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Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

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Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#61

Post by btdmaster »

vlovich123 wrote: post #51
btdmaster wrote: post #44

Can you revoke an Apache-2.0 copyright license? The terms say irrevocable, though it stipulates respecting the terms and conditions: "2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly…

Apache also doesn’t require you to share source code. Just because a company publishes their code under an OSS license doesn’t automatically make them the good guys and unless there’s some critical context it seems like pure FUD. Afaik Apache only requires you to maintain the copyright when distributing in source form (ie you don’t need to mention the license in binary form) but I’m not a lawyer and maybe misread. Th…

> The license is certainly irrevocable and patent indemnifying provided you don’t violate it.

That's essentially what I find contentious, is whether "subject to the terms and conditions of this license" it is irrevocable or it is irrevocable irrespective of whether the terms of the license are being violated. With its phrasing I assumed it's the latter.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#62

Post by rsstack »

rvnx wrote: post #41
debarshri wrote: post #27

Around 2019, a lot of kubernetes distributions started popping up. They often bundle various open source solutions into one platform/PaaS and sell it to the end users. I wonder, - What are the consequences for these companies? - Do they share revenue with the open source projects? - Can they simply distribute these services without any consequences? - If not, When and How does a small open source project org enforce…

The consequences is that these companies get very rich and they eventually take-over the open-source project. See Redis for example, two Israeli dudes took the open-source Redis, made tons of money. Everyone is happy: the two founders became rich, the VCs became rich. What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift. As a present you can have the privilege to work for us to keep maintain…

> What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift.

He was eventually hired by Redis-the-company, allowed them to use the trademark (originally they were Redis Labs which was a compromise with him), went to their conferences, trained their Redis developers (who contributed to Redis-the-open-source), etc.. I assume he was happy with the deal as he spoke positively about them and chose to spend a lot of time with them, and eventually retired after I presume getting a nice amount of money from the decade-long adventure.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#63

Post by bad416f1f5a2 »

debarshri wrote: post #50
ghaff wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that projects in the cloud native space are mostly Apache-licensed. (For example, the CNCF only approves other licenses on an exception basis I believe.) In that case, so long as attributions/trademarks are honored (which oddly seems to not have been the case here), projects licensed in that way can be freely used with Kubernetes without other restrictions.

Could you elaborate what free distribution mean? Often these platforms have enterprise license. Does that mean it is not free?

> Often these platforms have enterprise license. Does that mean it is not free?

There’s way too much nuance to give a clear answer without something being wrong. Give an example?

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#64

Post by gautamdivgi »

bionsystem wrote: post #19
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't blame engineers on every single issue. The engineer may not even know there's an issue here. They may be assured by their boss or legal department that they are in the clear. They may not even think about such mundane things like licensing and stuff, that's what they have higher ups for. If someone is to blame, then it's the company leadership and legal department. As much as we want to make us engineers…

You are being downvoted but I actually think there are some fair points that you are making. We use a lot of FOSS in our company. We pay licenses and contribute very little (our job isn't to improve gitlab or docker, we are shipping a software product on top of that), but I wouldn't know where exactly we are in the legal-illegal spectrum to save my life. I consider myself an employee, not an entrepreneur. If I was an…

Engineers need to ask legal for a license review. You as an engineer may not understand every aspect of it, but your legal team should make it clear. It’s the same at most places. Licenses are included with the source code, it’s not that hard to bump it up to legal to understand your responsibilities of including it in the product.

OTOH - if the engineer did that and received flawed guidance, then it’s a legal issue and not the engineer’s issue. I guess the question is whether the legal review of all FOSS licenses in the product was done.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#65

Post by debarshri »

bad416f1f5a2 wrote: post #63
debarshri wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate what free distribution mean? Often these platforms have enterprise license. Does that mean it is not free?

> Often these platforms have enterprise license. Does that mean it is not free? There’s way too much nuance to give a clear answer without something being wrong. Give an example?

For instance, let say there is a platform xyz platform that is an abstraction on rancher to deploy kubernetes, that also deploys the grafana, prometheus, loki, cilium etc. But now, the owners of platform xyz says it is 5k a month for enterprise license of this abstraction. But users may or may not realise that they are using all the tools I have listed. Does that mean, the owners of the platform to have to pay the other platforms?

Another question is, can anyone just decide to offer commercial version of any opensource project? Is there any kind of license that protects the interest of opensource developers.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#66

Post by ghaff »

debarshri wrote: post #65
bad416f1f5a2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Often these platforms have enterprise license. Does that mean it is not free? There’s way too much nuance to give a clear answer without something being wrong. Give an example?

For instance, let say there is a platform xyz platform that is an abstraction on rancher to deploy kubernetes, that also deploys the grafana, prometheus, loki, cilium etc. But now, the owners of platform xyz says it is 5k a month for enterprise license of this abstraction. But users may or may not realise that they are using all the tools I have listed. Does that mean, the owners of the platform to have to pay the ot…

The whole Apache license isn't very long but this is mostly the extent of your obligations: "You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Work."

Apache is a non-copyleft license. Copyleft licenses like the GPL also require that any code changes, derivative works code, etc. needs to be made available if the software is distributed.

However, you can absolutely charge for support, etc. (But I can't assert copyright over code I didn't actually write.)

>Is there any kind of license that protects the interest of opensource developers

If by "protects the interest" you mean forces consumers of the code to pay them or allows them to restrict who uses their code, then pretty much no. The Open Source Definition as it stands pretty much excludes those kind of restrictions. The developers could of course just choose a proprietary license instead if they want to control how their code is used.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#68

Post by toomuchtodo »

rsstack wrote: post #62
rvnx wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consequences is that these companies get very rich and they eventually take-over the open-source project. See Redis for example, two Israeli dudes took the open-source Redis, made tons of money. Everyone is happy: the two founders became rich, the VCs became rich. What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift. As a present you can have the privilege to work for us to keep maintain…

> What about the authors and contributors of Redis ? Well thank you for the gift. He was eventually hired by Redis-the-company, allowed them to use the trademark (originally they were Redis Labs which was a compromise with him), went to their conferences, trained their Redis developers (who contributed to Redis-the-open-source), etc.. I assume he was happy with the deal as he spoke positively about them and chose to…

Indeed, this is the ideal outcome for all involved. Everyone makes some money, everyone spent the time doing what they enjoyed doing, nobody got shafted, and contributors were able to integrate their contributions while being able to pull the whole app back down for their own (free) use.

Re: Nutanix Objects violates MinIO’s open source license

#70

Post by ticviking »

Jolter wrote: post #42
pabs3 wrote: post #6

Will revoking their license stop Nutanix from using MinIO or will they have to go to court to get them to stop? I don't see any mention of a lawsuit in the post.

First, revoke the license. That means they are no longer permitted to redistribute the code. If they then continue to redistribute it, they are committing a copyright violation. That’s when there is cause for a lawsuit.

More than that, they've been given notice, and are willfully distributing it.

There's all kinds of specific legal teeth for that behavior.

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