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

MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable

processmechanics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 245 posts

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

#81

Post by rlpb »

finchisko wrote: post #73

Just thinking. Can you make a fork of MongoDb before license change and keep merging upstream changes under former license? Not asking because I want to hurt Mongo, just curious.

> keep merging upstream changes under former license?

Upstream changes made by the project sponsor would be expected to be copyright and released only under the new license.

Unless the copyright holder permitted it (perhaps via the new license), it'd be copyright infringement for anyone to distribute those upstream changes under different terms.

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

#82

Post by bgdam »

Thaxll wrote: post #70
bgdam wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This is a very bold comment, explain how you scale write, do HA in pg?

Postgres HA: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/high-availability...

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

#83

Post by DannyBee »

tptacek wrote: post #65
VanL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would significantly ameliorate the problem.

So then, really, a big part of the critique here is that the SSPL is simply not written very well?

i mean to be fair that's the big problem with most licenses as "not written very well" covers almost all problems with contracts :)

Like the LGPL is confusing because it is not written well in some sense. But that goes to "confusing" instead of "unenforceable".

But yes, better written the problem with this license would just be "They are trying to claim things they know they can't claim" instead of "they are actually claiming things they know they can't claim".

The next question that would pop into my head would then be "At what point does attempting to claim rights to things you know you can't, as a way of scaring people into paying you, cross into unfair and deceptive trade practices"

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

#84

Post by asien »

Remind me of that one time when they went berserk on every tooling vendor using the name « Mongo » in their product name :

RoboMongo,MongoGUI etc... they all received a legal notice to remove the name mongo from their product.

This was probably one of the most evil thing have seen in the open source industry .

Most of those vendors were open source with paid premium features or donation.

After receiving their legal notice most of those vendors deprecated or sold their project to a company feeling betrayed by Mongo.

As a result Mongo Compass became the de facto GUI for MongoDB and is advertise as sold with MongoDB Enterprise.

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

#85

Post by VanL »

tptacek wrote: post #65
VanL wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would significantly ameliorate the problem.

So then, really, a big part of the critique here is that the SSPL is simply not written very well?

Yes, but it is deeper. My overall take is that SSPL overreaches based upon the tools that it is using, making it infirm for multiple reasons.

I don't necessarily disagree with the sort of thing they want to do, that definitely fits one kind of business model. But I wouldn't want to go to court the license as presented (and now entered into by some unknown number of people).

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

#86

Post by tptacek »

DannyBee wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then, really, a big part of the critique here is that the SSPL is simply not written very well?

i mean to be fair that's the big problem with most licenses as "not written very well" covers almost all problems with contracts :) Like the LGPL is confusing because it is not written well in some sense. But that goes to "confusing" instead of "unenforceable". But yes, better written the problem with this license would just be "They are trying to claim things they know they can't claim" instead of "they are actually…

Sorry, I just meant: "a more conscientious lawyer could have straightforwardly drafted that contract to avoid some of its major problems". Like, the subtext of the question is, if I was MongoDB, and stipulating that I didn't create unreasonable work conditions like "get it done in a day", should I be pissed at my lawyer?

Additional question: if you can fix that problem with the contract with a "to the extent possible" predicate, is that really not the default? Like, if a clause can be interpreted as requiring the impossible, even if a straightforward alternate interpretation doesn't, that clause is broken?

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

#87

Post by fatbird »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #61
fatbird wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a call with MongoDB sales yesterday, and specifically asked if the licence changes impacts us, where we use Mongo as a datastore for our application, but we're not offering Mongo itself as a service. They were very quick and clear to say that the change is about those providers offering Mongo itself as a service. Using mongo in your stack to provide your service is not implicated at all. The only grey area…

This makes sense, and I believe you, but lawyers being lawyers, I don't think any corporate legal team is going to even bother with trying. Easier to say "no". Source: 1 data point; the company I work for's legal team just said "no".

Same fight here, but we're digging in our heels and bothering to convince the internal lawyer that it's not a problem. We'll win, but it takes time we'd rather not have to spend.

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

#88

Post by DannyBee »

VanL wrote: post #76
DannyBee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how well written/what court decides to do. I'm going to short circuit a lot of nuanced case law and differences between jurisdictions/courts here to give a clear answer: Usually these things are written so the clauses are severable. The court would then most of the time just remove the invalid pieces and leave the rest intact. If it is not severable, the contract stands or falls as a whole. If it falls, no…

Interesting thing about misuse, is that it prevents the enforcement of the copyright against even non-parties until the misuse has been dealt with. Practically, that is probably dealt with via a blog post and a retreat to the AGPL, but still.

"Interesting thing about misuse, is that it prevents the enforcement of the copyright against even non-parties until the misuse has been dealt with."

Interesting. I've never delved that far into misuse but that makes sense. Is that piece a US specific thing or common in others?

As you say it would not have too much practical effect since it's curable trivially. You'd get a few hours of unrestricted mongo use, maybe, but I bet the official order would post-date the blog post fixing it :)

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

#89

Post by ianamartin »

For people defending this, you're being naive. It's way too easy to argue that the value of any app resides mostly in the data it collects. That data is stored in MongoDB, therefore the value of the app "primarily derives from the Program."

Of course their sales people are saying "No. We won't use it that way." Sales people gonna sell.

I'm sure the people currently running MongoDB would not do that. What happens when they get acquired by, say, Oracle? Or some other company that absolutely would do that?

The bottom line that you have to assume from a legal point of view is that any part of an agreement that can be abused, will be abused. This not only can be and will be, but it will be really easy.

If they are doing this to prevent people from competing with their own service--which they absolutely are--then they need to rewrite it and make that explicit. This is way too squishy for anyone with an ounce of brains to use in a commercial product.

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

#90

Post by Illniyar »

princekolt wrote: post #71

Okay so after reading the article, and thinking about this for a while, I get the following out of this debacle: The issue here is that SaaS providers are building tools on top of MongoDB that effectively add functionality, instead of modifying MongoDB (which would force them to share those changes publicly). This is a valid concern and I understand the motivation behind the license change. However, how is this diffe…

The difference is that those projects (apache, nginx) are ASL or MIT licensed.
Post reply on HN