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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

#181

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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

Note that the same is true of any property, and terms of sale, rental, or permissive use of other property may be unlawful as anticompetitive or otherwise contrary to public policy; while copyright misuse is a social doctrine evolved from the related doctrine of patent misuse, it's not really all that out of line with the kind of considerations that song with property rights in general.

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

#182

Post by amyjess »

metheus wrote: post #170
amyjess wrote: post #44

I honestly don't see how this can pass OSI or DFSG approval. It's a blatant violation of rule 9, which prohibits restrictions on distribution of other software.

There is no restriction, only the requirement that the systems that make your service run be made available under the SSPL.

If your license places any requirements on software that is not a derivative work of software you own the copyright to, the license is nonfree by the standards of the OFSI and the DFSG and probably others.

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

#183

Post by ptx »

microtonal wrote: post #6
kstrauser wrote: post #2

Absolutely. This license change takes it completely out of the contention for anything I would have previously considered it for. Can you imagine if Nginx said you had to release any software you run behind it as FOSS?

And then what? The owner of the code is entitled to license the software as they want it [1]. If you dislike the license, then use a different program or fork the last version before the license change. I can fully understand the frustration of pro-copyleft developers and companies that want to use copyleft for a 'share or pay model'. Cloud computing makes existing licenses toothless by moving the software from the c…

>> This license change takes it completely out of the contention for anything I would have previously considered it for.

> If you dislike the license, then use a different program

That's exactly what he said he would do, isn't it?

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

#184

Post by merb »

vesak wrote: post #80
icedchai wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, so did MySQL. Do you remember the MySQL 3.x "MyISAM" days? No transactions, automatic truncation and type conversions, etc...

...and a significant portion of IT people still distrust MySQL.

... or they love it, like uber

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

#185

Post by Ataraxy »

bgdam wrote: post #34
_verandaguy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I like relational data and I _love_ Postgres specifically, there are some tasks and contexts for which non-relational stores are better suited.

I'm sure that there are tasks for which non-relational stores might be better suited, but pretty much anything MongoDB does, Postgres does it better and in a more performant way (esp after the optimizations to the JSONB data type in the last few major releases).

So, I've been trying to figure this out a bit lately.

How would you go about writing a customer facing query builder that is analogous to the MongoDB aggregation pipeline with SQL?

With MongoDB I could conceivably generate/store a JSON object for such a query. In SQL it seems a lot more obtuse to do.

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

#186

Post by merb »

metheus wrote: post #157
ballenf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MongoDB also release their stack or are they exempt from the disclosure requirement? Apologies if this has been asked a million times -- didn't see it in a skim of your linked discussions nor the FAQ.

No apologies required! If we see this question come up a lot we can add it to the FAQ. MongoDB does not release the stack for Atlas, our SaaS. That's possible because we own the copyright to the source code -- we don't have to issue the software to ourselves. The blog post we published announcing the change covers this, as well as our motivations and expectations in a lot of detail: https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/…

that's sketchy and means you are violating your own license.

and since there is no dual licensing or anything that says that the mongodb inc does not do what the license says...

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

#187

Post by 51lver »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #161
51lver wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's hard when others take your code and make more money out of it then you Just my opinion, of course, but I think this is only true for sales and management types who are profit driven. For engineers and artists, it's not really an issue. We want to see our best work appreciated, primarily.

> For engineers and artists, it's not really an issue. We want to see our best work appreciated, primarily. I want to be paid first. Everything else comes second. That doesn't not make me an engineer. It makes me a wise engineer. Money buys options and freedom. Prestige and other abstract concepts are used to steal your time and value.

Right, but you aren't going to raise hell if someone makes more money on your work than you did. That's not the attitude of a craftsman, but business folks think in terms of lost potential revenue and junk like that and thus are not above such things.

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

#188

Post by afandian »

macintux wrote: post #130
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that don’t know, they are sometimes pronounced the exact same, which is why they are often mixed up (see also affect and effect). Where I’m from weary is pronounced WEER-y though.

I hear "weary" spoken so very rarely that I have no idea how it's pronounced here (Indiana). I can't even make up my mind how I pronounce it, but I'd wager it's almost, but not quite, indistinguishable from wary.

Of course it varies with accent and locale. So phonetic transcriptions don't help unless we use IPA. But in British English, "weary" has a diphthong and "wary" does not. Very distinctly different words.

On the subject, we pronounce "router" and "router" (two different words, same spelling) differently, one with a diphthong, one without.

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

#189

Post by sesutton »

mindcrime wrote: post #16

Yeah, 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…

>Copyleft is one thing, but this is so invasive and byzantine that it beggars belief that anybody actually thought this license made sense.

It makes complete sense if its purpose is to be so onerous that no one can actually use it without a commercial license.

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

#190

Post by rand0mthought »

metheus wrote: post #157
ballenf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MongoDB also release their stack or are they exempt from the disclosure requirement? Apologies if this has been asked a million times -- didn't see it in a skim of your linked discussions nor the FAQ.

No apologies required! If we see this question come up a lot we can add it to the FAQ. MongoDB does not release the stack for Atlas, our SaaS. That's possible because we own the copyright to the source code -- we don't have to issue the software to ourselves. The blog post we published announcing the change covers this, as well as our motivations and expectations in a lot of detail: https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/…

That takes some level of hypocrisy - you are not making your Atlas as opensource, but you require others to do so. This clearly indicates that you are using an opensource license as an extortion schema against competitors.
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