Isn't it just so that the Mongo's SSPL is a natural extension of AGPL, modified to make it cover things that wouldn't otherwise be considered a derived work (which is exactly what FSFs interpretation of GPL does for more typical, 'single-host' situations), and inheriting the AGPL's problems?
MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
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Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#12I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to support any site, all software higher in the stack needs to be released as well". Is that accurate? If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?
The copyright owner can indeed license their work anyway they see fit. But often, the purpose of OSS seems to be "to share good software with the world." If that's the case, and then they change their license to a "... and you must also share _your_ work with the world," then they can't really complain when A) users stay on old versions licensed with the old license, and B) when use of their systems drops off lots.
I don't see that as the case here necessarily. TFA just points out to potential users that the license has changed and might necessitate dropping MongoDB from your stack.
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#13I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to support any site, all software higher in the stack needs to be released as well". Is that accurate? If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?
Not quite—if you offer MongoDB itself as a service, then yes. If you just use it on the backend, no. (Read the license and consult your lawyer for details, of course.)
"offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program"
That sounds pretty squishy and likely to be broader than just the use case of offering Mongo as a service.
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#14Is this similar to the GPL3 in intent to force website backends to become open source?
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#15Use Postgres, problem solved.
Please take your unhelpful comments elsewhere
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#16Yeah, I'm not necessarily opposed to the general spirit of what they're trying to do here, but this license just doesn't make sense in practice. Now that I've had more time to look at it, I'd really recommend that everybody stay the f%!# away from MongoDB.
This bit in particular really hits the nail on the head:
Let's assume that it is ok somehow to pass forward other open source software, solving that problem. What about my continuous integration software (e.g. CircleCI), or my business backup software (e.g. Jungle Disk) or my code hosting service (e.g. Github)? There is no logical bound to this license. Taken on its face, I would theoretically be bound to release the internal source code of services from third parties that I included in or relied upon to deliver my service.
Copyleft is one thing, but this is so invasive and byzantine that it beggars belief that anybody actually thought this license made sense.
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#17I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to support any site, all software higher in the stack needs to be released as well". Is that accurate? If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?
[deleted]
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#18> accused infringer would then, quite rightly, plead impracticability
I’m not a lawyer, but I wouldn’t expect that to be a valid defense. If you can’t comply, don’t use it.
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#19Is this similar to the GPL3 in intent to force website backends to become open source?
How does the GPL3 have that intent? AGPL does, but GPL?
Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
#20I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to support any site, all software higher in the stack needs to be released as well". Is that accurate? If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?
No. If you take MongoDB and offer it as SaaS, the additional software that's part of your offering, such as monitoring, backup solutions, etc, have to be open-sourced, or you have to make their code available (since the chair of OSI defines what's open source).
I just had a call with MongoDB sales yesterday, and specifically asked if the licence changes impacts us, where we use Mongo as a datastore for our application, but we're not offering Mongo itself as a service. They were very quick and clear to say that the change is about those providers offering Mongo itself as a service. Using mongo in your stack to provide your service is not implicated at all.
The only grey area I see is if you offered some sort of database-as-a-service backed by Mongo but not explicitly sold as Mongo-as-a-service.