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MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

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Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#101

Post by greenshackle2 »

ninkendo wrote: post #68
DannyBee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP lawyer here :) "If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?" So let's separate out two questions implicit here: Can you make this part of a license? Would you win if you sued someone for violating it? The answer to the first is clearly yes, you can license it however you want :-). However, like most IP, in basically all countries there are limitations on how you are allowed to license things, to ensu…

I have a question about how derivative works are defined with respect to AGPL. With the GPL, you couldn't distribute software that links (at runtime) to GPL software, without open-sourcing your software as well. This is because, linking another piece of software to a GPL'd binary means you're creating a "derived work". That's why they made the LGPL (the "lesser" public license) which allows being linked to from close…

Runtime linking doesn't always equals derivative work. Some GPL enthusiasts would like it to be that way but it doesn't mean it is. As far as I know it's a murky legal issue. I forget the exact case but one counter-example was: you have proprietary library A. Someone makes a GPL implementation B with a compatible interface. You ship software C with instructions that users can use either library A or B. An example of this would be BLAS libraries, which have both proprietary and open-source versions. Software C is obviously not a derivative work of GPL library B.

Now, the risk that a court might decide your software is a GPL derivative because it links GPL software might be enough to dissuade your company from using GPL software altogether.

LGPL makes it explicit that you can link against the software without making your software GPL/LGPL so it removes that risk.

And that's not what the AGPL is about. It's not extending the definition of what a derived work is, that is completely outside the hands of the license, it's a matter of copyright law. The GPL says if you distribute GPL (and by extension GPL-derived software) you must distribute the sources too. The AGPL says if a user accesses AGPL (and by extension AGPL-derived software) over the network, you must distribute the sources to that user. It doesn't mean that if a user uses unrelated software to access AGPL software, that unrelated software is somehow derived from the AGPL software.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#103

Post by Illniyar »

I can understand the sentiment and realize the need to monetize, it's hard when others take your code and make more money out of it then you (which I am assuming is the case).

But even if they are right, this doesn't seem smart, it feels like a knee jerk reaction. I imagine that they hope that by doing this they'll cause people who are using mongo on other providers to move to mongolabs, since there is 0 chance of these providers open sourcing their infra.

But that's not whats going to happen, either cloud providers will remain with old versions and people will gradually move to different dbs or they'll just fork it, they certainly have the manpower for it, this will give them incentive.

Frankly though I think this is well within the agpl, cloud providers aren't modifying the code they are building things around it.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#104

Post by jillesvangurp »

nicole_express wrote: post #35

As a non-lawyer who's tried to understand copyright law, this analysis confuses me; my understanding was that in the realm of source code "by default" you only have rights to use that source code through a license or contract, so it seems odd that any restriction on the terms would be misuse or detrimental to competition, when the option always exists to not use MongoDB. This isn't me trying to argue against the arti…

This uncertainty and confusion is by design and the whole point of this license. It's designed to make people who are not lawyers consider getting a commercial license just to avoid the potential for legal headaches that may or not materialize.

I doubt it will work since many people will indeed not want to deal with companies that are dangling legal threats over their own users like this. IMHO there's no other way to interpret this than as exactly that: a user hostile move. Whether this thing is enforceable or not is beside the point.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#105

Post by greglindahl »

amarant wrote: post #26
tyingq wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

it also really doesn't sound like "if you use MongoDB in your streamingplatform/blog/whatever you need to opensource everything, which seems to be the gripe many a commenter is having.

It's not you that needs convincing, it's the lawyers of the company that's acquiring your Mongo-using startup that need convincing.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#106

Post by kstrauser »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #97
kstrauser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a decent chance that they’re using code I’ve written, and I haven’t seen a penny from them. Have you? Has anyone? I think it’s either: - Idiotic, because they meant well but managed to shoot themselves in the foot by making their software unviable, or - Malevolent, because they’re using this as a wedge to either force you into a pay-or-lose-it situation, while still trying to paint themselves as FOSS.

Because you don’t feel others are freeloading on you does not mean software consumers aren’t freeloading. You’re free to change your licenses (or not), just as other projects are (but should). It’s time the free ride and expectations of charity by for-profit users ends.

What is freeloading? MongoDB is building a project off the works of others and selling it. So am I. If you're employed, so are you. And in return, hopefully we all contribute back to that ecosystem so that the next person can build off our new work.

You say "freeloading". I say "participating in a rich culture of shared work". Maybe I don't contribute all my local work to Emacs upstream, but I push out a lot of Python stuff. Maybe you don't bother sharing all the Python tweaks you've made, but you're an active Vim contributor. Perhaps there's someone else that's a Vim "freeloader" but who cranks out a lot of kernel code that you and I both benefit from. I think that's a healthy, mutually-beneficial arrangement.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#107

Post by sytse »

polynomial wrote: post #102

Sincere question: who is actually using MongoDB these days?

At GitLab we still use it for Gitter. It wasn't a priority to convert it to PostgreSQL. After the WiredTiger updates I think Mongo got a lot more reliable. But I would start any new project with PostgreSQL.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#109

Post by Thaxll »

bgdam wrote: post #82
Thaxll wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very bold comment, explain how you scale write, do HA in pg?

Postgres HA: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/high-availability...

This is not what I called HA or horizontal scaling. Have a look at what MongoDB or Cassandra do.

Re: MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

#110

Post by Illniyar »

fatbird wrote: post #20
nevi-me wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For now. Their intent can change. Or they can be bought by oracle.

Always consider license changes based on the possibility of the company being bought by oracle, there should be a law about it!

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