131–140 of 220 posts
BTW, it would be great comparing multi-node TimescaleDB to VictoriaMetrics cluster [1], which is licensed under vanilla Apache2 open source license [2].
[1] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/clus...
[2] https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics/blob/clus...
This is an interesting window into their business model. This could be a purely an altruistic decision, which businesses sometimes do, contrary to popular belief. More likely it's a bet that wider adoption from making the clustered version free will drive more revenue through their managed database as a service offering. Which shows that their non-OSI open-source license is actually leading to more code and features…
> It affects us all positively
Except for users who want the highest quality hosted Timescale possible and see this license as an attempt to prevent others from creating better offerings. The open source companies that compete with cloud offerings are not exactly struggling.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with them using their position to prevent competition, but when people sell it as 'best for all the users', it feels disingenuous.
How does the multi-node version handle high availability and automatic failover? Are those included or are they paid add-ons?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a hedge against the company/project shutting down or pivoting in a radically different direction than you want. All the things you listed are foundational pieces of technology that are incredibly risky+costly to swap out, so if you needed to, there's an option to continue with a fork. If the thing is popular enough, there's a good chance a community-driven effort will pop up, you can find consultants to wor…
A slightly different perspective of our licensing/copyright approach is there isn't confusion about ownership, so if we were ever to decide on a more permissive license, we have the clean ability to do so. Zero plans, but this also applies if a company like ours were to ever pivot/shut down: we as copyright holders can just relicense _all_ the code to be more permissive / dual licensed / etc, which is not the case fo…
What you're saying here is that you have the ability to "give away" things that you own. Sure, but everybody has that. Even if you did not have all the copyrights to yourselves, you could relicense your portions and others could relicense their portions and others still could just replace the remaining portions with new code. In fact, this is precisely how OpenSSL recently relicensed itself completely.
Sure, what you claim you're adding here is a bit of convenience, but it's just that. When compared to the possibility that your company could "pivot/shut down" _without_ doing anything to the code, it's convenience-for-you vs. risk-for-your-customers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly the pedantry around the definition of Open Source, which I understand, is incredibly nauseating. Sure, this isn't Open Source by "the definition", but it's close enough if you squint. The difference doesn't impact almost anyone. Are you or someone you love impacted by this licensing decision? Throw in an expiry date, dual licensing (pay to play seems more than fair) and I'm content. History be damned. I'm so…
I am glad to hear there are more and more people that accepts those new kind of open source, not the official definition of the OSI but more like the global idea behind it
The trouble is that it _isn't_ the "global idea behind it" - the idea behind open source is the unrestricted freedom to modify and reuse. Closed source, source available, and open source are quite distinct from one another. Terminology sometimes has well established meaning and that can be very important for effective communication.
I actually like proprietary source available software, but it isn't the same thing as open source and anyone claiming otherwise is simply ignorant of the very well established meaning of that term. Pedantry can be called for, particularly when a monetary incentive exists to confuse and deceive. Consider for example that the definitions of many food products are defined in law and regulated to protect the consumer from deceptive vendors.
(To their credit, Timescale gets the terminology right and I appreciate that. It's people in the HN comments section that are incorrectly throwing the term open source about and completely missing the point.)
Timescale DB Core ( if there is such a thing ) is still available under Apache 2.0. So nothing has changed. You can use it just like any other open source project with no restriction.
Timescale DB multi-node, originally not free and only available in Timescale Cloud. Is now Freely available under the Timescale License, a source-available license.
Timescale DB multi-node and its license only forbid you to provide TimescaleDB "multi-node" itself-as-a-service. And does not allow running it with any changes that is not upstreamed. You can still resell any software or services built on top of Timescale DB multi-node.
Again, correct me if I am wrong.
Free multi-node TSDB solution sound cool! I wonder if someone tried to use TimescaleDB as remote-storage for some heavy-loaded Prometheus [1] setups. [1] https://prometheus.io/
We wrote one of the first remote backends to Prometheus that supports both the remote_read/remote_write interface: https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/integrations/#remote-en...
Given how much interest we had using TimescaleDB for this, we recently built and released (in beta) a new "full-stack" of Prometheus + TimescaleDB + Grafana that comes fully configured and "just works" out-of-the-box:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That sounds like open source to me, I bet they're just being really conservative about saying "open source" because people there's been so much backlash at MongoDB/Cockroach/etc for similar restrictions. Open Source has a very defined meaning. Please read up on the history of open source and source available licenses before saying it is all the same. We've been defending it against a number of attacks and we will p…
Frankly the pedantry around the definition of Open Source, which I understand, is incredibly nauseating. Sure, this isn't Open Source by "the definition", but it's close enough if you squint. The difference doesn't impact almost anyone. Are you or someone you love impacted by this licensing decision? Throw in an expiry date, dual licensing (pay to play seems more than fair) and I'm content. History be damned. I'm so…
Then I think that while you might have read and understood the definition, you seem to have missed the broader idea behind it.
> pay to play seems more than fair
That's irrelevant. Sure it's fair, but it's fundamentally _not open source_.
It's not about gospel or having power over you. It's about communication and well established meanings. Calling a fish a bird doesn't make it a bird, and resisting attempts by others to redefine the language I use is a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned.
(To their credit, Timescale uses the terminology correctly and I greatly appreciate that. I also think they picked the right licensing model given how things seem to work these days.)
This is an interesting window into their business model. This could be a purely an altruistic decision, which businesses sometimes do, contrary to popular belief. More likely it's a bet that wider adoption from making the clustered version free will drive more revenue through their managed database as a service offering. Which shows that their non-OSI open-source license is actually leading to more code and features…
(Timescale CEO and post author) You are spot on. Before the Timescale License, we were left with a tough decision: do we open-source a feature so that everyone can have it for free OR do we close a feature so that the mega-clouds don't have access to it? We didn't like either of those options, which is why we created the Timescale License, which allows us to offer capabilities for free (and make the source code avail…
The conversation down thread though raises an interesting point: why does the license say you can’t run modifications in production (under any circumstances) versus some sort of “for commercial purposes” clause? It seems to me like it’s infeasible to have actual contributions if someone isn’t allowed to have a patch, carry it forward, and attempt to upstream it over time.
I assume the intent / goal of your license is to prevent people (AWS, Azure, GCP) from taking your code and offering it as a service. I don’t disagree with that. I think it’s also fine to prevent even small companies from saying “and now we wish to be the TimescaleDB company!”. But it seems strange to also prevent non-commercial usage to run patched versions.
Lawyering is hard, but is there a clear reason against patched non-commercial?
I really appreciate that the linked article uses the phrasing "source-available", the lower case "free", and doesn't use the phrase "open source". Terminology matters a lot. For me, a lot of the value in Free software comes from being able to make modifications to the software (either yourself, or by hiring others), and generally being in control of your own "software destiny". With that in mind, I think it's importa…
OSI FOSS licenses do not protect neither the author nor the work. The author can intend the work to be _free_ while others can simply rebrand it and sell it as a closed source product is if it were their own while the author themselves cannot complain or even know. The source-available license is the only way for the author to keep the work somewhat under control from competitors and quick buck parasites.