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I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to supp

I don't understand the line of reasoning. Can anyone give me a lay explanation? My understanding of the license change is basically "if you use MongoDB to support any site, all software higher in the stack needs to be released as well". Is that accurate? If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?

geofft 8y ago
Not quite—if you offer MongoDB itself as a service, then yes. If you just use it on the backend, no. (Read the license and consult your lawyer for details, of course.)
- tyingq 8y ago
  "offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program" That sounds pretty squishy and likely to be broader than just the use case of offering Mongo as a service.
  - fatbird 8y ago
    It doesn't seem squishy to me insofar as you can't offer Mongo as a service and then swap Mongo out for a different product, while leaving your offering unchanged. Any app using Mongo simply as a datastore on the backend can swap it out without altering their offering.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      Yes, it clearly targets Mongo as a Service. I'm not clear, though, on whether that's where it stops.
  - amarant 8y ago
    it also really doesn't sound like "if you use MongoDB in your streamingplatform/blog/whatever you need to opensource everything, which seems to be the gripe many a commenter is having.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      Maybe. If there's more lines of code in the Mongo part than the other part, is the value "primarily" Mongo? What if I made a file upload/download site? Mongo might constitute the bulk of the value/lines of code/whatever. Words like "primarily" and "including, without limitation" make lawyers nervous.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      That depends on how you think a court would weigh the source of value of your offering; and any factor that makes MongoDB more valuable as a component before considering the license makes it more risky when you consider the license.
    - greglindahl 8y ago
      It's not you that needs convincing, it's the lawyers of the company that's acquiring your Mongo-using startup that need convincing.
  - kstrauser 8y ago
    Yeah, that throws off huge “what would Oracle do” red flags.
    - geofft 8y ago
      That's a good point—it likely trips the unofficial "tentacles of evil" test of the Debian free software guidelines, from https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html : > Imagine that the author is hired by a large evil corporation and, now in their thrall, attempts to do the worst to the users of the program: to make their lives miserable, to make them stop using the program, to expose them to legal liability, to make the program non-free, to discover their secrets, etc. The same can happen to a corporation bought out by a larger corporation bent on destroying free software in order to maintain its monopoly and extend its evil empire. The license cannot allow even the author to take away the required freedoms! If MongoDB does not say in a legally binding way that this is clearly not what they mean, an acquirer could very likely twist the clause.
nevi-me 8y ago
No. If you take MongoDB and offer it as SaaS, the additional software that's part of your offering, such as monitoring, backup solutions, etc, have to be open-sourced, or you have to make their code available (since the chair of OSI defines what's open source).
- fatbird 8y ago
  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 I see is if you offered some sort of database-as-a-service backed by Mongo but not explicitly sold as Mongo-as-a-service.
  - michaelcampbell 8y ago
    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".
    - fatbird 8y ago
      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.
      - DannyBee 8y ago
        What mongo says on a sales call is not going to be found usable in court.
        fatbird 8y ago
VanL 8y ago
Quick summary: 1) It is problematic to use copyright infringement as a hammer to force people to release/relicense code that is not related to the copyrighted code. (That's the "misuse" bit) 2) If you try to do this via contract, there are lots of practical difficulties associated with actually releasing the code - the biggest of which is that you probably don't own all the code you would be required to release. (That's the "impracticability" bit)
delinka 8y ago
The copyright owner can indeed license their work anyway they see fit. But often, the purpose of OSS seems to be "to share good software with the world." If that's the case, and then they change their license to a "... and you must also share _your_ work with the world," then they can't really complain when A) users stay on old versions licensed with the old license, and B) when use of their systems drops off lots. I don't see that as the case here necessarily. TFA just points out to potential users that the license has changed and might necessitate dropping MongoDB from your stack.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DannyBee 8y ago
IP lawyer here :) "If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?" So let's separate out two questions implicit here: Can you make this part of a license? Would you win if you sued someone for violating it? The answer to the first is clearly yes, you can license it however you want :-). However, like most IP, in basically all countries there are limitations on how you are allowed to license things, to ensure the original goals of copyright are respected. Those limitations are usually presented as defenses. Van gave two examples of defenses. There are others. For example, patent misuse is a defense to patent infringement. Here's a concrete example of patent misuse that may be easier to understand than copyright misuse: You sell a thing that infringes my patent. In order for you to avoid infringing my patent, I force you to pay royalties for 10 years (Rather than a smaller length of time). But wait, the patent expires in 5 years! Can I enforce this? No. It's patent misuse. You cannot use your currently valid patent to force someone to pay royalties past the validity period of your patent. Another example: You have a product X that infringes my patent. I use my patent on X force you into an agreement to pay royalties on a product Y that doesn't infringe my patent. Can i enforce this? No. You shouldn't be able to use the patent on X to force me to pay royalties on something that doesn't use your patent. To bring it back to Van's examples, the copyright misuse is similar to the patent misuse i just gave you. You can't leverage your copyright on X to force me to do something with an unrelated thing. The GPL and AGPL are very careful about this. The AGPL applies to modified versions (which are derivative works) and only extends to pieces that are derivative works. The GPL is the same - only the derivative works are touched. That is within the copyright rights of the thing that was AGPL/GPL'd. How do you know it's unrelated to a given copyright? If X could not claim any copyright rights over it, it's unrelated. This usually comes down to whether it's a derivative work not because the other rights are not very broad in coverage. Here, the license is taking X, and saying "You must do something with unrelated thing Y, which is clearly not within the scope of copyright of X". So I am trying to use my copyright right in X to force you to do it. Note: No lawyer believes there is any reasonable argument that completely and totally independent piece of software X that does say, monitoring, is a derivative work. So that's a good start on copyright misuse :) (The other prong is about whether it restricts competition, which they already admit is their goal here)
- nebulous1 8y ago
metheus 8y ago
That's not correct, the license only says if you make SSPL licensed software itself available as a service, you have to release the service code under the SSPL. Using the licensed software to build anything else at all is ok to do without releasing your code.
- i_phish_cats 8y ago
  The problem is that we don't know how Mongo will choose to exercise this brand new license, and how courts will rule on them. I've brought this change to our corporate counsel and they are advising we stay clear of it.

geofft 8y ago

Not quite—if you offer MongoDB itself as a service, then yes. If you just use it on the backend, no. (Read the license and consult your lawyer for details, of course.)

tyingq 8y ago
"offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program" That sounds pretty squishy and likely to be broader than just the use case of offering Mongo as a service.
- fatbird 8y ago
  It doesn't seem squishy to me insofar as you can't offer Mongo as a service and then swap Mongo out for a different product, while leaving your offering unchanged. Any app using Mongo simply as a datastore on the backend can swap it out without altering their offering.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Yes, it clearly targets Mongo as a Service. I'm not clear, though, on whether that's where it stops.
- amarant 8y ago
  it also really doesn't sound like "if you use MongoDB in your streamingplatform/blog/whatever you need to opensource everything, which seems to be the gripe many a commenter is having.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Maybe. If there's more lines of code in the Mongo part than the other part, is the value "primarily" Mongo? What if I made a file upload/download site? Mongo might constitute the bulk of the value/lines of code/whatever. Words like "primarily" and "including, without limitation" make lawyers nervous.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    That depends on how you think a court would weigh the source of value of your offering; and any factor that makes MongoDB more valuable as a component before considering the license makes it more risky when you consider the license.
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    It's not you that needs convincing, it's the lawyers of the company that's acquiring your Mongo-using startup that need convincing.
- kstrauser 8y ago
  Yeah, that throws off huge “what would Oracle do” red flags.
  - geofft 8y ago
    That's a good point—it likely trips the unofficial "tentacles of evil" test of the Debian free software guidelines, from https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html : > Imagine that the author is hired by a large evil corporation and, now in their thrall, attempts to do the worst to the users of the program: to make their lives miserable, to make them stop using the program, to expose them to legal liability, to make the program non-free, to discover their secrets, etc. The same can happen to a corporation bought out by a larger corporation bent on destroying free software in order to maintain its monopoly and extend its evil empire. The license cannot allow even the author to take away the required freedoms! If MongoDB does not say in a legally binding way that this is clearly not what they mean, an acquirer could very likely twist the clause.

nevi-me 8y ago

No. If you take MongoDB and offer it as SaaS, the additional software that's part of your offering, such as monitoring, backup solutions, etc, have to be open-sourced, or you have to make their code available (since the chair of OSI defines what's open source).

fatbird 8y ago
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 I see is if you offered some sort of database-as-a-service backed by Mongo but not explicitly sold as Mongo-as-a-service.
- michaelcampbell 8y ago
  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".
  - fatbird 8y ago
    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.
    - DannyBee 8y ago
      What mongo says on a sales call is not going to be found usable in court.
      - fatbird 8y ago

VanL 8y ago

Quick summary: 1) It is problematic to use copyright infringement as a hammer to force people to release/relicense code that is not related to the copyrighted code. (That's the "misuse" bit) 2) If you try to do this via contract, there are lots of practical difficulties associated with actually releasing the code - the biggest of which is that you probably don't own all the code you would be required to release. (That's the "impracticability" bit)

delinka 8y ago

The copyright owner can indeed license their work anyway they see fit. But often, the purpose of OSS seems to be "to share good software with the world." If that's the case, and then they change their license to a "... and you must also share _your_ work with the world," then they can't really complain when A) users stay on old versions licensed with the old license, and B) when use of their systems drops off lots. I don't see that as the case here necessarily. TFA just points out to potential users that the license has changed and might necessitate dropping MongoDB from your stack.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

DannyBee 8y ago

IP lawyer here :) "If so, why can't an author make this part of the license?" So let's separate out two questions implicit here: Can you make this part of a license? Would you win if you sued someone for violating it? The answer to the first is clearly yes, you can license it however you want :-). However, like most IP, in basically all countries there are limitations on how you are allowed to license things, to ensure the original goals of copyright are respected. Those limitations are usually presented as defenses. Van gave two examples of defenses. There are others. For example, patent misuse is a defense to patent infringement. Here's a concrete example of patent misuse that may be easier to understand than copyright misuse: You sell a thing that infringes my patent. In order for you to avoid infringing my patent, I force you to pay royalties for 10 years (Rather than a smaller length of time). But wait, the patent expires in 5 years! Can I enforce this? No. It's patent misuse. You cannot use your currently valid patent to force someone to pay royalties past the validity period of your patent. Another example: You have a product X that infringes my patent. I use my patent on X force you into an agreement to pay royalties on a product Y that doesn't infringe my patent. Can i enforce this? No. You shouldn't be able to use the patent on X to force me to pay royalties on something that doesn't use your patent. To bring it back to Van's examples, the copyright misuse is similar to the patent misuse i just gave you. You can't leverage your copyright on X to force me to do something with an unrelated thing. The GPL and AGPL are very careful about this. The AGPL applies to modified versions (which are derivative works) and only extends to pieces that are derivative works. The GPL is the same - only the derivative works are touched. That is within the copyright rights of the thing that was AGPL/GPL'd. How do you know it's unrelated to a given copyright? If X could not claim any copyright rights over it, it's unrelated. This usually comes down to whether it's a derivative work not because the other rights are not very broad in coverage. Here, the license is taking X, and saying "You must do something with unrelated thing Y, which is clearly not within the scope of copyright of X". So I am trying to use my copyright right in X to force you to do it. Note: No lawyer believes there is any reasonable argument that completely and totally independent piece of software X that does say, monitoring, is a derivative work. So that's a good start on copyright misuse :) (The other prong is about whether it restricts competition, which they already admit is their goal here)

nebulous1 8y ago

metheus 8y ago

That's not correct, the license only says if you make SSPL licensed software itself available as a service, you have to release the service code under the SSPL. Using the licensed software to build anything else at all is ok to do without releasing your code.

i_phish_cats 8y ago
The problem is that we don't know how Mongo will choose to exercise this brand new license, and how courts will rule on them. I've brought this change to our corporate counsel and they are advising we stay clear of it.