4 ms·

mongodb announced the Server Side Public License change less than 12 weeks ago. When you account for end of year and holidays, building a new product line and r

mongodb announced the Server Side Public License change less than 12 weeks ago. When you account for end of year and holidays, building a new product line and rolling it out in such a short period of time seems unlikely. I would guess this has been in the works for a while (although admittedly I could be overestimating engineering effort and underestimating amazon engineering talent).

paulddraper 8y ago
You're absolutely right. AWS is not known to move that fast (though they are known to move faster if they think the competition is outpacing them). This undoubtedly had been in the works as Aurora for MongoDB. The timing is suspect, sure. But one look at Aurora for MySQL and Aurora for PostgreSQL will tell you that AWS would've gotten around to it regardless of licensing.
threeseed 8y ago
Reverse engineering the MongoDB API, getting it to work on Aurora storage engine, verifying existing CLI/drivers work and having it all scaleable and supportable. At least a few months work there. Even for Amazon.
robbyt 8y ago
Lawyers move slower than software engineers. There could have been years of exchanges between the company prior to this.
maximilianburke 8y ago
MongoDB could have been having conversations with Amazon prior, trying to negotiate a licensing agreement. These negotiations take a lot of time at corporations, I could easily see someone saying "hey, MongoDB's starting to squeeze us, let's get some people working on Plan B before they cut us off".
athrun 8y ago
Difficult to know for sure, but it's probable that MongoDB made Amazon aware that they would introduce such a licensing change, in a bid to put pressure on AWS and get them to contract with MongoDB. It didn't work.
kemitchell 8y ago
I was told on Twitter that the DocumentDB project is over two years old at Amazon. Mongo 3.6, the version whose API they claim to clone, came out about 15 months ago.

paulddraper 8y ago

You're absolutely right. AWS is not known to move that fast (though they are known to move faster if they think the competition is outpacing them). This undoubtedly had been in the works as Aurora for MongoDB. The timing is suspect, sure. But one look at Aurora for MySQL and Aurora for PostgreSQL will tell you that AWS would've gotten around to it regardless of licensing.

threeseed 8y ago

Reverse engineering the MongoDB API, getting it to work on Aurora storage engine, verifying existing CLI/drivers work and having it all scaleable and supportable. At least a few months work there. Even for Amazon.

robbyt 8y ago

Lawyers move slower than software engineers. There could have been years of exchanges between the company prior to this.

maximilianburke 8y ago

MongoDB could have been having conversations with Amazon prior, trying to negotiate a licensing agreement. These negotiations take a lot of time at corporations, I could easily see someone saying "hey, MongoDB's starting to squeeze us, let's get some people working on Plan B before they cut us off".

athrun 8y ago

Difficult to know for sure, but it's probable that MongoDB made Amazon aware that they would introduce such a licensing change, in a bid to put pressure on AWS and get them to contract with MongoDB. It didn't work.

kemitchell 8y ago

I was told on Twitter that the DocumentDB project is over two years old at Amazon. Mongo 3.6, the version whose API they claim to clone, came out about 15 months ago.