Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

InfiniSQL

infinisql.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: InfiniSQL

#51

Post by DannyBee »

philwelch wrote: post #50
DannyBee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are many organizations that cannot use any flavor of GPL, including LGPL, for legal reasons" To be clear, there are no legal reasons I can think of that would ever prevent internal use of LGPL/GPL software. You mean these companies (Apple, for example) have policies. Policies like this often change because someone decides the cost vs risk tradeoff is worth it. Changing a license because of bad policies of cert…

I find that to be a strangely ideological response. Your prospective users' requirements are up to them to decide, not up to you. They're the ones who are going to decide whether or not to use your software.

?? Of course they are up to the users to decide, but policies and needs are different. I'm curious, how do you think policies like this change?

Most of the developers i've seen will happily sell you a commercial license if you don't like the software. After paying for it enough, most companies start to ask "well, actually, how risky is this, really?", and this is how policies change.

In any case, my other point stands - there are no actual legal reasons to not use LGPL/GPL software internally. It would have zero legal impact.

Re: InfiniSQL

#52

Post by DannyBee »

philwelch wrote: post #48
mtravis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, Phil. I'm conflicted about this--I was convinced recently to move away from AGPL having to do with what I was previously unaware of as seemingly legitimate acceptance issues. I feel good about using GPL instead of AGPL. But I'm conflicted about GPL vs Apache (or BSDish) in the sense that I'm getting the message that I have to bend over backwards just a little bit further before somebody, somewhere might be…

You can do what you want because it's your software. But from the open source policies I've seen companies use, there are generally three lists of licenses. The first list is "you can use any open source software that follows these licenses". BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. are on this list. The second list is "you have to get approval from Legal to use software with these licenses but we would generally prefer for you not to…

I'm very curious where you are getting this info.

I own open source licensing policy at one very large company (which doesn't really work like you suggest), and am in contact with about 50-100 other open source counsel on a regular basis, and the only software most ban is AGPL (and a few other licenses which aren't talking about here, as they are wildly uncommon).

Most companies also do not treat GPLv2 and GPLv3 differently from a licensing perspective, only those that ship embedded devices do.

At least, this is my experience. I'm curious where yours is coming from.

Re: InfiniSQL

#53

Post by philwelch »

DannyBee wrote: post #51
philwelch wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that to be a strangely ideological response. Your prospective users' requirements are up to them to decide, not up to you. They're the ones who are going to decide whether or not to use your software.

?? Of course they are up to the users to decide, but policies and needs are different. I'm curious, how do you think policies like this change? Most of the developers i've seen will happily sell you a commercial license if you don't like the software. After paying for it enough, most companies start to ask "well, actually, how risky is this, really?", and this is how policies change. In any case, my other point stand…

If InfiniSQL was an established incumbent where the choice was between living with GPL and buying a commercial license I would agree with you, but it's a newcomer where the main choice is whether to use it at all.

Re: InfiniSQL

#54

Post by philwelch »

DannyBee wrote: post #52
philwelch wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do what you want because it's your software. But from the open source policies I've seen companies use, there are generally three lists of licenses. The first list is "you can use any open source software that follows these licenses". BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. are on this list. The second list is "you have to get approval from Legal to use software with these licenses but we would generally prefer for you not to…

I'm very curious where you are getting this info. I own open source licensing policy at one very large company (which doesn't really work like you suggest), and am in contact with about 50-100 other open source counsel on a regular basis, and the only software most ban is AGPL (and a few other licenses which aren't talking about here, as they are wildly uncommon). Most companies also do not treat GPLv2 and GPLv3 diff…

I'm a developer at a company that uses a lot of open source software, and I've spoken to other developers at other companies as well. Where I work, it's required to get legal approval to use GPL software. Software under more permissive licenses may be imported and used freely at the discretion of the development team. So in my experience, InfiniSQL faces a much higher barrier to adoption due to GPL.

Perhaps you work with companies where adopting technology stacks is more of a top-down decision where legal counsel is always involved. In those situations, GPL doesn't pose a particular barrier because all open source software faces that same barrier. But some companies give more autonomy to their developers, and in those cases there's a difference in overhead when managing GPL compliance.

Re: InfiniSQL

#55

Post by DannyBee »

philwelch wrote: post #54
DannyBee wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very curious where you are getting this info. I own open source licensing policy at one very large company (which doesn't really work like you suggest), and am in contact with about 50-100 other open source counsel on a regular basis, and the only software most ban is AGPL (and a few other licenses which aren't talking about here, as they are wildly uncommon). Most companies also do not treat GPLv2 and GPLv3 diff…

I'm a developer at a company that uses a lot of open source software, and I've spoken to other developers at other companies as well. Where I work, it's required to get legal approval to use GPL software. Software under more permissive licenses may be imported and used freely at the discretion of the development team. So in my experience, InfiniSQL faces a much higher barrier to adoption due to GPL. Perhaps you work…

"I'm a developer at a company that uses a lot of open source software, and I've spoken to other developers at other companies as well. Where I work, it's required to get legal approval to use GPL software. Software under more permissive licenses may be imported and used freely at the discretion of the development team. So in my experience, InfiniSQL faces a much higher barrier to adoption due to GPL."

Interesting. We use about 8000 open source packages, and add roughly 90 a week right now.

"Perhaps you work with companies where adopting technology stacks is more of a top-down decision where legal counsel is always involved. In those situations, GPL doesn't pose a particular barrier because all open source software faces that same barrier. But some companies give more autonomy to their developers, and in those cases there's a difference in overhead when managing GPL compliance."

Actually, i work at a company (Google) where autonomy is given. People are free to use basically anything but AGPL. We simply tell them what will be required of them if they use it, and enforce that this happens.

The overhead of GPL compliance is not any more than the overhead of any other license compliance, for us, in practice.

You still have to do stuff for BSD and MIT anyway, so you need a process that knows what is going into shipping software.

The short version is that:

Overhead is kept low by doing it as part of the same check-in process as any other source code (IE you don't fill out some magical form and send it to lawyers), among other things.

Shipping time is simple verification that nothing changed (and the build system will verify it anyway).

My experience is that companies find GPL compliance overhead higher because they aren't doing the right thing for other licenses anyway. In particular, they never produce correct attribution for MIT/BSD/etc, so having to do "anything at all" is higher overhead.

This experience comes from reviewing a large number of companies for acquisition :)

Re: InfiniSQL

#56

Post by philwelch »

DannyBee wrote: post #55
philwelch wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer at a company that uses a lot of open source software, and I've spoken to other developers at other companies as well. Where I work, it's required to get legal approval to use GPL software. Software under more permissive licenses may be imported and used freely at the discretion of the development team. So in my experience, InfiniSQL faces a much higher barrier to adoption due to GPL. Perhaps you work…

"I'm a developer at a company that uses a lot of open source software, and I've spoken to other developers at other companies as well. Where I work, it's required to get legal approval to use GPL software. Software under more permissive licenses may be imported and used freely at the discretion of the development team. So in my experience, InfiniSQL faces a much higher barrier to adoption due to GPL." Interesting. We…

Google has a lot more top-down technical mandates than some companies (programming languages for instance), and I'm not surprised they're more GPL-friendly either.

I'm willing to concede that GPL is not a disadvantage to adoption by Google or any of the hundreds of startups Google might aquihire in a given quarter :)

Re: InfiniSQL

#57

Post by belorn »

philwelch wrote: post #48
mtravis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, Phil. I'm conflicted about this--I was convinced recently to move away from AGPL having to do with what I was previously unaware of as seemingly legitimate acceptance issues. I feel good about using GPL instead of AGPL. But I'm conflicted about GPL vs Apache (or BSDish) in the sense that I'm getting the message that I have to bend over backwards just a little bit further before somebody, somewhere might be…

You can do what you want because it's your software. But from the open source policies I've seen companies use, there are generally three lists of licenses. The first list is "you can use any open source software that follows these licenses". BSD, MIT, Apache, etc. are on this list. The second list is "you have to get approval from Legal to use software with these licenses but we would generally prefer for you not to…

It always funny when people include the Apache license like that, given that one of the two significant changes made between GPLv2 and GPLv3 was copying the apache license text into the GPL regarding patents. Sure, they did add a clause about patent agreement, but that is only relevant if you got patent agreements.

The second change from GPLv2 to GPLv3 is the DRM clause, or the "you can't use a technical method to bypass the legal requirements". Again, only really relevant if the company uses DRM, but would be willing to use GPLv2. That is a very short list.

Re: InfiniSQL

#58

Post by justin66 »

zobzu wrote: post #18
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider the Apache License or some other license instead of the GPL. There are many organizations that cannot use any flavor of GPL, including LGPL, for legal reasons. You can debate the wisdom of that amongst yourselves, but alas, that's how it is in some places. (And I really want to try this...)

So many reasons to keep GPL. They can use GPL just fine, it's just that they don't wanna contribute if they modify it.

> So many reasons to keep GPL. They can use GPL just fine, it's just that they don't wanna contribute if they modify it.

More charitably, they don't want to be _legally obligated_ to contribute if they modify it.

Re: InfiniSQL

#59

Post by stormbrew »

DannyBee wrote: post #44
stormbrew wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think I've rewritten anything. Is anything factually wrong with my post? GCC's version in OSX' dev tools, along with bash and afaik all gnu binaries, was frozen at the last version available with gpl v2. This is plain fact. The conclusion I've drawn from it is that GPLv3 was a significant driver in the decision to seek out and drive forward a non-GPL compiler project. I didn't say it was the only facto…

The rewrite is the part where you continue to claim it was driven at all by licensing "The conclusion I've drawn from it is that GPLv3 was a significant driver in the decision to seek out and drive forward a non-GPL compiler project. I didn't say it was the only factor, but I stand by my conclusion that it must have been a significant one." I believe i've completely rebutted this statement with my response. I believe…

The timing is a fair point, though I think you ignore one factor: While gcc didn't switch to gplv3 until 2009, gplv3 was released in draft form in 2006.

So I'll concede that it likely wasn't a direct cause of the move to and support of llvm, clang didn't come along until later -- and after it must have been clear that gcc would eventually be gplv3 licensed.

God knows GCC's codebase is a rats nest that few people really want to work with, but if it hadn't been for gplv3 do you really maintain that apple wouldn't have stuck with it as a frontend for longer? The early releases of clang (and gcc+llvm before it) were problematic for a lot of mac developers at the time, after all.

Re: InfiniSQL

#60

Post by coolsunglasses »

mtravis wrote: post #42
coolsunglasses wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers and early adopters are using Perl in 2013? Sure you aren't off by 12-15 years?

This you? http://favstar.fm/users/hipsterhacker Also, the main application is in C++. A python script launches the C++ daemons. Perl scripts are quick and dirty tests and deployment scripts. The main hacking I'm looking for is with C++, and I don't care so much if the other stuff gets re-implemented in some other language.

Nope, just a guy that fucks with databases.

No API, got it.

Post reply on HN