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CockroachDB license change

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB license change

#291

Post by WuxiFingerHold »

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…

Neon doesn't horizontal scale of writes. Just like Aurora doesn't.

Also, not all alternatives listed are ACID compliant with serializable transactions like CockroachDB is.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#292

Post by deathanatos »

shagie wrote: post #262
znpy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a trust point, though: assigning copyright to the free software foundation allows code to be relicensed under new versions of the gpl.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html - section 14 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that a certain numbered versio…

> The "why they require a CLA" is for enforcement.

None of that seems like a "why" to me; to cynically paraphrase it, "our policies require our polices." Why does your record-keeping require a CLA? Why is a CLA required to enforce the GPL?

Re: CockroachDB license change

#293

Post by WuxiFingerHold »

999900000999 wrote: post #44

I'm trying to figure out how this is better than Postgress ? Does it perform significantly better to justify the cost? Back in the day I worked heavily with databases and we always tilted towards open source.

Sharding (huge data and local distribution, even worldwide) and HA by retaining serializable transactions. Possibly easier to operate.

The downsides are:

- slower - Postgres (if it can handle the amount of data, which is very much on proper hardware and partitioning of > 1B row tables) is much faster, esp. for joins

- features

- ecosystem (see the countless extensions)

- cost of course

Re: CockroachDB license change

#294

Post by tsimionescu »

haolez wrote: post #131
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.

Old(?) school open source with GPL licenses doesn't seem to suffer from this, on a first glance. Maybe Stallman was right. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this. I'm not trying to troll.

MongoDB switched from AGPL to their own license when they couldn't compete with others offering their software as SaaS, so I don't think the GPL is any kind of protection from this. It's just that the GPL is less popular than alternatives for this type of business model.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#295

Post by haolez »

omoikane wrote: post #183
haolez wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old(?) school open source with GPL licenses doesn't seem to suffer from this, on a first glance. Maybe Stallman was right. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this. I'm not trying to troll.

Old school open source projects don't seem particularly profitable. The projects themselves might thrive, but that seem to rely on altruistic developers with other sources of income. Richard Stallman himself doesn't seem to make money from any software he made directly, but from various grants and such, for example: https://web.archive.org/web/20220123032418/http://tech.mit.e... I thought he was on the payroll for FS…

You are correct, but there is also an interesting phenomenon going on here: old school open source projects last longer. They end up being more reliable in the long term. It's kind of weird that the unprofitable option is the stable one.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#296

Post by tsimionescu »

zachmu wrote: post #239
bityard wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CockroachDB hasn't been an open source project in more than 5 years. They took down the blog post (I'd be curious to know why), but here is the announcement: https://web.archive.org/web/20190604173131/https://www.cockr... What started as a neat project with a vibrant and enthusiastic community is now just another dull beige enterprise vendor.

The BSL doesn't make it closed source, it prevents a competitor from running their own DBaaS business using Cockroach as the backend. This has happened to various open source projects, AWS started selling their technology and ate their lunch. BSL is a totally fair compromise for commercial open source licensing imho. If you see BSL as the first step to an announcement like today's, that's a fair criticism. Not sure h…

Any license that prevents others from selling your code and eating your lunch is, by definition, not an open source license.

One good way of looking at the goals of open source licenses is to force companies to compete on offering services related to the code. Whether this is a sustainable idea is a different question, but this is one of the bedrock ideas about OSS (and FLOSS as well). The other is of course that the rights of those running the software are absolute and trump any rights that the original creators have, except where the users would try to prevent other users from gaining the same rights.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#297

Post by leeoniya »

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 took at least 17y for Amazon to get rid of its last Oracle database:

this is from CockroachDB license, pretty much straight out of Oracle's playbook:

> You will not perform Benchmarks against any products or services provided under terms that restrict performing and disclosing the results of benchmarks of such products or services, unless You have the lawful right to waive such terms. If You perform or disclose, or direct or permit any third party to perform or disclose, any Benchmark, You will include in any disclosure and will disclose to Licensor all information necessary to replicate such Benchmark, and You agree that Licensor may perform and disclose the results of benchmarks of Your products or services, irrespective of any restrictions on benchmarks in the terms governing Your products or services.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#298

Post by tsimionescu »

deathanatos wrote: post #292
shagie wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html - section 14 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies that a certain numbered versio…

> The "why they require a CLA" is for enforcement. None of that seems like a "why" to me; to cynically paraphrase it, "our policies require our polices." Why does your record-keeping require a CLA? Why is a CLA required to enforce the GPL?

A CLA is required to be able to sue someone infringing the GPL and represent yourself as the legal owner of the entirety of that code. If you have a hugely fractured ownership like Linux, it may be very expensive to bring a suit against an infringer.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#299

Post by tsimionescu »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #156
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…

AGPL + commercial license is a solution for keeping a project open while avoiding the situation where profit goes to cloud hosting. Is there a better solution?

This one is not a solution.

The first of these open source companies to switch to a closed source license because the big bad cloud was eating their lunch was MongoDB, which was already AGPL. The AGPL, by design, doesn't stop anyone from offering your code: it merely makes sure that they provide the source code and installation instructions to anyone who is using the service. Amazon is only to happy to provide this, and they always have for all of the services they offer (that require it). They even contribute to some of these projects.

Also, from the perspective of the free software movement at least, there is nothing to solve here. The whole point of the GPLs is that you don't get to have any special power over the code that you create: everyone who gets a copy has the exact same rights to it that you do, including the right to run your company under the ground if they can outcompete you.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#300

Post by mcpherrinm »

timcobb wrote: post #283
jaaron wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I know it's not as popular or sexy as it used to be, but the whole point of a foundation like Apache was to avoid these situations, even more than the way the Linux Foundation is setup. Apache _explicitly_ manages projects to avoid these downsides. - Single corporation ownership. Projects ca…

What is more popular than the Apache Foundation? I thought Apache was top... Is there a cooler/better Apache? If so, please let me know. And when was Apache more popular? I thought it was the uncool place where stuff was written in Java, that became popular because people's conception of Java (and the language/ecosystem itself) changed.

I think CNCF is home to most of the big projects I’ve been contributing to or using lately.
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