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> The SSPL is not an open source license. It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. > "Thou shall not comp

> The SSPL is not an open source license. It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. > "Thou shall not compete with MongoDB." Sounds to me like, "thou shall not offer MongoDB, and your own custom tooling, in your cloud without talking to us about licensing fees or making your cloud tech open source."

cyphar 8y ago
> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. It is effectively impossible to follow the conditions of the license -- according to the interpretation by Bradley Kuhn and others this would require you to provide the source code for Linux under this license if you run MongoDB on Linux. Linux is GPLv2 and has thousands of copyright owners -- it is not possible for any individual to relicense it to any other license. If you have an "open source" license (which violates the one of the entries in the OSI definition -- "License Must Not Restrict Other Software") which cannot be followed by anyone then it's obviously not an FOSS software. It doesn't matter that in theory it would be FOSS, what matters is whether it is FOSS in practice.
- sseveran 8y ago
  Individuals interpretations of this are unlikely to matter much until such a clause is tested in court. The interpretation that the license is as broad as Mr Kuhn claims may be true, but it may not be. Personally I think that both Mongo and Redis doing this is great as it shows the danger posed when a company can just relicense a project at will, which IMHO is the greater issue here. If Mongo felt the need they could amend their license again if it was tested in court and the court ruled against them. Individuals and companies should be aware that with some of these license agreements they could change at any time. Ultimately governance of a project matters. We have seen somewhat of a split in the Cassandra community between Apache Cassandra and DataStax. That may ultimately prove to be beneficial as a new set of organizations has started to contribute. Having an organization like Apache to provide oversight and help draw a firm distinction between an open source project and a vendors proprietary offering was crucial there.
  - antirez 8y ago
    "Redis doing this" -> Redis is BSD licensed, but Redis Labs modules that were never part of Redis itself changed license. Note btw that when something is BSD can be relicensed by everybody, both the original copyright owners or anyone else.
    - sseveran 8y ago
      I have never used Redis so I cannot comment on what is in Redis vs whatever Redis Labs modules are. I did observe that when the license was changed there was much gnashing of teeth about the license change so clearly at least a subset of potential users were surprised or upset about the license change. I do think much of conversation about license changes is missing what I think the main risk of taking a dependency on an open source project where the license can be changed by the primary contributors with little to no oversight from anyone. And indeed Oracle has demonstrated that this is an issue for software that while proprietary has been free. It may still be the right thing to do to use Redis or MongoDB or the Oracle JVM. Users may be fine with the new licensing terms. Maybe things fork and go their own way. Maybe people wake up to the risk they actually run when signing a contributor agreement (depending on what it contains). I just think there is too little real analysis of the true risks that exist when taking a dependency on a component which might not be supported under the expected licensing terms in the future.
    - bhickey 8y ago
      > when something is BSD can be relicensed by everybody Relicensing is not something that the BSD license permits. The license family is permissive, but a user doesn't have the right to strip out the copyright notice and call it a day.
      - cyphar 8y ago
        I think they meant sublicense, which is something that the BSD license permits (though not as explicitly as MIT) because otherwise you wouldn't be able to use BSD code in GPL projects.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
bhickey 8y ago
> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. And you'd be mistaken. It isn't open source because (among other reasons) it discriminates based on your purpose for using the software. This tickles freedom zero of the free software definition and point six of the open source definition.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> It seems like it is to me, It directs licensing of software that is not a derived work of, or part of a combined work with, the software offered under the license, in violation of criterion 9 of the OSD. (OTOH, it might be Free Software under the FSF Free Software Definition.)

cyphar 8y ago

> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. It is effectively impossible to follow the conditions of the license -- according to the interpretation by Bradley Kuhn and others this would require you to provide the source code for Linux under this license if you run MongoDB on Linux. Linux is GPLv2 and has thousands of copyright owners -- it is not possible for any individual to relicense it to any other license. If you have an "open source" license (which violates the one of the entries in the OSI definition -- "License Must Not Restrict Other Software") which cannot be followed by anyone then it's obviously not an FOSS software. It doesn't matter that in theory it would be FOSS, what matters is whether it is FOSS in practice.

sseveran 8y ago
Individuals interpretations of this are unlikely to matter much until such a clause is tested in court. The interpretation that the license is as broad as Mr Kuhn claims may be true, but it may not be. Personally I think that both Mongo and Redis doing this is great as it shows the danger posed when a company can just relicense a project at will, which IMHO is the greater issue here. If Mongo felt the need they could amend their license again if it was tested in court and the court ruled against them. Individuals and companies should be aware that with some of these license agreements they could change at any time. Ultimately governance of a project matters. We have seen somewhat of a split in the Cassandra community between Apache Cassandra and DataStax. That may ultimately prove to be beneficial as a new set of organizations has started to contribute. Having an organization like Apache to provide oversight and help draw a firm distinction between an open source project and a vendors proprietary offering was crucial there.
- antirez 8y ago
  "Redis doing this" -> Redis is BSD licensed, but Redis Labs modules that were never part of Redis itself changed license. Note btw that when something is BSD can be relicensed by everybody, both the original copyright owners or anyone else.
  - sseveran 8y ago
    I have never used Redis so I cannot comment on what is in Redis vs whatever Redis Labs modules are. I did observe that when the license was changed there was much gnashing of teeth about the license change so clearly at least a subset of potential users were surprised or upset about the license change. I do think much of conversation about license changes is missing what I think the main risk of taking a dependency on an open source project where the license can be changed by the primary contributors with little to no oversight from anyone. And indeed Oracle has demonstrated that this is an issue for software that while proprietary has been free. It may still be the right thing to do to use Redis or MongoDB or the Oracle JVM. Users may be fine with the new licensing terms. Maybe things fork and go their own way. Maybe people wake up to the risk they actually run when signing a contributor agreement (depending on what it contains). I just think there is too little real analysis of the true risks that exist when taking a dependency on a component which might not be supported under the expected licensing terms in the future.
  - bhickey 8y ago
    > when something is BSD can be relicensed by everybody Relicensing is not something that the BSD license permits. The license family is permissive, but a user doesn't have the right to strip out the copyright notice and call it a day.
    - cyphar 8y ago
      I think they meant sublicense, which is something that the BSD license permits (though not as explicitly as MIT) because otherwise you wouldn't be able to use BSD code in GPL projects.
- dragonwriter 8y ago

bhickey 8y ago

> It seems like it is to me, it's just extremely protective of the source code owner's rights. And you'd be mistaken. It isn't open source because (among other reasons) it discriminates based on your purpose for using the software. This tickles freedom zero of the free software definition and point six of the open source definition.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> It seems like it is to me, It directs licensing of software that is not a derived work of, or part of a combined work with, the software offered under the license, in violation of criterion 9 of the OSD. (OTOH, it might be Free Software under the FSF Free Software Definition.)