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Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

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Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#341

Post by the_duke »

alexeldeib wrote: post #335
lunfard00 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is the biggest leecher in the industry. They haven't open-sourced any meaningful project back to the community and they even prevent its employees to work in any of them[1] on their free-time. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/3axbeh/i...

I think firecracker is pretty meaningful.

Firecracker is a fork of Googles crossvm, not an original Amazon project.

I bet it wouldn't be open source otherwise.

Also, it's a more convenient and secure shell around kvm. It's valuable, but bit that meaningful.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#342

Post by nine_k »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #304
nine_k wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not mean to say that open-source software (broadly, MIT-licensed) and free software (broadly, GPL-licensed) don't do well! They do, and I'm happy about it. Some have commercial entities around them, but most don't. What I was trying to say is that FOSS was never about capturing commercial value, and always about capturing the value of the freedom to inspect, share, and tweak. In this regard, going AGPL is prefe…

> I did not mean to say that open-source software (broadly, MIT-licensed) and free software (broadly, GPL-licensed) Sorry, but free software IS open-source software. I take issue with how you're presenting these. Perhaps a better term would be liberally licensed software, as opposed to copyleft.

Agreed; one is a subset of the other. I tried to say something like "open-source in general, and its more strictly licensed copyleft subset,..".

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#343

Post by m4rtink »

josephcsible wrote: post #299
Seirdy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the point. The purpose of MIT/BSD is to enable nonfree derivative works; the purpose of the AGPL is to only allow free derivatives. AGPL maximizes freedom by prohibiting further restriction of it; it's a local maxima of "user freedom" as a function of "developer freedom". If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL.

I agree with the substance of what you said, but I'm going to nitpick a bit of wording: what you call "developer freedom" isn't freedom at all, and is more rightly called power. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

Well, GPL is about freedom for the users, not necessarily for the developers.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#344

Post by 533474 »

jrv wrote: post #168
blendergeek wrote: post #38

I applaud this decision. I would like to see all major SaaSS projects be AGPLv3. End users still have freedom to user, modify, and distribute the software. Cloud providers must share contributions. This is how I like it.

That sounds nice in theory, but the reality is also that a lot of more permissively licensed (BSD / Apache) projects now cannot use (most) parts of Grafana / Loki / Tempo anymore, since realistically they won't be able to or want to switch to the AGPL as well (because of all the pain that would incur on others, in turn). That means that basically the whole free code sharing idea goes out of the window, at least in on…

I suggest you read more deeply into the legal interpretations; it is not so clear cut as you put it.

A more permissive license is simply incompatible with this project's ideals - they are willing to sacrifice developer convenience for user freedom and prevent corporate theft and bastardization of the codebase into competing products

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#345

Post by m4rtink »

LukeShu wrote: post #321
kevincox wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to be shared to the user under the same license. So any user could publish the changes publicly.

Sure, but there might be out-of-band reasons for users to not do that. For instance, grsecurity will sell you a security-hardening-patched Linux kernel. You, as the user/customer, have the right to take those GPL patches, and share them publicly. But if you do so, grsecurity will blacklist you as a customer, and you won't be able to get any more patches from them.

Didn't that preaty much out grsecurity into (an even bigger) obscurity as no one sane will touch a logic bomb like this, not to mention build their business on it ?

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#346

Post by clusterfish »

josephcsible wrote: post #299
Seirdy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of the point. The purpose of MIT/BSD is to enable nonfree derivative works; the purpose of the AGPL is to only allow free derivatives. AGPL maximizes freedom by prohibiting further restriction of it; it's a local maxima of "user freedom" as a function of "developer freedom". If you want to use AGPL software in your project, you're free to relicense under AGPL.

I agree with the substance of what you said, but I'm going to nitpick a bit of wording: what you call "developer freedom" isn't freedom at all, and is more rightly called power. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.en.html

That seems like splitting hairs for ideological gain.

You might as well describe freedom of movement as power to take someone else's job in another town, or freedom of speech as power to manipulate masses, or freedom to do an abortion as power over the unborn child. Which way the issues are framed says more about the author than the issue.

Software has leverage (one developer, many users at low marginal cost) built-in, but that doesn't make developing non-(A)GPL or even proprietory software a projection of developer's power. Lack of competition is what lets developer's exert power over users, and while copyleft licenses help with that, they're neither required nor sufficient to prevent abuse of power.

At the same time, copyleft doesn't come free (ha), as developers who need to earn a living will choose to work on problems where they can actually extract some profit to compensate for their effort. Not everyone is keen to work for free, or work as much / as hard for free as they would if they could make a living off it. So yes you might get free-er software, but less of it.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#347

Post by 533474 »

533474 wrote: post #344
jrv wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds nice in theory, but the reality is also that a lot of more permissively licensed (BSD / Apache) projects now cannot use (most) parts of Grafana / Loki / Tempo anymore, since realistically they won't be able to or want to switch to the AGPL as well (because of all the pain that would incur on others, in turn). That means that basically the whole free code sharing idea goes out of the window, at least in on…

I suggest you read more deeply into the legal interpretations; it is not so clear cut as you put it. A more permissive license is simply incompatible with this project's ideals - they are willing to sacrifice developer convenience for user freedom and prevent corporate theft and bastardization of the codebase into competing products

*Correction: My comment is a reply to Seirdy's answer

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#348

Post by pvorb »

gpanders wrote: post #248
pvorb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I want to keep my software under a permissive license? AGPL would also infect my code, no? And what if we're talking about proprietary code that doesn't have much to do with Grafana and only uses it for monitoring?

If you're only using Grafana, but not modifying it and re-distributing it, then the AGPL places no obligation on you. You only have to license your own software as AGPL if it is a derivative work of another AGPL licensed program.

Thanks. Misunderstanding by me. I got the term "linking" wrong.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#349

Post by __david__ »

SuperQue wrote: post #230
nopzor wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for saying the AGPL is nice; we think it strikes the right balance. but, i'm curious to understand your perspective here. do you mean to say that you'd never contribute to an apache licensed project? anything that is apache licensed can be relicensed by the project, even if there isn't a CLA [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]

The problem is CLAs. They are a much higher barrier to entry for a lot of contributors. No, they're not all the same, but they make it harder. Each CLA needs to be reviewed and approved by company lawyers. It's kinda like creating a brand new OSS license that way. To use a concrete example, the Google open source CLA is awful. At my previous job our lawyers refused to sign off the Google CLA. One of my engineers wrot…

Does clause (d) allow the project to relicense its code? Because as far as I understand, that is the reason that GNU tends to have CLAs on their projects.

Re: Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3

#350

Post by pvorb »

saagarjha wrote: post #231
pvorb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I want to keep my software under a permissive license? AGPL would also infect my code, no? And what if we're talking about proprietary code that doesn't have much to do with Grafana and only uses it for monitoring?

You can keep your software under a permissive license, as long as you ship it under the GPL.

You mean in binary form?
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