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No, the open source community is not about giving free labor to Amazon. But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about members of the open sourc

No, the open source community is not about giving free labor to Amazon. But that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about members of the open source community taking free labor from the community and then pulling back on the open source promise. As someone in the same boat, I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used. If something is licensed as MIT, I expect it to stay MIT. Furthermore, the presumption that users of the software are now required to contribute back flies in the face of the agreement. I'm not against people using a license like this. It does however seems a slap in the face to change the license after benefiting from the fact that you are releasing an open source product. tl;dr: It's a bait and switch, and dislike it.

JoshTriplett 7y ago
It also pulls the rug out from under other projects depending on them.
- amenod 7y ago
  Not really. The limit is clearly defined (if you are using it as DB, there is no change). If you allow users to create schemas, then it's a different thing, but I'm guessing there is no such project.
amenod 7y ago
That is a valid point. Of course the question is, how big the contributions from the random people were. Judging by the list of contributors [0] a relatively small core contributed most, but I wasn't involved at any point so this is not a reliable assessment. [0] https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/graphs/contributors https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/graphs/contributors
- gtirloni 7y ago
  Code is not the only type of contribution in an open source project.
toyg 7y ago
> But that's not what we are talking about. No, that's exactly what we are talking about. The threat of big cloud players swallowing up the SaaS model that powered opensource to the current highs, is very real. Until Amazon and friends were mostly interested in powering the low-level bits, it wasn't a big deal; but now they are moving up the stack and pulverizing the small businesses that drive the OSS ecosystem. That is a problem. The AGPL was supposed to protect against this sort of play and it really isn't, for various reasons. Personally, I welcome the attempts at innovating in this area particularly when they are clearly well-intentioned like this one. > I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used Unless you've waived your rights, you can exert your copyright and block any such move.

JoshTriplett 7y ago

It also pulls the rug out from under other projects depending on them.

amenod 7y ago
Not really. The limit is clearly defined (if you are using it as DB, there is no change). If you allow users to create schemas, then it's a different thing, but I'm guessing there is no such project.

amenod 7y ago

That is a valid point. Of course the question is, how big the contributions from the random people were. Judging by the list of contributors [0] a relatively small core contributed most, but I wasn't involved at any point so this is not a reliable assessment. [0] https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/graphs/contributors https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach/graphs/contributors

gtirloni 7y ago
Code is not the only type of contribution in an open source project.

toyg 7y ago

> But that's not what we are talking about. No, that's exactly what we are talking about. The threat of big cloud players swallowing up the SaaS model that powered opensource to the current highs, is very real. Until Amazon and friends were mostly interested in powering the low-level bits, it wasn't a big deal; but now they are moving up the stack and pulverizing the small businesses that drive the OSS ecosystem. That is a problem. The AGPL was supposed to protect against this sort of play and it really isn't, for various reasons. Personally, I welcome the attempts at innovating in this area particularly when they are clearly well-intentioned like this one. > I'd hate to see a project I contributed to change it's license to something that limits how the applications can be used Unless you've waived your rights, you can exert your copyright and block any such move.