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Aerospike goes Open Source

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Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#41

Post by belorn »

throwaway6829 wrote: post #29
yeukhon wrote: post #3

The APGL license caught my eyes. Does anyone take this license into account (deciding between an Apache/MIT/BSD DB vs APGL DB) when they use it in their service / software stack. For example, this openstack thread always keeps me alert using APGL when I am developing a solution. http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-Marc... and here is MongoDB's FAQ explaining APGL in plain English: http://blog.mong…

Where I work[1], AGPL software is strictly and unconditionally forbidden to use for anything, even things that are completely internal and will never see a public user. The fear that our lawyers have is that, since putting up the software in a service counts as a derived work, our whole software stack (including the stuff we don't open source) will have to be opened along with it. There have to be clear service bound…

A lawyers job is to think about all the things that could go wrong and to prepare for that possibility. Their job is to think what would happen if the company goes under, or what if the newly bought property would burn down, or what if the business partnership you just signed up for went sourer. Their job is not do cost-benefit analysis, or even consider how high risk something actually is. Their job is to handle the what-if's.

So the reaction you are talking about is natural behavior of lawyers being exposed to legal documents and contracts. If there is anything that could be interpreted to impact the company, their job is to consider it and think "what-if".

The question comes down to, what is a healhty way to handle the result of lawyers paranoia. Best-practice is to do a cost-benefit analysis and balance the benefits with the insight of the legal advice. Second-worst is to avoid anything with a risk, regardless of benefits, in order to avoid it. Worst choice is to ignore the lawyers. Most companies, including the "very well known technology companies", pick the second-worst option for anything that is not critical to the company survival. Its clearly not the best option, but it keeps the status quo.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#42

Post by teddyh »

weitzj wrote: post #40

If the server uses the AGPL instead of the GPL, why does it matter that the clients are under an Apache License? I thought if you use the AGPL you have to contribute back the client code as well, when you use the server remotely.

I’m sorry, but people seem to believe all manner of wild and crazy things about the AGPL – this means that you have to back up your claims with references.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#43

Post by DoubleMalt »

weitzj wrote: post #40

If the server uses the AGPL instead of the GPL, why does it matter that the clients are under an Apache License? I thought if you use the AGPL you have to contribute back the client code as well, when you use the server remotely.

That is not true.

If you expose an service based on AGPL licensed service, you have to make the source code available to the services that use it.

For example you could modify WordPress (which is GPL licensed), put it on your server and let it serve pages without providing your modified source code to anyone.

If WordPress was AGPL licensed you would have to provide your modified source code to anyone using the system.

This also effects services that use libraries that are AGPL licensed (like newer versions of iText), but not services, that use other services.

The point is AGPL only adds that if you consume it over the network, you have the right to the source code. If you use it as a network service, for your webapp, your webapp is the consumer.

MongoDB has the same licensing model, and nobody sued Foursquare for the source code, so I guess this is legally tested ;)

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#44

Post by rolfvandekrol »

Hmm, if the community edition server is AGPL licensed, are they even allowed to have an enterprise edition that is not AGPL licensed? I suppose the enterprise edition is an altered version of the community edition, so can they be 'forced' to publish their changes?

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#45

Post by infinite8s »

rolfvandekrol wrote: post #44

Hmm, if the community edition server is AGPL licensed, are they even allowed to have an enterprise edition that is not AGPL licensed? I suppose the enterprise edition is an altered version of the community edition, so can they be 'forced' to publish their changes?

This seems to be a common misconception about the interplay of copyright and GPL style licenses. Since they own the copyright, they can relicence it however they choose. The GPL and other open source licenses just give non-copyright holders additional rights beyond what copyright law provide (which for most works is nothing beyond a bit of fair-use). In that way the GPL is a clever hack of copyright, since it relies on the default of no-rights granted by copyright to enforce its terms.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#46

Post by rolfvandekrol »

infinite8s wrote: post #45
rolfvandekrol wrote: post #44

Hmm, if the community edition server is AGPL licensed, are they even allowed to have an enterprise edition that is not AGPL licensed? I suppose the enterprise edition is an altered version of the community edition, so can they be 'forced' to publish their changes?

This seems to be a common misconception about the interplay of copyright and GPL style licenses. Since they own the copyright, they can relicence it however they choose. The GPL and other open source licenses just give non-copyright holders additional rights beyond what copyright law provide (which for most works is nothing beyond a bit of fair-use). In that way the GPL is a clever hack of copyright, since it relies…

I get that part, but how does that work when other people also contribute changes for which they own the copyright and which are also AGPL licensed, but then to the Aerospike devs?

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#47

Post by belorn »

e12e wrote: post #24
_delirium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone modified the database and deployed it publicly (or as part of a webapp that was deployed publicly), they'd need to share the modified source, yes. AGPL is roughly GPL but where the traditional definition of "shipping software" is expanded to include deploying on a network. My guess is that they have two motivations, both of which are fairly traditional GPL motivations: 1) sell AGPL exceptions to commercial…

To be pedantic: deployed it a an externa l service, not necessarily a public service (I suppose to a legal entity that would not normally share license rights, such as an inividual not part of the organisation or to another organisation). Those external users would have to be given an option to access the full source with modifications. As for the "part of a web service"-bit, I'm not sure what the agpl's actual "reac…

While its interesting to theorize about databases and AGPL, I am rather sure there hasn't been any actually case or a legal reason to think that the database would become a derivative work when used together with a webserver.

If it was, the EULA for SQL server and oracle would have to include copyright permission for derivative works. That we do not see that should be a clear sign that the scope of copyright has not reached that far yet.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#48

Post by nl »

rolfvandekrol wrote: post #46
infinite8s wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a common misconception about the interplay of copyright and GPL style licenses. Since they own the copyright, they can relicence it however they choose. The GPL and other open source licenses just give non-copyright holders additional rights beyond what copyright law provide (which for most works is nothing beyond a bit of fair-use). In that way the GPL is a clever hack of copyright, since it relies…

I get that part, but how does that work when other people also contribute changes for which they own the copyright and which are also AGPL licensed, but then to the Aerospike devs?

Usually the way it works is the company requires copyright assignment to them.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#49

Post by ris »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #14
ris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just look at the cost savings" Purported cost savings.

An alternative example... http://www.aerospike.com/blog/big-bucks-for-bluekai-snapdeal... "Snapdeal replaced 10 MongoDB database servers with the Aerospike database on two servers on Amazon EC2—an 80% reduction—while continuing to rapidly scale the business."

Again, an alternative example from the database vendors. Please, display some critical thinking.

Re: Aerospike goes Open Source

#50

Post by ris »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #16
ris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To give some idea of speed" Purported speed. Please, we've all seen enough wildly hyped NoSQL databases now to remain a little cynical, haven't we?

Here's a benchmark from 2013 from Thumbtack Technology, comparing Aerospike, Cassandra, MongoDB and Couchbase... http://www.odbms.org/2013/01/ultra-high-performance-nosql-be... http://www.odbms.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NoSQLBenchma... In this benchmark, Couchbase gets some impressive results, but it does appear that Aerospike is the overall winner when it comes to speed and reliability. Anyway, the code is free…

In the former study, if you read it carefully, Aerospike were essentially able to choose the hardware for the test.

"Anyway, the code is free to install, it's easy enough to validate the speed claims"

So why don't you do so and come back with your own results that can at least pretend to be neutral instead of spreading empty hype around here?

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