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Can somebody tell me what is wrong is SSPL? I just don't understand what this hostility is all about. A company creates a crucial infrastructure component which

by trpc 7y ago

Can somebody tell me what is wrong is SSPL? I just don't understand what this hostility is all about. A company creates a crucial infrastructure component which is a database, open sources it, everybody can use it for free, cloud vendors started just installing it on their servers or making clones of it and making profit off it, everybody is using a component that took years and millions of dollars to develop but the company that created it cannot even get profit from its own product. I just can't understand why would a company open sources its products if this is the result. The product is free to use, but for profit entities using this product MUST pay the maker if they are using it as a SaaS which is a zero effort operation. This just doesn't happen in any other industry, if you go to a baker, you must pay for the bread, you can't in most cases even ask how this bread was made or know for sure that price was fair or not, and mind you this is just slice of bread, while in technology it takes years of experience and knowledge just to create something as crucial as a database, and yet people expect everything to be free, very liberal licensing to even profit from the product without sharing it with the original maker. I don't even like or even respect MongoDB as a database, but the amount of hostility towards anybody trying to make money off a FREE and OPEN SOURCE complex software is totally beyond me.

alluro2 7y ago
I, too, don't understand the hostility...It's not like they pulled parts of the code out and closed it (looking at you, Elastic), or even have "enterprise" paid features - they just want to prevent AWS et al. from hugely profiting off of their work, which is, in the long term, bad for everyone involved except partially AWS who would have to pay to sell it, thus keeping the development going...I'd expect this to be something that OS community would stand behind, as long as it's very defined and narrow-scoped like it seems it is to me...If anyone could give more color to explain the reasons for hostility, I'd be grateful
tedivm 7y ago
I don't think your baker metaphor holds up though, because a major component of open source software is that people outside of the companies support it. A better metaphor would be if the bakery had started by using volunteers to create all the recipes, and then the baker decided that people could only use those recipes if they followed his terms so that the baker could stop other bakeries from competing. This obviously upsets the people who contributed to the recipes thinking they would be open for anyone to use. Mongo started as an open source project, used that openness to build community (and indeed their product itself), and then pulled the rug out from under everyone to gain a competitive advantage.
- trpc 7y ago
  If MongoDB started as a community OSS then I am wrong in this case, but about other open-source companies companies that want to protect their rights in not getting exploited by other for-profit entities that might use the product and profit from it? even AGPL guaranties nothing in most real-world cases.
  - tedivm 7y ago
    Well here's the question- how are they getting exploited? If I release code for people to use for free, and people use it, where's the exploitation? I can understand why some people would not choose to give their code away for free, but trying to be both open source while having the benefits of being closed source seems like they are trying to exploit the open source community.
    - trpc 7y ago
      this is totally beyond me. So a company making a profit from a product made by another company by just hosting it is not exploitation? Does this happen in any industry? A company that makes product for free and another takes it as is and sells it is not an exploitation?
      - theamk 7y ago
        People sell Linux laptops, which has Ubuntu “as is”. This is not generally an exploitation.
        DangitBobby 7y ago
        That behavior also falls directly in line with Canonical's intended distribution of Ubuntu and the business model that surrounds it. Not quite apples to apples.
      - tedivm 7y ago
        It isn't exploitation because it is literally part of the definition of open source that other people can use and profit off of the work. Linux has made more than one company rich- do we think Red Hat is exploiting Linux? It's also unfair to pretend that companies who are setting up managed services are universally not contributing back- by open sourcing their code MongoDB has been able to benefit off of the issues that these other companies have found, often without having to do more than review a pull request. There are benefits of open sourcing your code, just as their are downsides. Companies like MongoDB can't have their cake and eat it to- by closing their source code like they have they are exploiting the open source community. They spent years taking the benefits of the community, with the community having given them these benefits with the assumption that the community would be able to benefit from the openness of their code. MongoDB deciding to no longer offer a true open source option for their software is exploitative and a slap in the face to every open source developer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Software licensed under the SSPL is not “free” in either sense of the word. It’s not free as in beer, because I must pay to use it. It’s not free as in speech, because it violates Freedom 0 of the four fundamental freedoms [1]: I can’t run it as I wish, for any purpose. More practically, MongoDB offers their own managed hosting service. Are they paying the Linux Foundation for the OS they’re almost certainly running? How about nginx / HAProxy / Let’s Encrypt / whatever else they’re using in their stack? This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with charging for software, but it’s pretty hypocritical to point their finger at others for profiting off free software whilst doing so themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
- trpc 7y ago
  afaik the user doesn't pay for MongoDB, you can use it freely, read the code, modify; if I understand correctly SSPL is basically AGPL/GPL but with clause that cloud vendors that want to use this product to provide a SaaS version must pay to the maker. I don't think this is any unfair esepcially if this project was made from scratch by the maker and not a fork off another OSS project.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Cloud vendors are "users", too. I'm not saying it's fair or unfair, just that it's not free. MongoDB is of course within their rights to charge to use their software, but they're not somehow being exploited by those who profit from it without paying — after they offered it for free! — when they themselves profit off the labor of the same people without compensating them. Put another way: Amazon is a corporate member of the Linux Foundation. Why is it okay for MongoDB to profit off Amazon's labor without paying, but not vice versa?
    - trpc 7y ago
      Okay, what if I want to offer total freedom to users but not for other competing companies? There is no single license that can protect a company that creates a FOSS product. It's just ridiculous that a company creates a product for free and another uses it as is and sells it for profit by just "hosting" it. Esepcially for the case of a database, the only way to make money is by having managed service or licesning it to cloud vendors. I can't think of any other way of monetizing such a product For the case of Amazon sponsoring linux, it's in the very interest of Amazon that Linux stays alive and active because all their billions from AWS comes by running linux kernel as infrastructure, not to mention having the advantage to influence the components being added and maintained that result directly in more profit for them. Linux foundation is totally different in its structure and goals from a for-profit company like Mongo.
danShumway 7y ago
The only hostility is because people are trying to continue to push MongoDB as Open Source. It's fine for MongoDB to be proprietary, lots of good software is proprietary. It's just not Open Source. To your baker analogy, I don't have any objection to a baker withholding their recipe. But if a bunch of bakers want to share recipes, and they form a special supermarket where only these recipe-included products will be sold, why is it considered hostility for them to exclude a product that doesn't make its recipe freely available? Nobody's being mean to MongoDB. Even with Homebrew, MongoDB can still distribute its own source. It's just that MonboDB doesn't belong in the same store aisle that they used to be in. People are only getting ticked that MongoDB is trying to position itself as some kind of open source savior, that its advocating that MongoDB should still be allowed into the recipe-included bakery chain, even though it's not following the same rules. If I run a vegan bakery and I don't include sausages, that's not me being mean to the meat industry. If I run an Open Source repository and I don't include proprietary software, then what part of that is hostile?

by trpc 7y ago

alluro2 7y ago

I, too, don't understand the hostility...It's not like they pulled parts of the code out and closed it (looking at you, Elastic), or even have "enterprise" paid features - they just want to prevent AWS et al. from hugely profiting off of their work, which is, in the long term, bad for everyone involved except partially AWS who would have to pay to sell it, thus keeping the development going...I'd expect this to be something that OS community would stand behind, as long as it's very defined and narrow-scoped like it seems it is to me...If anyone could give more color to explain the reasons for hostility, I'd be grateful

tedivm 7y ago

I don't think your baker metaphor holds up though, because a major component of open source software is that people outside of the companies support it. A better metaphor would be if the bakery had started by using volunteers to create all the recipes, and then the baker decided that people could only use those recipes if they followed his terms so that the baker could stop other bakeries from competing. This obviously upsets the people who contributed to the recipes thinking they would be open for anyone to use. Mongo started as an open source project, used that openness to build community (and indeed their product itself), and then pulled the rug out from under everyone to gain a competitive advantage.

trpc 7y ago
If MongoDB started as a community OSS then I am wrong in this case, but about other open-source companies companies that want to protect their rights in not getting exploited by other for-profit entities that might use the product and profit from it? even AGPL guaranties nothing in most real-world cases.
- tedivm 7y ago
  Well here's the question- how are they getting exploited? If I release code for people to use for free, and people use it, where's the exploitation? I can understand why some people would not choose to give their code away for free, but trying to be both open source while having the benefits of being closed source seems like they are trying to exploit the open source community.
  - trpc 7y ago
    this is totally beyond me. So a company making a profit from a product made by another company by just hosting it is not exploitation? Does this happen in any industry? A company that makes product for free and another takes it as is and sells it is not an exploitation?
    - theamk 7y ago
      People sell Linux laptops, which has Ubuntu “as is”. This is not generally an exploitation.
      - DangitBobby 7y ago
        That behavior also falls directly in line with Canonical's intended distribution of Ubuntu and the business model that surrounds it. Not quite apples to apples.
    - tedivm 7y ago
      It isn't exploitation because it is literally part of the definition of open source that other people can use and profit off of the work. Linux has made more than one company rich- do we think Red Hat is exploiting Linux? It's also unfair to pretend that companies who are setting up managed services are universally not contributing back- by open sourcing their code MongoDB has been able to benefit off of the issues that these other companies have found, often without having to do more than review a pull request. There are benefits of open sourcing your code, just as their are downsides. Companies like MongoDB can't have their cake and eat it to- by closing their source code like they have they are exploiting the open source community. They spent years taking the benefits of the community, with the community having given them these benefits with the assumption that the community would be able to benefit from the openness of their code. MongoDB deciding to no longer offer a true open source option for their software is exploitative and a slap in the face to every open source developer.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jakelazaroff 7y ago

Software licensed under the SSPL is not “free” in either sense of the word. It’s not free as in beer, because I must pay to use it. It’s not free as in speech, because it violates Freedom 0 of the four fundamental freedoms [1]: I can’t run it as I wish, for any purpose. More practically, MongoDB offers their own managed hosting service. Are they paying the Linux Foundation for the OS they’re almost certainly running? How about nginx / HAProxy / Let’s Encrypt / whatever else they’re using in their stack? This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with charging for software, but it’s pretty hypocritical to point their finger at others for profiting off free software whilst doing so themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition

trpc 7y ago
afaik the user doesn't pay for MongoDB, you can use it freely, read the code, modify; if I understand correctly SSPL is basically AGPL/GPL but with clause that cloud vendors that want to use this product to provide a SaaS version must pay to the maker. I don't think this is any unfair esepcially if this project was made from scratch by the maker and not a fork off another OSS project.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Cloud vendors are "users", too. I'm not saying it's fair or unfair, just that it's not free. MongoDB is of course within their rights to charge to use their software, but they're not somehow being exploited by those who profit from it without paying — after they offered it for free! — when they themselves profit off the labor of the same people without compensating them. Put another way: Amazon is a corporate member of the Linux Foundation. Why is it okay for MongoDB to profit off Amazon's labor without paying, but not vice versa?
  - trpc 7y ago
    Okay, what if I want to offer total freedom to users but not for other competing companies? There is no single license that can protect a company that creates a FOSS product. It's just ridiculous that a company creates a product for free and another uses it as is and sells it for profit by just "hosting" it. Esepcially for the case of a database, the only way to make money is by having managed service or licesning it to cloud vendors. I can't think of any other way of monetizing such a product For the case of Amazon sponsoring linux, it's in the very interest of Amazon that Linux stays alive and active because all their billions from AWS comes by running linux kernel as infrastructure, not to mention having the advantage to influence the components being added and maintained that result directly in more profit for them. Linux foundation is totally different in its structure and goals from a for-profit company like Mongo.

danShumway 7y ago

The only hostility is because people are trying to continue to push MongoDB as Open Source. It's fine for MongoDB to be proprietary, lots of good software is proprietary. It's just not Open Source. To your baker analogy, I don't have any objection to a baker withholding their recipe. But if a bunch of bakers want to share recipes, and they form a special supermarket where only these recipe-included products will be sold, why is it considered hostility for them to exclude a product that doesn't make its recipe freely available? Nobody's being mean to MongoDB. Even with Homebrew, MongoDB can still distribute its own source. It's just that MonboDB doesn't belong in the same store aisle that they used to be in. People are only getting ticked that MongoDB is trying to position itself as some kind of open source savior, that its advocating that MongoDB should still be allowed into the recipe-included bakery chain, even though it's not following the same rules. If I run a vegan bakery and I don't include sausages, that's not me being mean to the meat industry. If I run an Open Source repository and I don't include proprietary software, then what part of that is hostile?