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> The BSL lets us hit our goals in a clean and low-impact way: it won’t change anyone’s ability to run Sentry at their company, but it will ensure that we are p

> The BSL lets us hit our goals in a clean and low-impact way: it won’t change anyone’s ability to run Sentry at their company, but it will ensure that we are protected from our work being used in an anti-competitive fashion I don't think this is accurate. It will ensure that Sentry is protected from its work being used in a competitive fashion. While the issues pointed out in the blog post are real, competing isn't "anti-competitive." The intent and the effect here is to reduce competition, not increase it.

squiggleblaz 7y ago
But they're not competing. They're not trying to do something similar in a more efficient way. They're parasites - genuinely, even literally. They're taking away the energy sentry needs to run themselves but, if they succeed too well, they will destroy their own capacity to run. Two people can compete. Tomatoes and people are complementary - it's nice to have both. Tapeworms and people are playing a game in which, if the people win, the tapeworms lose, and if the people lose, the tapeworms lose to.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
This ignores the nuance. It is to level the playing field. Sentry would not be able to compete against Amazon hosting their service and reaping the financial benefits, and nor should they have to (and to do so with Amazon's resources available to them would be a Herculean task). If you're not a fan of the model, roll your own codebase.
- troydavis 7y ago
  > Sentry would not be able to compete against Amazon hosting their service, and nor should they have to. If that's Sentry's opinion (and it seems like it is), that's fine, but that's not what "anti-competitive" means. The word for that is "competitive." (The specifics depend on the jurisdiction, but the behavior described by the FTC is what's widely considered "anti-competitive": https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices)
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    It's only competitive if you have a fighting chance. Me (as an indie dev) competing against Sentry is different than a $900 billion company competing against Sentry. Shouldn't it be a fair fight in the marketplace? There is no fair fight to be had against Amazon. Time for the rubber to meet the road. Pragmatism and revenue > philosophy. Can't pay the rent and groceries with platitudes about "open source" from a vocal minority while cloud providers reap what you've sown.
    - yabadabadoes 7y ago
      I think there is 24/7 user support and very different software consultant like support and AWS can't actually provide the latter even on a product they control. I don't really get what these growth startups are supposed to be and for people who contribute nothing back maybe buyer beware is fair.. But it is dishonest to create these company sponsored communities that convert after taking input from individual contributors. Plenty of people try to help a community with out considering that this kind of thing happens and these products compete directly with real open communities through this temporary branding.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        A project can be relicensed at any time. This is a known quantity (just as a commercial product's price or availability can change without notice). To think that because it is open source, all future versions will be open source, is naive at best. To expect contributors and project owners to not be compensated for their work (or not enact controls through licenses to protect their ability to monetize pieces of their work) to support a belief system (absolute "open source") is downright unacceptable. Open source was never about "free as in beer", it was about "free as in speech", which even in the civil rights sense is not absolute. Communities and ideas evolve, and it does a disservice to those who have contributed in a material way to the non-commercial software space to color them as heretics for trying to protect themselves from competitors with effectively unlimited resources.
        7y ago
- tracker1 7y ago
  While I agree with the statement, I think the tone may be a bit off-putting. In the end, this is precisely what the license change is trying to prevent. It's happened to several database companies at this point, and they're simply trying to hedge things off on competing SaaS providers (their commercial model). I know some may not like less than "Open Source" licenses, but the reality and practicality of the real world does at time necessitate it.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    I think a wide swath (very likely the majority) of the community is totally fine with not-open licenses. It’s the default condition for new code and I personally have zero issue with it. I think more people are put off by perceived bait-and-switch or claims that a given piece of tech is open (with all the benefits that come from that) while making it not actually open. If it’s a duck, call it a duck. If it’s a hunting decoy, don’t call it a duck.
DasIch 7y ago
It does reduce the competition of the "We provide Sentry as a Service" kind but it still allows people to create their own Sentry-like product of which they can also provide as a service. I think for customers having different companies have their own approaches to solving this problem is vastly preferable to having different companies solve the same problem in exactly the same way.
- tedivm 7y ago
  It would be cool if they started that way, but closing their source and pretending that it's to make the market more competitive is really a stretch.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    They aren't closing their source though, just making it against the license to use it as a hosted service. Example: Our company self-hosts sentry, this license won't effect us at all, we're still free to use and modify the source. We only use it internally - we don't sell "access" to it. --- This is cropping up more and more with various software companies. They _want_ to keep their source open. But people take the source, and just start selling it (Looking at you amazon) without actually contributing. It's one of those, "This is why we can't have nice things"
    - tedivm 7y ago
      "Open source" has a definition, and they are removing their project from that open source definition. Even their own blog post acknowledges that they are no longer open source.
      - squiggleblaz 7y ago
        How's it different from AGPL? It seems like AGPL creates certain restrictions on the internal order of a company which uses AGPL code for the benefit of the AGPLed code's community. And this licence is basically the same.
zeeg 7y ago
We agree that this language isn't correct and are going to publish an update. Thanks for pointing this out.
falcolas 7y ago
> I don't think this is accurate. Nor do I, but for slightly different reasons. > it won’t change anyone’s ability to run Sentry at their company I can't go up to a lawyer with years of experience trying and defending against BSL lawsuits and say "Is my usecase one Sentry can sue me for and win," because such a lawyer doesn't exist. At least with other licenses, their actual legal limitations are well known, through case law and court rulings. The BSL in contrast is a legal liability that is probably not worth betting a small company on. Sure, the Sentry of now might never do that - but if/when they're acquired for their patents and licenses that acquiring company may.
- SolarNet 7y ago
  > Sure, the Sentry of now might never do that - but if/when they're acquired for their patents and licenses that acquiring company may. And the three year conversion window gives you cover there. It's a question of will the Sentry of the next three years do that.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Not necessarily. There's nothing stopping an entity from suing you in 5 years for your use of Sentry in those intervening 3 years.

squiggleblaz 7y ago

But they're not competing. They're not trying to do something similar in a more efficient way. They're parasites - genuinely, even literally. They're taking away the energy sentry needs to run themselves but, if they succeed too well, they will destroy their own capacity to run. Two people can compete. Tomatoes and people are complementary - it's nice to have both. Tapeworms and people are playing a game in which, if the people win, the tapeworms lose, and if the people lose, the tapeworms lose to.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

This ignores the nuance. It is to level the playing field. Sentry would not be able to compete against Amazon hosting their service and reaping the financial benefits, and nor should they have to (and to do so with Amazon's resources available to them would be a Herculean task). If you're not a fan of the model, roll your own codebase.

troydavis 7y ago
> Sentry would not be able to compete against Amazon hosting their service, and nor should they have to. If that's Sentry's opinion (and it seems like it is), that's fine, but that's not what "anti-competitive" means. The word for that is "competitive." (The specifics depend on the jurisdiction, but the behavior described by the FTC is what's widely considered "anti-competitive": https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices)
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It's only competitive if you have a fighting chance. Me (as an indie dev) competing against Sentry is different than a $900 billion company competing against Sentry. Shouldn't it be a fair fight in the marketplace? There is no fair fight to be had against Amazon. Time for the rubber to meet the road. Pragmatism and revenue > philosophy. Can't pay the rent and groceries with platitudes about "open source" from a vocal minority while cloud providers reap what you've sown.
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
    I think there is 24/7 user support and very different software consultant like support and AWS can't actually provide the latter even on a product they control. I don't really get what these growth startups are supposed to be and for people who contribute nothing back maybe buyer beware is fair.. But it is dishonest to create these company sponsored communities that convert after taking input from individual contributors. Plenty of people try to help a community with out considering that this kind of thing happens and these products compete directly with real open communities through this temporary branding.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      A project can be relicensed at any time. This is a known quantity (just as a commercial product's price or availability can change without notice). To think that because it is open source, all future versions will be open source, is naive at best. To expect contributors and project owners to not be compensated for their work (or not enact controls through licenses to protect their ability to monetize pieces of their work) to support a belief system (absolute "open source") is downright unacceptable. Open source was never about "free as in beer", it was about "free as in speech", which even in the civil rights sense is not absolute. Communities and ideas evolve, and it does a disservice to those who have contributed in a material way to the non-commercial software space to color them as heretics for trying to protect themselves from competitors with effectively unlimited resources.
      - 7y ago
tracker1 7y ago
While I agree with the statement, I think the tone may be a bit off-putting. In the end, this is precisely what the license change is trying to prevent. It's happened to several database companies at this point, and they're simply trying to hedge things off on competing SaaS providers (their commercial model). I know some may not like less than "Open Source" licenses, but the reality and practicality of the real world does at time necessitate it.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I think a wide swath (very likely the majority) of the community is totally fine with not-open licenses. It’s the default condition for new code and I personally have zero issue with it. I think more people are put off by perceived bait-and-switch or claims that a given piece of tech is open (with all the benefits that come from that) while making it not actually open. If it’s a duck, call it a duck. If it’s a hunting decoy, don’t call it a duck.

DasIch 7y ago

It does reduce the competition of the "We provide Sentry as a Service" kind but it still allows people to create their own Sentry-like product of which they can also provide as a service. I think for customers having different companies have their own approaches to solving this problem is vastly preferable to having different companies solve the same problem in exactly the same way.

tedivm 7y ago
It would be cool if they started that way, but closing their source and pretending that it's to make the market more competitive is really a stretch.
- penagwin 7y ago
  They aren't closing their source though, just making it against the license to use it as a hosted service. Example: Our company self-hosts sentry, this license won't effect us at all, we're still free to use and modify the source. We only use it internally - we don't sell "access" to it. --- This is cropping up more and more with various software companies. They _want_ to keep their source open. But people take the source, and just start selling it (Looking at you amazon) without actually contributing. It's one of those, "This is why we can't have nice things"
  - tedivm 7y ago
    "Open source" has a definition, and they are removing their project from that open source definition. Even their own blog post acknowledges that they are no longer open source.
    - squiggleblaz 7y ago
      How's it different from AGPL? It seems like AGPL creates certain restrictions on the internal order of a company which uses AGPL code for the benefit of the AGPLed code's community. And this licence is basically the same.

zeeg 7y ago

We agree that this language isn't correct and are going to publish an update. Thanks for pointing this out.

falcolas 7y ago

> I don't think this is accurate. Nor do I, but for slightly different reasons. > it won’t change anyone’s ability to run Sentry at their company I can't go up to a lawyer with years of experience trying and defending against BSL lawsuits and say "Is my usecase one Sentry can sue me for and win," because such a lawyer doesn't exist. At least with other licenses, their actual legal limitations are well known, through case law and court rulings. The BSL in contrast is a legal liability that is probably not worth betting a small company on. Sure, the Sentry of now might never do that - but if/when they're acquired for their patents and licenses that acquiring company may.

SolarNet 7y ago
> Sure, the Sentry of now might never do that - but if/when they're acquired for their patents and licenses that acquiring company may. And the three year conversion window gives you cover there. It's a question of will the Sentry of the next three years do that.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Not necessarily. There's nothing stopping an entity from suing you in 5 years for your use of Sentry in those intervening 3 years.