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I am really torn about this news. On one hand MongoDB's change of license is a clear attempt to discriminate against a set of users, so it is clearly non-free.

by amenod 8y ago

I am really torn about this news. On one hand MongoDB's change of license is a clear attempt to discriminate against a set of users, so it is clearly non-free. On the other hand I know it is really difficult to make a sustainable business by developing an opensource product, especially since there are companies (like Amazon) who will take successful opensource projects and offer them as a service, or simply offer a compatible service (which is what Amazon did now). Discriminating against such uses doesn't seem wrong to me since they clearly harm the creators and maintainers in their effort to actually make some income from the project. There is a really limited set of options for opensource companies and I have yet to see an opensource product that would bring their creators enough money to sustain it on aything else than their goodwill. RedHat doesn't count, because they packaged other people's opensource and sold the package to enterprise. They did contribute back and even started and maintained some of the projects (which makes them "good guys" in my eyes), but any other opensource project will have difficulties replicating that success. EDIT: I would really appreciate discussion instead of (down)votes.

kstrauser 8y ago
PostgreSQL is used much more widely than MongoDB, and has a much freer license. Lots of people make money developing and supporting PostgreSQL. I also content that MongoDB built their project on top of a mountain of Free Software. It rings a little hollow to me when they complain that others are making money from using their software, when the MongoDB team is also making money from using others' software. Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim, or...
- threeseed 8y ago
  > Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling on Linux. On OSX and Windows it uses other toolchains. And your point goes against the entire spirit of open source. No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be criticised by the community.
  - kstrauser 8y ago
    > MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling on Linux. Good call. They should also be contributing back to those toolchains. > No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be criticised by the community. That right there is what we call irony. This is precisely what Mongo is trying to do.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      So if I build an application on Linux I should be contributing back to Linux, GCC, Clang, CMake and the hundreds or thousands of libraries I use. That makes absolutely no sense.
      - kstrauser 8y ago
        If you’re building your application on Linux and complaining that other make money off it (in accordance with your license), then yes, I absolutely expect that you better be supporting all the people whose work you’re building off of.
    - bb611 8y ago
      That's not really what they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is make it so challenging to host MongoDB as a service that cloud providers can't do it. They implemented it with an absurd requirement forcing contributions to open source, but the intent is not to improve open source, it's to end regain market control.
      - kstrauser 8y ago
        I totally agree. I’m convinced of it. The license shenanigans are just the means to that end.
- amenod 8y ago
  > ... Lots of people make money developing and supporting PostgreSQL. Postgres is definitely an actively developed and very useful project, but I must admit I have no idea how the development is financed. It seems there is a non-profit collecting donations, for example EnterpriseDB seems to employ "key community members" [0]. And Amazon is listed among sponsors [1], though it is weird that they are so low on the list (from my limited experience most cloud use of Postgres is via RDS @ AWS). So basically donations? [0] https://www.enterprisedb.com/enterprisedb-community-participation https://www.enterprisedb.com/enterprisedb-community-particip... [1] https://appdevelopermagazine.com/why-citus-data-is--donating-1-percent-equity-to-postgresql-foundations/ https://appdevelopermagazine.com/why-citus-data-is--donating...
kklimonda 8y ago
> Discriminating against such uses doesn't seem wrong to me since they clearly harm the creators and maintainers in their effort to actually make some income from the project It may not be wrong, but it does stand in opposition to the definition of Open Source and Free Software (at least as defined by bodies that RedHat and many others see as authoritative on that subject). So perhaps we could call MongoDB what it is - a proprietary software with shared code license that lets you run their code for free in some scenarios. I think that wouldn't sell to the investors and VCs as well as open source though, and would make it harder to build a community around. And then we haven't even touched on the CLA required to make contributions to the project - I have no idea how many people and companies contributed changes or fixes to MongoDB, but they must be pretty happy right now. Does that mean you can't have a business built around an open source project? It does seem that way to me, especially if we talk about something that scales in a number of employees and revenue. I do think that you could bootstrap a small, consultancy-style business, built around your open source technology, but definitely not something that VCs would drool over. Also, on a related note, I'd like to add something that's rough around the edges and I'm sure someone else could make a much better case of it, but well, here I go. There has always been a discussion on Free Software vs. Open Source [1] where the advocates of Free Software are arguing that Open Source does not protect freedom of the users (and communities) while Open Source advocates opposed that view with argument that Open Source is even more free and pure than Free Software. In my opinion, the recent changes made by MongoDB, Redis Labs [2] and even Elastic [3] show that without ethics backing the movement, the movement itself is in danger of having its core believes changed. If some software can't be made in a spirit of Free Software (or even Open Source) then perhaps it should be made as proprietary software with shared code license - it's not as cool, and perhaps will make the adoption harder, but at least it's more sincere. [1] For example, see Stallman's "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" article https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... [2] Calling their non-free licenses "Apache-2 + Common Clause" is a pretty disingenuous move, and the only reason why I see it less bad than what Mongo did being the fact that it only affects a subset of previously-closed extensions IIRC. [3] Their announcement on x-pack did not call it open source, however the entire press release was full of "open source" this and "open source" - it felt like they tried really hard to ride the Open Source train without actually riding it.

by amenod 8y ago

kstrauser 8y ago

PostgreSQL is used much more widely than MongoDB, and has a much freer license. Lots of people make money developing and supporting PostgreSQL. I also content that MongoDB built their project on top of a mountain of Free Software. It rings a little hollow to me when they complain that others are making money from using their software, when the MongoDB team is also making money from using others' software. Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim, or...

threeseed 8y ago
> Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling on Linux. On OSX and Windows it uses other toolchains. And your point goes against the entire spirit of open source. No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be criticised by the community.
- kstrauser 8y ago
  > MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling on Linux. Good call. They should also be contributing back to those toolchains. > No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be criticised by the community. That right there is what we call irony. This is precisely what Mongo is trying to do.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    So if I build an application on Linux I should be contributing back to Linux, GCC, Clang, CMake and the hundreds or thousands of libraries I use. That makes absolutely no sense.
    - kstrauser 8y ago
      If you’re building your application on Linux and complaining that other make money off it (in accordance with your license), then yes, I absolutely expect that you better be supporting all the people whose work you’re building off of.
  - bb611 8y ago
    That's not really what they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is make it so challenging to host MongoDB as a service that cloud providers can't do it. They implemented it with an absurd requirement forcing contributions to open source, but the intent is not to improve open source, it's to end regain market control.
    - kstrauser 8y ago
      I totally agree. I’m convinced of it. The license shenanigans are just the means to that end.
amenod 8y ago
> ... Lots of people make money developing and supporting PostgreSQL. Postgres is definitely an actively developed and very useful project, but I must admit I have no idea how the development is financed. It seems there is a non-profit collecting donations, for example EnterpriseDB seems to employ "key community members" [0]. And Amazon is listed among sponsors [1], though it is weird that they are so low on the list (from my limited experience most cloud use of Postgres is via RDS @ AWS). So basically donations? [0] https://www.enterprisedb.com/enterprisedb-community-participation https://www.enterprisedb.com/enterprisedb-community-particip... [1] https://appdevelopermagazine.com/why-citus-data-is--donating-1-percent-equity-to-postgresql-foundations/ https://appdevelopermagazine.com/why-citus-data-is--donating...

kklimonda 8y ago

> Discriminating against such uses doesn't seem wrong to me since they clearly harm the creators and maintainers in their effort to actually make some income from the project It may not be wrong, but it does stand in opposition to the definition of Open Source and Free Software (at least as defined by bodies that RedHat and many others see as authoritative on that subject). So perhaps we could call MongoDB what it is - a proprietary software with shared code license that lets you run their code for free in some scenarios. I think that wouldn't sell to the investors and VCs as well as open source though, and would make it harder to build a community around. And then we haven't even touched on the CLA required to make contributions to the project - I have no idea how many people and companies contributed changes or fixes to MongoDB, but they must be pretty happy right now. Does that mean you can't have a business built around an open source project? It does seem that way to me, especially if we talk about something that scales in a number of employees and revenue. I do think that you could bootstrap a small, consultancy-style business, built around your open source technology, but definitely not something that VCs would drool over. Also, on a related note, I'd like to add something that's rough around the edges and I'm sure someone else could make a much better case of it, but well, here I go. There has always been a discussion on Free Software vs. Open Source [1] where the advocates of Free Software are arguing that Open Source does not protect freedom of the users (and communities) while Open Source advocates opposed that view with argument that Open Source is even more free and pure than Free Software. In my opinion, the recent changes made by MongoDB, Redis Labs [2] and even Elastic [3] show that without ethics backing the movement, the movement itself is in danger of having its core believes changed. If some software can't be made in a spirit of Free Software (or even Open Source) then perhaps it should be made as proprietary software with shared code license - it's not as cool, and perhaps will make the adoption harder, but at least it's more sincere. [1] For example, see Stallman's "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" article https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.... [2] Calling their non-free licenses "Apache-2 + Common Clause" is a pretty disingenuous move, and the only reason why I see it less bad than what Mongo did being the fact that it only affects a subset of previously-closed extensions IIRC. [3] Their announcement on x-pack did not call it open source, however the entire press release was full of "open source" this and "open source" - it felt like they tried really hard to ride the Open Source train without actually riding it.