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I'm not super surprised that RHEL removed Mongo because of the licensing change. I don't completely understand why people getting upset about the licensing, how

I'm not super surprised that RHEL removed Mongo because of the licensing change. I don't completely understand why people getting upset about the licensing, however. As far as I know, MongoDB is still open source. If you are a hosting provider offering "MongoDB as a Service" the provider then needs to pay a licensing fee to Mongo. This seems ok to me, with the logic that MongoDB is a business that needs to make money. I am not an expert in licensing, but how is this any different than paying for a license of RHEL vs using CentOS? I'm genuinely curious as to how this is against open source beliefs.

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e1ven 8y ago
It is not generally considered Open Source. The new license was rejected by the OSI, which is generally regarded as the defacto arbitrator of if something is OSS or not. It was also rejected by Red Hat and Debian as being not open source. There are various issues with the license, including the scope of what they considered tainted. You could read the mailing list archives on the subject, or there appears to be a summary at https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523 The newly submitted v2 of the license hasn't resolved (m)any of the problems that the OSI has raised, and isn't expected to be approved either.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  OSI has not rejected SSPL, v1 or v2. Mongo substituted for v2 in review, and v2 is still in debate. To my knowledge, OSI has never affirmatively rejected a license. A proposal to change its process to include rejection, which came up during SSPL review, remains pending.
matthewmacleod 8y ago
As far as I know, MongoDB is still open source. If you are a hosting provider offering "MongoDB as a Service" the provider then needs to pay a licensing fee to Mongo. To me, those are two contradictory statements. The software is not open-source if its license restricts the purposes for which it can be used, QED.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  SSPL does not prohibit any kind of use. Section 13 attaches a copyleft condition to use in provision of the software as a hosted service.
SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
You're free to offer RHEL as a service without paying a fee. Most people do it through CentOS, but that's not a requirement of the GPL license; you have every right to copy the exact RHEL source code, build it, and run the resulting blob as a service for customers. The only things you can't do are call it "Red Hat" and use the Red Hat logo.

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e1ven 8y ago

It is not generally considered Open Source. The new license was rejected by the OSI, which is generally regarded as the defacto arbitrator of if something is OSS or not. It was also rejected by Red Hat and Debian as being not open source. There are various issues with the license, including the scope of what they considered tainted. You could read the mailing list archives on the subject, or there appears to be a summary at https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523 The newly submitted v2 of the license hasn't resolved (m)any of the problems that the OSI has raised, and isn't expected to be approved either.

kemitchell 8y ago
OSI has not rejected SSPL, v1 or v2. Mongo substituted for v2 in review, and v2 is still in debate. To my knowledge, OSI has never affirmatively rejected a license. A proposal to change its process to include rejection, which came up during SSPL review, remains pending.

matthewmacleod 8y ago

As far as I know, MongoDB is still open source. If you are a hosting provider offering "MongoDB as a Service" the provider then needs to pay a licensing fee to Mongo. To me, those are two contradictory statements. The software is not open-source if its license restricts the purposes for which it can be used, QED.

kemitchell 8y ago
SSPL does not prohibit any kind of use. Section 13 attaches a copyleft condition to use in provision of the software as a hosted service.

SpicyLemonZest 8y ago

You're free to offer RHEL as a service without paying a fee. Most people do it through CentOS, but that's not a requirement of the GPL license; you have every right to copy the exact RHEL source code, build it, and run the resulting blob as a service for customers. The only things you can't do are call it "Red Hat" and use the Red Hat logo.