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Relicensing CockroachDB

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#101

Post by bithavoc »

Good for CockroachDB, they need to make money. I understand I'm not their target user though, I stopped using them when they released Follower-Reads as an enterprise feature.

I'm back to Postgres for now but I can't stop thinking about the opportunity CRDB is missing by not releasing the enterprise features as part of the BSL-licensed core, that way I can use them from the very beginning(when I have no money) and when I grow and have traction, money and what not, then I can pay to scale beyond X amount of nodes/capacity a la MemSQL[0].

[0] https://www.memsql.com/blog/announcing-memsql-free-tier/

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#102

Post by zem »

this seems like an excellent licence, clearly spelling out the intent of the copyright, rather than trying to fashion a one-size-fits-all set of rules. it reminds me of cory doctorow's point that, intuitively, if some community theatre wanted to dramatise one of his works, they should be able to just do so, but if a major hollywood studio wanted to film it they should require a licence, and it is hard to draft a copyright law that does this properly.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#103

Post by elcritch »

alfonsodev wrote: post #93
nradov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put any license on your software that you want, but a license that required revenue sharing wouldn't really count as "open source".

I understand what you mean and totally agree with you, I just feel the need to remind (not to you) the term free software, as many things are open source but not free software [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

Unless the AGPL becomes the new GNU default, "free" software is largely moot as well in the age of SaaS.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#104

Post by olavgg »

ansible wrote: post #28
napsterbr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never used CRDB so this question may make no sense, but given it builds upon Postgres (AFAIU), couldn't you use any of the many backup solutions Pg offers?

CRDB is compatible with the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so you can use existing database drivers (in C#, Golang, whatever) to talk to a CRDB instance. The SQL itself is slightly different (no two databases are the same these days), so that would have to be adjusted. If your backup solution is fine with "SELECT * FROM table1; SELECT * FROM table2; ..." you can use the client interface for backups. But usually you want t…

Would ZFS snapshots work? It is what I use to backup PostgreSQL, much easier and faster than ordinary backup

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#105

Post by filereaper »

gtirloni wrote: post #99
staticassertion wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this undermine their efforts? It seems totally reasonable to say "You can't just sell a hosted version of this yourself". Anyone who was planning to use Cockroach still can, it even seems that you could be a CockroachDB shop that provides consulting services, so long as you don't manage and host it.

Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs. While they are experts in the technology they've created, offering a managed service is much more than just having awesome developers. Not to mention some companies have other restrictions (on premises, local presence, etc, etc, etc). For a customer, unless I'm completely sold on their technology and really n…

>Simply because if I'm using CockroachDB and don't want to manage it myself, my only option is Cockroach Labs.

I don't think this is the case, a third party can provide hosted CockroachDB provided they license it from Cockroach Labs.

>"The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license."

Again, IANAL.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#106

Post by gtirloni »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #95
xwdv wrote: post #50

I’m still not sure why people open source great products then get outraged that someone else would simply resell the product and make money off of it, possibly even more than them. When I put something out as open source, I’m doing it fully aware that I am leaving money on the table, but it will be worth it if a community of maintainers springs up around the project and ends up making it far better and more useful th…

> I’m still not sure why people open source great products then get outraged that someone else would simply resell the product and make money off of it, possibly even more than them. Perhaps I didn't look at the right comments, but I'm not sensing outrage from the community. The vibe I'm feeling is, "Bummer, that's another approach to funding OSS development that's having trouble. I hope we can find a good alternativ…

I think OP means the outrage coming from the companies making the licensing changes, not the open source community.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#107

Post by kemitchell »

DannyBee wrote: post #35
dhd415 wrote: post #4

This is more validation of the threat that cloud providers (mainly AWS) are to businesses built around open source products. Yes, AWS and others are legally permitted by existing open source licenses to create SaaS versions of these open source products, but with cloud computing becoming an increasingly winner-take-all market, it leaves little room for the software's authors to generate revenue via hosted offerings o…

The problem with this argument is that there has always been a before and after. IE This is not the first business model issue OSS has dealt with. For example: It seems ridiculous now, but at one point authors were significantly squeezed by commercial distros offering support and feature work directly to customers for their packages. (And this was even a similar kind of disintermediation applied to authors as you see…

Many authors are still squeezed out on support. RedHat is the breakaway winner there.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#108

Post by StreamBright »

dhd415 wrote: post #4

This is more validation of the threat that cloud providers (mainly AWS) are to businesses built around open source products. Yes, AWS and others are legally permitted by existing open source licenses to create SaaS versions of these open source products, but with cloud computing becoming an increasingly winner-take-all market, it leaves little room for the software's authors to generate revenue via hosted offerings o…

>> If you think that the Cockroach Labs, Redis Labs, Mongos, Elastics, etc., of the world provide a net benefit to the software world

Elastic is an exception though, I think Lucene would be a better addition to that list.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#109

Post by toyg »

gtirloni wrote: post #73

CockroachDB is an excellent project but it doesn't have the massive adoption that would prompt AWS/Azure/GCP to implement it as a managed service. Companies are much more likely to just go with AWS Aurora than to consider CockroachDB at this point. I'm still amazed as how promising open source projects continue to undermine themselves with this "commons clause" movement. I hope something good comes out of it but I'm…

Companies don't relicense on a whim. It is plausible that they might have got wind of a big player readying to offer their service, and proactively tried to defuse the threat.

Re: Relicensing CockroachDB

#110

Post by stingraycharles »

It’s interesting to see the mindset over here at HN change over the year. I recall when MongoDB introduced their “commons clause”, RedisLabs did the relicensing and ElasticSearch doing the dual license open source code, there was quite some outrage over here.

I guess everyone is accepting that these clouds are in fact major threats to these projects, as providing these databases as a service is pretty much the only realistic way to get decent revenue numbers.

I think it’s good that CockroachDB is preemptively doing this, now that it has become more acceptable a practice.

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