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CockroachDB license change

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB license change

#462
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism works fine under certain conditions: free markets, which implies competition. The problem is that these conditions do not always prevail. I used to think this was fixable: https://pietersz.co.uk/2009/11/fix-capitalism I now think it is more complex and we need a mixed economy.

> Capitalism works fine under certain conditions: free markets, which implies competition. The problem is that these conditions do not always prevail. Eventually, on the free market there are winners, and these winners form a monopoly. See Nestle, Tyson foods, Apple. The big corps, having cornered the market, then squeeze the hapless users (and the ecosystem, in Apple's case) into exorbitant prices, because there is…

Yes, which is also what Milton Friedman said. I am not sure anyone notable in capitalistic thought actually professed full unbridled capitalism.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#463
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSI, and the open source definition they produced, predate the very notion of public cloud by close to a decade. While you don’t have to accept the definition, you are out of step with the industry at large, who broadly use “open source” to refer to things which meet the OSI definition. There’s no need for a competing definition: it’s fine for software to not be open source. As to the specifics of SSPL, I personally…

At large? As you can see, there is room for a community with a different view on that. My personal definition of an "open source license" is that, as the name implies, I can access the code, preferably without much gatekeeping (e.g., creating a free account in a private GitLab instance). And, to be honest, I prefer the BSL with an Additional Use Grant over any other license, because this is the most reliable option t…

You cannot redefine words because they don't fit with your personal definition. Open source has meant in accordance with the OSI, for quite a while.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#464
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not necessarily true. Sometimes it's needed to pivot to a better/different open source license without going through the pain of contacting every contributor ever. I have seen that pain in some projects that want to go from LGPL to MIT or something. For many contributors, they're ok giving full ownership of their contributions to a project owner on the owner's terms. Some contributors may not be ok with that…

I wonder... if you do something with AGPL that requires releasing the changes back ... you don't need to sign a CLA to do that. However that would also mean that the core project couldn't accept your changes without the CLA since that would also bind them to never switching the license or relicensing your contributions for an enterprise license. ... I think. My head hurts when trying to consider the implications for…

That's the core project's own fault and problem, not yours.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#465
post #49

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…

Agreed. I talked with them in the past and the pricing was far too expensive to make it worth it. As always: “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

Sometimes quotes are affordable for small businesses - no harm in asking.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be a fool to put all your eggs in this basket: > Annual term. Can be renewed subject to meeting the then-current eligibility requirements

OK, use a different database then if you don't like the terms.

Like the original commenter, everyone at my company really likes all the folks at Cockroach Labs. It's been a pleasure working with them.

We're currently in discussion with them to see if we can resolve this licensing change to our satisfaction. If not, we'll do the obvious (use a different database) as you said.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#467
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are -- and it's worked well for us! (The most acute issue we hit was actually a gnarly OS issue[0][1].) That said, we are not currently a Cockroach Labs customer and we will not be becoming one for purposes of licensing CockroachDB. We are abiding by the terms of the BSL, and the version that we are on (22.1) will be Apache licensed in May 2025; by that point, we will maintain our own Apache-licensed fork for…

And like clockwork too. 1. Company builds cool OSS and releases it to the world. 2. The product becomes stable, mature, and users are happy with its feature set. Development slows down. 3. Company starts having to make money so they relicense future code. 4. A few large users of the software (that company was hoping for $$$ from) realize that since it's mature and stable it's massively lower cost to just maintain the…

Any real world example for this?

Re: CockroachDB license change

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what do you expect to maintain the mouse’s cloud servers, if not subscription revenue? The greed here!

1. Create a mouse that needs Cloud services. 2. Need revenue to pay for the Cloud services. 3, Charge mouse users for the Cloud services. It's the (stupid) circle of life.

It's scary to have you say that when logitech recently looked a computer mouse that needs a subscription:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/logitech-has-an-idea...

Re: CockroachDB license change

#469

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

Hi, Does multi-region replication also go under the apache license?

Re: CockroachDB license change

#470

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.

The 8.19.2024 Oxide.Computer podcast talks about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNHMYp8M40k

Of special interest is that they are maintaining a completely free pre-rugpull version of CockroachDB that was forked before Cockroach's retroactively relicensed security fixes.

I would look seriously at using that instead of starting down Cockroach's free with telemetry offering.

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