If cone entity does the development, they can change direction or licensing and it is hard for anyone to fork. If you have more of a bazaar form of development with many contributors neither is as easy (even less so if you do not have a CLA). Even if you have a small core team of developers, a really bad direction is likely to lead to a split.

I think you are right to think of it in terms of who is doing development. The plus of a non open-source license is well-funded development. The downside is fewer outside contributions. In this specific instance, I think Cockroach was BSL? So, it can be forked into a community project where new contributions are open-source. Another corporation just wouldn't be able to profiteer off the fork directly until the changeover date.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#144

Post by zeeg »

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…

You have nailed their issues - packaging and their revenue model. If you align this well with your target audience the license would have not been a problem for them. Wrote about this a bit here: https://cra.mr/open-source-is-not-a-business-model/

Re: CockroachDB license change

#145

Post by mplanchard »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #138

That's another company that feels like they don't want to be an OSS company after all. After Elastic, I pay more attention to contributor agreements. Basically I consider any project that requires transfer of copyright for OSS contributions as likely to change their license at some point. It's fine; I'm not against that sort of thing and I sometimes pay for software. But I like to know what I'm getting into before an…

tbf I think both GNU and Linux require copyright assignment, and I don't think that either of those are likely to swap licenses any time soon

Re: CockroachDB license change

#147

Post by ted_dunning »

remram wrote: post #130
fweimer wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's mentioned in this document: https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html

Thanks! It seems a little short of the claim in their FAQ though, but it's something: > The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity [...] including the creation and maintenance of "open source" software distributed by the Corporation to the public at no charge

I don't think that falls short.

The reason for the "any lawful act" language is to allow the ASF to do things like run a conference, accept donations, sell t-shirts and other activities. If the statement was only "develop open-source software" there are all kinds of important activities that support open source development that would be impossible.

The fact is, however, that certificates can be changed by the people who can vote. IN the case of the ASF, the members are the ones who vote. Getting those ~800 members to radically trash the traditional goal of the foundation is not going to be possible as long as the current membership is active.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#148

Post by veggieroll »

arccy wrote: post #8
ukuina wrote: post #2

> On November 18, 2024, we will eliminate our Core offering and consolidate on a single, robust CockroachDB Enterprise license That is incredibly short notice.

only a problem if you need to update

This hasn't been my experience. After another VC-backed software switched licenses, we continued using an older, open source version licensed Apache 2. But that didn't stop their lawyers from trying to shake us down, claiming we were using the latest, enterprise version. We just showed up in their telemetry as using their product and they came a knockin. I imagine that their telemetry failed to distinguish who was running old FOSS from the latest proprietary one.

We showed our lawyers that we were using the FOSS version. But, they didn't care and demanded we remove their product (despite being FOSS) immediately on all our systems.

That was a crazy crazy week.

You can say that's a problem with our lawyers. But still, who wants to go to court even if you know that you'll win eventually? It's expensive and incredibly annoying as an engineer to have to deal with lawyers.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#149

Post by wrycoder »

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…

Well named! It is like a roach motel - once in, you can never leave.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#150

Post by tristor »

I like the technology here, but at the same time I feel like they've been on this trajectory since the beginning. It's just another VC-backed company using open source for marketing, without any legitimate desire to actually be open source. At least now they've pulled the wool off of it.
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