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CockroachDB license change

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB license change

#381

Post by lacker »

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.

This is not true. Many companies want a CLA because their lawyers are worried about unclear patent law. They don't want someone to contribute some code, and then later claim the contributed code violates their patents.

Good examples are React from Facebook, and TypeScript from Microsoft. Both require a CLA. But these projects are never going to go closed-source. They are complements to the companies' core business strategies.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#382

Post by geenat »

karmakaze wrote: post #181
geenat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of... Certain extensions such as basic backups are closed source and have never been in the OSS version. Many things would have to be re-added from scratch in a fork.

I'm having trouble parsing/making sense of this. Was basic backup in Core? If you were running anything more than Core you weren't running an OSS version and had already crossed that line before this announcement. If you were running an OSS version there's nothing to add, just fork, no?

CockroachDB Core uses 3 licenses: CCL, BSL, Apache

CCL, BSL = "source available"

Apache = open source

Parts of CockroachDB under CCL that do NOT transition to Apache OSS: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl

    > the sub-tree under pkg/ccl is under a different license (CCL) that does not transition to APL2 after a set duration.
https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#...

Re: CockroachDB license change

#383

Post by valyala »

999900000999 wrote: post #376
valyala wrote: post #366

VictoriaMetrics CTO here. I don't understand why pure open-source license such as Apache2, MIT or BSD should be replaced with some source available license in order to increase profits from enterprise support contracts: - The license change won't force cloud companies signing the enterprise agreement with you in most cases. If they didn't want paying you before the license change, why they will change their mind afte…

What if AWS launches AWS Metrics which just takes your code and hosts it. You can't out compete Amazon here. I vastly prefer to use MIT or Apache code for my projects. It just makes things easier, but I also respect companies like yours have a right to seek a profit.

If Amazon will make a product on top of open-source VictoriaMetrics, then we'll say thanks to Amazon, since this is great marketing - more people will be aware of great products provided by VictoriaMetrics!

There is close to zero probability that Amazon will pay us for this product, so there is no any sense in changing the license from Apache2 to some BSL-like license, since they never sign long-term contracts with open-source product vendors.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#384

Post by FireBeyond »

caniszczyk wrote: post #379
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…

Apache isn't a silver bullet... there are plenty of Apache projects where the individuals are compromised mostly from one company and hide behind the veneer of the ASF... where they are working on the projects per their employment. Gerrymandering is definitely possible and has happened in the past, that's why you have to look at governance and ownership of the marks/build systems etc: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/1…

Agreed. Red Hat isn't perfect, but when I worked there we had a few products that were CNCF under my umbrella, including a few incubator projects. Even though we had several developers working full or part time on those projects, it was always something I was meaningful of, not stacking the project board Red Hat-heavy, to not make it a defacto RH project.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#385

Post by geenat »

a-robinson wrote: post #193
geenat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of... Certain extensions such as basic backups are closed source and have never been in the OSS version. Many things would have to be re-added from scratch in a fork.

"Basic" (i.e. full) backups have been included in the OSS version since its November 2020 release (20.2): https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/backup-restore/ They are still pretty limited compared to what's in the enterprise version, but it's not right to say basic backups are closed source and have never been there.

CockroachDB Core uses 3 licenses: CCL, BSL, Apache

CCL, BSL = "source available"

Apache = open source

Parts of CockroachDB under CCL that do NOT transition to Apache OSS: https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/tree/master/pkg/ccl

    > the sub-tree under pkg/ccl is under a different license (CCL) that does not transition to APL2 after a set duration.
https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/discussions/127140#...

Re: CockroachDB license change

#386

Post by FireBeyond »

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…

> I thought he was on the payroll for FSF, but his reportable compensation has been zero from 2002 to 2022 according to:

He resigned in 2019 following allegations of inappropriate behavior towards women (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583).

Re: CockroachDB license change

#387

Post by valyala »

chrsig wrote: post #375
valyala wrote: post #366

VictoriaMetrics CTO here. I don't understand why pure open-source license such as Apache2, MIT or BSD should be replaced with some source available license in order to increase profits from enterprise support contracts: - The license change won't force cloud companies signing the enterprise agreement with you in most cases. If they didn't want paying you before the license change, why they will change their mind afte…

I hope you can appreciate that the problem here is that the proposition that you "aren't going to change" is entirely unfalsifiable, reliant on trust, and that the individuals making the proposition are in a position to enforce it ad infinitum. Consider me skeptical.

I tried providing good reasons why changing the license from truly open source to some source-available license has little sense from business perspective. Of course, something may change in the future, which could force us reconsider the decision on sticking with Apache2 license. But currently I don't see any reasons to change the license. And I'm sure there will no be such reasons in the next 10 years.

P.S. IMHO, the main reason to change the license at CocroachDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, TimescaleDB, Grafana and other products is weak revenue growth rate. Shareholders falsely think that the license change may help increasing the revenue growth rate, but I don't understand why...

Re: CockroachDB license change

#388

Post by FireBeyond »

steeeeeve wrote: post #195

I'm really not a big fan of holding backups and DR behind licensing. That's base level functionality. That and row level security, but at least with row level, I get that there has been a lot of time and energy expended on that feature. Cluster optimization, and enhanced security sure. And responsive support, absolutely.

It's the same with SSO, and I think it hurts some companies more than it helps. SSO too often is an arbitrary selection for "Enterprise/$Call Us".

Then you're two or three founders, you set up G Suite, and think oh, let's use SSO for this service, and then you're paying $$$.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#389

Post by redwood »

bcantrill wrote: post #380
redwood wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look forward to reading it

As promised, I have made RFD 508 ("Whither CockroachDB?")[0] public -- along with RFD 53[1] and RFD 110[2], which explain the problem we are trying to solve and our rationale for CockroachDB, respectively. [0] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0508 [1] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0053 [2] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0110

Thanks: I think there's a category you're missing, which is transactional document oriented databases with strongly consistent secondary indexes.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#390

Post by [deleted] »

eikenberry wrote: post #279
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.

FSF requires signing of a CLA. A CLA would let them change the license to whatever they want, just like these companies. Some people were not happy with GPL3 yet that didn't stop the FSF from changing the licenses on their software.

[deleted]
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