6 ms·

Now that RethinkDB has no commercial ambitions, will you consider re-licensing to more commercial friendly license?

zeveb 10y ago
The GPL is of course completely commerce-friendly, as it permits anyone to resell the original or modifications to it. What you're asking for is a license friendly to proprietary software[1]. Why on earth would they want to enable someone to close his modifications to RethinkDB? How does that make the world a better place? How does that encourage the growth of RethinkDB (vice the proliferation of closed, proprietary forks of RethinkDB)? [1] Which is to say, user-hostile software. Users should be free to use, modify & distribute software.
- oomkiller 10y ago
  RethinkDB is licensed AGPL, not GPL.
  - oh_well 10y ago
    That's an unfortunate license choice. No one will use it.
    - X86BSD 10y ago
      Not sure about no one but anything with gpl in the license is surely a dead end for some of us.
      - oh_well 10y ago
        Affero General Public License is much more restrictive than GPL. People are not comfortable using it in a commercial setting.
- pc86 10y ago
  Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile," and hyperbole like this does much more harm than good to people like me who would like to see more open source and less proprietary software in the world simply as a matter of principle.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile," Yes, it is: by definition it violates one of the Four Freedoms of users … which is hostile.
    - morgante 10y ago
      Just because your chosen religion says something is evil doesn't make it so. You're speaking tautologically.
      - astrodust 10y ago
        Let's apply the Ferrengi Rules of Acquisition or Sun Tzu's Art of War to software licenses! The Four Freedoms are just someone's opinion, not some tangible fact.
    - tbrownaw 10y ago
      I disagree. Most of those are things that most users don't give a damn about in most cases (because they're meaningless unless you have certain unusual skills), which means they don't make for a sensible definition of "hostile".
      - belorn 10y ago
        Do pirate bay support your statement or proof that it is wrong? Maybe it just that "most users don't give a damn" about copyright, and as such don't care if what they do is legal or illegal with current copyright laws. In order to care about copyright licenses, first users need to care about what happens when they don't follow it.
    - deleted 10y ago
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  So you care more about having the entire pie, than about how much pie you have? If you have a license that "permits" commercial sales in a way that by design makes most business models completely unfeasible... guess what? You'll only get contributions from those with one of the handful of blessed business models. Which will work or not depending on what sorts of businesses models your project is suited for. Copyleft works fine for things like the kernel that are complementary to tons of different expensive things and nobody cares about otherwise. Permissive works well for Postgres.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    At the same time, you're arguing that you should be able to take the work they've done, add to it, but not give back, despite having received a HUGE base to start with.
winter_blue 10y ago
It's licensed under the Affero GPLv3, but I don't think AGPL license requires you to open source your code, if you're just using ReQL (the API/interface for RethinkDB). GPL/AGPL requires you to share your code if you statically (or dynamically) link (which is a C language family concept) to GPL code, but I don't know if calling an API is considered "linking". I don't think most companies really make any contributions or modifications to the databases they use that they absolutely do not want to share back to the community. (If using ReQL constitutes "linking" under AGPLv3, then that's a very serious matter. Perhaps re-licensing under LGPLv3 would make sense then.) But overall, I think it's fair that they used AGPL. I especially like that they opted for the Affero version, since companies that do make useful changes can't just hold onto it , and not share it back.
- woliveirajr 10y ago
  I've worked in a project that used some AGPL component. There were some many doubts on what should be open-sourced/which licenses were possible that we dropped that component and invested or time modification another one. After some while, that component changed its licensing model. It was too late.
  - ksec 10y ago
    Exactly, I call the AGPL anxiety license. It create so much problem in the mindset that is VERY commercial unfriendly.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  I wish you would just consider a 2 clause bsd license and end all debate and worry about licensing issues. But it's your code.

zeveb 10y ago

The GPL is of course completely commerce-friendly, as it permits anyone to resell the original or modifications to it. What you're asking for is a license friendly to proprietary software[1]. Why on earth would they want to enable someone to close his modifications to RethinkDB? How does that make the world a better place? How does that encourage the growth of RethinkDB (vice the proliferation of closed, proprietary forks of RethinkDB)? [1] Which is to say, user-hostile software. Users should be free to use, modify & distribute software.

oomkiller 10y ago
RethinkDB is licensed AGPL, not GPL.
- oh_well 10y ago
  That's an unfortunate license choice. No one will use it.
  - X86BSD 10y ago
    Not sure about no one but anything with gpl in the license is surely a dead end for some of us.
    - oh_well 10y ago
      Affero General Public License is much more restrictive than GPL. People are not comfortable using it in a commercial setting.
pc86 10y ago
Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile," and hyperbole like this does much more harm than good to people like me who would like to see more open source and less proprietary software in the world simply as a matter of principle.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile," Yes, it is: by definition it violates one of the Four Freedoms of users … which is hostile.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Just because your chosen religion says something is evil doesn't make it so. You're speaking tautologically.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Let's apply the Ferrengi Rules of Acquisition or Sun Tzu's Art of War to software licenses! The Four Freedoms are just someone's opinion, not some tangible fact.
  - tbrownaw 10y ago
    I disagree. Most of those are things that most users don't give a damn about in most cases (because they're meaningless unless you have certain unusual skills), which means they don't make for a sensible definition of "hostile".
    - belorn 10y ago
      Do pirate bay support your statement or proof that it is wrong? Maybe it just that "most users don't give a damn" about copyright, and as such don't care if what they do is legal or illegal with current copyright laws. In order to care about copyright licenses, first users need to care about what happens when they don't follow it.
  - deleted 10y ago
tbrownaw 10y ago
So you care more about having the entire pie, than about how much pie you have? If you have a license that "permits" commercial sales in a way that by design makes most business models completely unfeasible... guess what? You'll only get contributions from those with one of the handful of blessed business models. Which will work or not depending on what sorts of businesses models your project is suited for. Copyleft works fine for things like the kernel that are complementary to tons of different expensive things and nobody cares about otherwise. Permissive works well for Postgres.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  At the same time, you're arguing that you should be able to take the work they've done, add to it, but not give back, despite having received a HUGE base to start with.

winter_blue 10y ago

It's licensed under the Affero GPLv3, but I don't think AGPL license requires you to open source your code, if you're just using ReQL (the API/interface for RethinkDB). GPL/AGPL requires you to share your code if you statically (or dynamically) link (which is a C language family concept) to GPL code, but I don't know if calling an API is considered "linking". I don't think most companies really make any contributions or modifications to the databases they use that they absolutely do not want to share back to the community. (If using ReQL constitutes "linking" under AGPLv3, then that's a very serious matter. Perhaps re-licensing under LGPLv3 would make sense then.) But overall, I think it's fair that they used AGPL. I especially like that they opted for the Affero version, since companies that do make useful changes can't just hold onto it , and not share it back.

woliveirajr 10y ago
I've worked in a project that used some AGPL component. There were some many doubts on what should be open-sourced/which licenses were possible that we dropped that component and invested or time modification another one. After some while, that component changed its licensing model. It was too late.
- ksec 10y ago
  Exactly, I call the AGPL anxiety license. It create so much problem in the mindset that is VERY commercial unfriendly.
X86BSD 10y ago
I wish you would just consider a 2 clause bsd license and end all debate and worry about licensing issues. But it's your code.