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> Whereas the only legally safe way to use MongoDB is to pay MongoDB Inc. to host it. This is clearly not the case. Given a) the text of the license itself, an

> Whereas the only legally safe way to use MongoDB is to pay MongoDB Inc. to host it. This is clearly not the case. Given a) the text of the license itself, and b) the fact that people still use MongoDB. I think what you meant to say was “I cannot provide MongoDB as a service without open sourcing the rest of what I use directly to provide that service”. In other words, if I want to sell the usage of software which I don’t have the copyright to(remember, open source software may be free, but it’s still owned by somebody), then I have to give my source away as well. It doesn’t say “Thou shalt not compete,” the way the commons clause does. You can still provide Mongo as a service. You can still do anything you want with the software, but you might have to open source the rest of your stack. Honestly, it’s not like Mongo didn’t have a lawyer look at the license (ie write the thing). If it was as horrrible and perilous as you say, they couldn’t use it because all the lawyers of all the other companies who use Mongo would get up in arms. The only “safety” you lose is that of owning the copyright to closed source software, which if you really care about that, then why do you care how “closed source” Mongo chose to be?

colejohnson66 6y ago
Minor nitpick: > b) the fact that people still use MongoDB. Just because people are using something doesn’t mean they’re doing so legally.
pritambaral 6y ago
> ... the text of the license itself ... I'd like to refer you again to the three links I cited in my parent post. > ... the fact that people still use MongoDB That is no basis for legality. If we're to use popularity as a measure, I'd refer to my classic argument about the popularity of competing religions that each denounce the other. > I think what you meant to say was ... No. As I've been saying all along in this thread, the license is legally-unenforceable. But you seem to be insistent on this other point, so I'll take the bait, for now, and hopefully I'll do a good enough job of illustrating my point this time. > "I cannot provide MongoDB as a service without open sourcing the rest of what I use directly to provide that service" 1. "open sourcing" != releasing under the SSPL, which is what's demanded by the SSPL. The SSPL is not an open source license. 2. "... use directly to provide that service": this falls under contract law, not copyright law. Licenses fall under copyright law, not contract law. Licenses dictating terms beyond the scope of the copyrighted work, which is what the SSPL does, is copyright abuse and legally invalid. Copyleft licenses, including the GPL family, work strictly within copyright law; the terms they dictate apply only to the copyrighted work. Yes, derivatives of copyrighted work fall under the same copyright. No, "... use directly to provide that service" does not qualify as derivative work and thus does not fall under the copyright of the original work. > ... didn’t have a lawyer look at the license (ie write the thing). Lawyers across the world write legal briefs, notices, claims, affidavits, contracts etc. and lose all the time. Simply being written by a lawyer does not make something valid or correct. > If it was as horrrible and perilous as you say, they couldn’t use it because all the lawyers of all the other companies who use Mongo would get up in arms. Most users of MongoDB do not do carry out due diligence before using it anyway, or, historically, MongoDB wouldn't have had as many users in the first place. For a neutral example: companies and institutions across the world use pirated works all the time, and not because they actively want to tempt legal trouble. > The only “safety” you lose is that of owning the copyright to closed source software ... This is not how open source licenses work — open source licenses do not confer ownership of copyright by mere usage — so I don't know what your point is. Perhaps you were confused by how MongoDB has in the past demanded (and probably still does) copyright transfer before accepting contributions from outside, but, I assure you, that has nothing to do with open source licensing.
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  >"... use directly to provide that service": this falls under contract law, not copyright law. Licenses fall under copyright law, not contract law. Licenses dictating terms beyond the scope of the copyrighted work, which is what the SSPL does, is copyright abuse and legally invalid. Copyleft licenses, including the GPL family, work strictly within copyright law; the terms they dictate apply only to the copyrighted work. Yes, derivatives of copyrighted work fall under the same copyright. No, "... use directly to provide that service" does not qualify as derivative work and thus does not fall under the copyright of the original work. I think that there's some room here. The links that you gave had two examples, the Lasercomb case and the Sandisk case. The SSPL isn't like either of those. From your first link: > For example, in Lasercomb, the license agreement required the licensee to > agree not to develop a competitive computer-aided design program for 99 > years. Lasercomb America v. Reynolds. 911 F.2d 970, 15 USPQ2d 1846 (4th > Cir. 1990). In Practice Management Information Corp. v. American Medical > Ass'n 121 F.3d 516 (9th Cir. 1997) the AMA licensed “CPT” health care > codes (in which the AMA claimed a copyright) on a condition that the > licensee not use any other such competing codes. In Assessment > Technologies v. WIREdata. 350 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2003), the copyright > holder tried to limit the licensee’s access to the licensee’s own data > stored using the software. This defense is almost always applied to > prevent a copyright holder from leveraging its copyright to impose > anti-competitive practices. In other words, what we're looking at here is, "Now that you have accepted our license terms, you can't build a competing software, with no out" What the SSPL says (paraphrasing) is "If you can't offer our product as SaSS on an SSPL stack, then you can't offer it (see 12. No Surrender of Others Freedom)." It doesn't say, "by using our software, you are not allowed to build a competing product." Let's look at SanDisk: >SanDisk had a patent licensing program that required any licensee to provide a grant-back license to any subsequently-developed patents in the same field of use. Two courts examined SanDisk's program under both the antitrust and patent misuse angles. In other words, SanDisk said, "if you use our license, we can use anything else in this space that you license." MongoDB is not saying, "now that you have licensed Mongo, you MUST SSPL regardless of whether you are currently using Mongo." Again, point 12 comes into play here. You are allowed to simply /not/ use Mongo. You have an out. The requirement of having a stack under SSPL or compatible license is a precondition for being allowed to provide Mongo as a service, not a limitation of what you can do after the fact. In other words, if the company sued over SSPL can't or won't release their stack, then they just can't provide Mongo as a service. That is, I think an enforceable outcome within the bounds of copyright: "if you do X, you can't use our copyrighted material." Thus I think your point of the SSPL being unenforceable is incorrect. Of course, this is interpretation, IANAL, and we won't truly know the result of this until it hits a court. >This is not how open source licenses work — open source licenses do not confer ownership of copyright by mere usage — so I don't know what your point is. You've misunderstood me. I mean that providers lose the ability to use closed source code in the providing of the service. The statement you were quoting was said with the presumption that "you" (in the general sense) were the provider of the service, who also owned the copyright to said closed source code used to provide said service, and that the thing lost was the ability to keep that software closed-source. >SSPL is not an open-source license What, because some committee says it isn't? Very well, open-source in the colloquial sense, as in "I can read the source code, modify it, and run it if I wish."

colejohnson66 6y ago

Minor nitpick: > b) the fact that people still use MongoDB. Just because people are using something doesn’t mean they’re doing so legally.

pritambaral 6y ago

> ... the text of the license itself ... I'd like to refer you again to the three links I cited in my parent post. > ... the fact that people still use MongoDB That is no basis for legality. If we're to use popularity as a measure, I'd refer to my classic argument about the popularity of competing religions that each denounce the other. > I think what you meant to say was ... No. As I've been saying all along in this thread, the license is legally-unenforceable. But you seem to be insistent on this other point, so I'll take the bait, for now, and hopefully I'll do a good enough job of illustrating my point this time. > "I cannot provide MongoDB as a service without open sourcing the rest of what I use directly to provide that service" 1. "open sourcing" != releasing under the SSPL, which is what's demanded by the SSPL. The SSPL is not an open source license. 2. "... use directly to provide that service": this falls under contract law, not copyright law. Licenses fall under copyright law, not contract law. Licenses dictating terms beyond the scope of the copyrighted work, which is what the SSPL does, is copyright abuse and legally invalid. Copyleft licenses, including the GPL family, work strictly within copyright law; the terms they dictate apply only to the copyrighted work. Yes, derivatives of copyrighted work fall under the same copyright. No, "... use directly to provide that service" does not qualify as derivative work and thus does not fall under the copyright of the original work. > ... didn’t have a lawyer look at the license (ie write the thing). Lawyers across the world write legal briefs, notices, claims, affidavits, contracts etc. and lose all the time. Simply being written by a lawyer does not make something valid or correct. > If it was as horrrible and perilous as you say, they couldn’t use it because all the lawyers of all the other companies who use Mongo would get up in arms. Most users of MongoDB do not do carry out due diligence before using it anyway, or, historically, MongoDB wouldn't have had as many users in the first place. For a neutral example: companies and institutions across the world use pirated works all the time, and not because they actively want to tempt legal trouble. > The only “safety” you lose is that of owning the copyright to closed source software ... This is not how open source licenses work — open source licenses do not confer ownership of copyright by mere usage — so I don't know what your point is. Perhaps you were confused by how MongoDB has in the past demanded (and probably still does) copyright transfer before accepting contributions from outside, but, I assure you, that has nothing to do with open source licensing.

Gollapalli 6y ago
>"... use directly to provide that service": this falls under contract law, not copyright law. Licenses fall under copyright law, not contract law. Licenses dictating terms beyond the scope of the copyrighted work, which is what the SSPL does, is copyright abuse and legally invalid. Copyleft licenses, including the GPL family, work strictly within copyright law; the terms they dictate apply only to the copyrighted work. Yes, derivatives of copyrighted work fall under the same copyright. No, "... use directly to provide that service" does not qualify as derivative work and thus does not fall under the copyright of the original work. I think that there's some room here. The links that you gave had two examples, the Lasercomb case and the Sandisk case. The SSPL isn't like either of those. From your first link: > For example, in Lasercomb, the license agreement required the licensee to > agree not to develop a competitive computer-aided design program for 99 > years. Lasercomb America v. Reynolds. 911 F.2d 970, 15 USPQ2d 1846 (4th > Cir. 1990). In Practice Management Information Corp. v. American Medical > Ass'n 121 F.3d 516 (9th Cir. 1997) the AMA licensed “CPT” health care > codes (in which the AMA claimed a copyright) on a condition that the > licensee not use any other such competing codes. In Assessment > Technologies v. WIREdata. 350 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2003), the copyright > holder tried to limit the licensee’s access to the licensee’s own data > stored using the software. This defense is almost always applied to > prevent a copyright holder from leveraging its copyright to impose > anti-competitive practices. In other words, what we're looking at here is, "Now that you have accepted our license terms, you can't build a competing software, with no out" What the SSPL says (paraphrasing) is "If you can't offer our product as SaSS on an SSPL stack, then you can't offer it (see 12. No Surrender of Others Freedom)." It doesn't say, "by using our software, you are not allowed to build a competing product." Let's look at SanDisk: >SanDisk had a patent licensing program that required any licensee to provide a grant-back license to any subsequently-developed patents in the same field of use. Two courts examined SanDisk's program under both the antitrust and patent misuse angles. In other words, SanDisk said, "if you use our license, we can use anything else in this space that you license." MongoDB is not saying, "now that you have licensed Mongo, you MUST SSPL regardless of whether you are currently using Mongo." Again, point 12 comes into play here. You are allowed to simply /not/ use Mongo. You have an out. The requirement of having a stack under SSPL or compatible license is a precondition for being allowed to provide Mongo as a service, not a limitation of what you can do after the fact. In other words, if the company sued over SSPL can't or won't release their stack, then they just can't provide Mongo as a service. That is, I think an enforceable outcome within the bounds of copyright: "if you do X, you can't use our copyrighted material." Thus I think your point of the SSPL being unenforceable is incorrect. Of course, this is interpretation, IANAL, and we won't truly know the result of this until it hits a court. >This is not how open source licenses work — open source licenses do not confer ownership of copyright by mere usage — so I don't know what your point is. You've misunderstood me. I mean that providers lose the ability to use closed source code in the providing of the service. The statement you were quoting was said with the presumption that "you" (in the general sense) were the provider of the service, who also owned the copyright to said closed source code used to provide said service, and that the thing lost was the ability to keep that software closed-source. >SSPL is not an open-source license What, because some committee says it isn't? Very well, open-source in the colloquial sense, as in "I can read the source code, modify it, and run it if I wish."