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This is an interesting window into their business model. This could be a purely an altruistic decision, which businesses sometimes do, contrary to popular belie

by eloff 6y ago

This is an interesting window into their business model. This could be a purely an altruistic decision, which businesses sometimes do, contrary to popular belief. More likely it's a bet that wider adoption from making the clustered version free will drive more revenue through their managed database as a service offering. Which shows that their non-OSI open-source license is actually leading to more code and features being available free and (mostly) open-source. As opposed to gating features for paying customers. I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. The additional restriction in the timescaledb license that you can't run a paid database as a service offering affects hardly anyone negatively (AWS). It affects us all positively by providing a sustainable business model to support additional development and support of an open-source product we use. Win-win if ever there was one. I'd like to see more open-source and closed-source companies consider this model.

zrail 6y ago
> I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. Where "we" is defined as an extremely vocal minority on HN. I don't think most people take issue with licenses like this Timescale license or the BSL.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yes, that's probably true. Still vocal minorities tends to wield outsized power by virtue of being vocal.
- Reelin 6y ago
  I don't think (most) people take issue with source available licenses per se, but rather attempts to misapply the term open source to them. The Timescale license is great if it allows them to provide source code and a free product while still operating a successful business! That doesn't make it open source though. (And to their credit, Timescale doesn't make that claim.)
CameronNemo 6y ago
> I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. I disagree. The free software criteria were defined as they are for a reason. AWS and other cloud vendors are taking advantage, but that is not a good reason to give up on the ideals of the movement. I would be much more comfortable contributing to timescaledb if the license had a date at which it expired to AGPL or some other OSI/DFSG/fourfreedoms license.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  In principle, yes I agree, but in practice: no! AGPL is a minefield, it's a shame it is, but it is. The spirit of GPL (and AGPL) was that you could do whatever you want but you have to release the source, but they have continually been handicapped by the evolution of software. Existing licenses are not appropriate for SaaS businesses, they are either too liberal or too restrictive. What you're seeing here is the right move: I can use this for free, for personal use or business. I can't sell it directly -- why should I be able to? It's sleazy and encourages closed ecosystems (AWS, GCP, etc.). The spirit of free software is very much alive in this decision, methinks.
  - pritambaral 6y ago
    > The spirit of free software is very much alive in this decision, methinks. From the text of the Timescale License, clause 2.1 (d): "A license to prepare, compile, and test Derivative Works of the TSL Licensed Software Source Code solely in a Non-Production Environment". Further along, in section 2.2, the following prohibition is laid out: "You agree not to, except as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(d), prepare Derivative Works of any TSL Licensed Software" That removes the freedom to run your own modifications in production. Pretty incompatible with the spirit of free software.
    - GordonS 6y ago
      This is only for the parts of the code that are licensed under the Timescale license (most code is not). Personally, I don't have a problem with this, and think it encourages users to upstream their changes.
akulkarni 6y ago
(Timescale CEO and post author) You are spot on. Before the Timescale License, we were left with a tough decision: do we open-source a feature so that everyone can have it for free OR do we close a feature so that the mega-clouds don't have access to it? We didn't like either of those options, which is why we created the Timescale License, which allows us to offer capabilities for free (and make the source code available) to everyone except the cloud providers (ie free for 99.9999% of all users). We find that this has resulted in a mutually beneficial outcome for ourselves and our users. "I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. The additional restriction in the timescaledb license that you can't run a paid database as a service offering affects hardly anyone negatively (AWS). It affects us all positively by providing a sustainable business model to support additional development and support of an open-source product we use. Win-win if ever there was one. I'd like to see more open-source and closed-source companies consider this model." ^ Really well put.
- bithavoc 6y ago
  Can this license be used to, say, create a Datadog-like SaaS powered by TimescaledDB?
  - akulkarni 6y ago
    It depends on the amount of access to TimescaleDB the services provides. If you're really curious, I'd be happy to chat: ajay (at) timescale.com
  - mfreed 6y ago
    In most cases, yes, the license will permit this. (There is discussion elsewhere in this threads about whether you give DDL access to your users, i.e., they themselves define schemas, tables, indexes, etc. Otherwise, Datadog is primarily a Value Added Service over just the database; huge numbers of companies utilize Timescale for building their SaaS services.)
- jcims 6y ago
  I'm a huge fan of Splunk but always want to keep my eye open for alternatives. My use case is mostly security analytics against event content and patterns, and for that the Splunk Processing Language is very well suited. That said I find it's fairly tedious to do a lot of time-series analysis and pattern discovery/anomaly detction across rich event models (think aws cloudtrail events). Anything TimescaleDB can help with here? Are there case studies you can point us to? It feels like there is probably home for both just in my domain and quite obviously in the broader context of large enterprise ops/security.
kev009 6y ago
I think you are being a bit generous on the causes and effects. The #1 concern of a product like this is adoption. Not in some unsustainable subsidized taxi or food delivery type thing, just that data stores are naturally sticky and come with long term opportunity as usage grows. If they dominate the time series use case, and there is good reason to believe they will, earning revenues will fall out of that in a multitude of ways. I will believe the license proves prophetic if a major cloud or minor cloud with deep pockets does a SaaS license. Until then, this is a pretty standard FOSS+support business model that became popular in the past decade.
- eloff 6y ago
  I don't think it's FOSS+support, more like a cloud database service offering. Time will tell I suppose as to which business model dominates. And one could make the argument the service is a form of support.
  - kev009 6y ago
    My own experience is the majority of people are using it on their own cloud instances, on prem, or embedded. It's not obvious the first-party aaS will catch on right now, just like the novel license. I don't mean any of this negatively, it's clearly a well run business by smart people that are experimenting with revenue models and trying to achieve the fair outcomes for customers and the business.
ecnahc515 6y ago
I kind of agree. The argument of go 100% FOSS or not reminds me of the argument of free market vs regulation. Yes a free market sounds ideal, but in practice, a few major players take advantage and everyone who isn't them is left out in the cold. The same applies to FOSS vs Proprietary software. If everyone did FOSS to the fullest extent, and anyone building products on FOSS made their product 100% FOSS, then it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if Amazon took TimescaleDB and sold it, because anything they did would be available to everyone else. But that isn't how it works. They just wait until a market establishes itself and swoop in and do something someone else is already doing successfully, but better by using their massive resources behind it. Honestly it's a lot like embrace, extend, extinguish. I'm not saying this to shit on Amazon, I don't necessarily think it's intentionally malicious, it just often ends up hurting a lot of organizations building FOSS. I think of it this way: A lot of people agree that tech giants are increasingly becoming more powerful as they expand their reach, often due to their ability to simply buy or kill the competition through undercutting with their massive cash stockpiles accumulated through their primary business. For FOSS, it is the same strategy except the competition isn't being "bought", it's simply being taken (FOSS) and made into something "better" with their nearly unlimited resources, and then undercutting the original proprietors.
pritambaral 6y ago
> The additional restriction in the timescaledb license that you can't run a paid database as a service offering affects hardly anyone negatively (AWS). That's not the only additional restriction. The Timescale License does not give you the freedom to run modified versions of the code in production. Pretty big difference compared to Open Source.
bglusman 6y ago
I think I agree with this sentiment with one caveat: (I didn't read their license in detail, but really for licenses like this which seems to be the broader topic) Today Timescale offers Timescale-as-a-service, so this allows them a kind of soft-monopoly on being a paid provider for this, but do these licenses generally contain a provision such that if they no longer provide that service themselves, whether from going out of business or a pivot to another product, then someone else could step in and offer it in the future? Closed source products have often had a kind of source-code escrow arrangement so that if they go out of business, you're not stuck unable to fix your own bugs, but similarly, if part of the value in adopting it is that the paid service IS available, knowing that someone else can offer a compatible service if they disappear might be a nice reassurance for the license to offer.
- massaman_yams 6y ago
  They're not actually providing it themselves - Aiven actually runs the backend. Seems like that points to it having some longevity. https://kb.timescale.cloud/en/articles/2752585-timescale-cloud-and-our-partnership-with-aiven https://kb.timescale.cloud/en/articles/2752585-timescale-clo...
ensignavenger 6y ago
I think you greatly misunderstand the implications of the Timescale License. Others have pointed out additional restrictions, but as to the restriction you mention, if it were the only additional restriction: If I build my product on such software, host it on the official service, and latter their business model changes to no longer be a good fit for my business model (or if my model changes), I am stuck hosting the fork myself- I can't pay some one else to host it anymore. Now lets say that I am not alone- but there are several other customers in this situation- we can't band together to create a fork with a thriving, healthy community, including hosting options. Avoiding vendor lock-in is my number one reason for choosing Open Source software! If your non-open source "Diet" Open license license leads to vendor lock-in, it is not much better to me than any other proprietary license.
solidasparagus 6y ago
What this doesn't touch on is the reality of selling enterprise software as an early startup - being open source is a hard requirement for many buyers. > It affects us all positively Except for users who want the highest quality hosted Timescale possible and see this license as an attempt to prevent others from creating better offerings. The open source companies that compete with cloud offerings are not exactly struggling. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with them using their position to prevent competition, but when people sell it as 'best for all the users', it feels disingenuous.

by eloff 6y ago

zrail 6y ago

> I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. Where "we" is defined as an extremely vocal minority on HN. I don't think most people take issue with licenses like this Timescale license or the BSL.

eloff 6y ago
Yes, that's probably true. Still vocal minorities tends to wield outsized power by virtue of being vocal.
Reelin 6y ago
I don't think (most) people take issue with source available licenses per se, but rather attempts to misapply the term open source to them. The Timescale license is great if it allows them to provide source code and a free product while still operating a successful business! That doesn't make it open source though. (And to their credit, Timescale doesn't make that claim.)

CameronNemo 6y ago

> I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. I disagree. The free software criteria were defined as they are for a reason. AWS and other cloud vendors are taking advantage, but that is not a good reason to give up on the ideals of the movement. I would be much more comfortable contributing to timescaledb if the license had a date at which it expired to AGPL or some other OSI/DFSG/fourfreedoms license.

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
In principle, yes I agree, but in practice: no! AGPL is a minefield, it's a shame it is, but it is. The spirit of GPL (and AGPL) was that you could do whatever you want but you have to release the source, but they have continually been handicapped by the evolution of software. Existing licenses are not appropriate for SaaS businesses, they are either too liberal or too restrictive. What you're seeing here is the right move: I can use this for free, for personal use or business. I can't sell it directly -- why should I be able to? It's sleazy and encourages closed ecosystems (AWS, GCP, etc.). The spirit of free software is very much alive in this decision, methinks.
- pritambaral 6y ago
  > The spirit of free software is very much alive in this decision, methinks. From the text of the Timescale License, clause 2.1 (d): "A license to prepare, compile, and test Derivative Works of the TSL Licensed Software Source Code solely in a Non-Production Environment". Further along, in section 2.2, the following prohibition is laid out: "You agree not to, except as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(d), prepare Derivative Works of any TSL Licensed Software" That removes the freedom to run your own modifications in production. Pretty incompatible with the spirit of free software.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    This is only for the parts of the code that are licensed under the Timescale license (most code is not). Personally, I don't have a problem with this, and think it encourages users to upstream their changes.

akulkarni 6y ago

(Timescale CEO and post author) You are spot on. Before the Timescale License, we were left with a tough decision: do we open-source a feature so that everyone can have it for free OR do we close a feature so that the mega-clouds don't have access to it? We didn't like either of those options, which is why we created the Timescale License, which allows us to offer capabilities for free (and make the source code available) to everyone except the cloud providers (ie free for 99.9999% of all users). We find that this has resulted in a mutually beneficial outcome for ourselves and our users. "I think we're too hung up on OSI open source licenses. The additional restriction in the timescaledb license that you can't run a paid database as a service offering affects hardly anyone negatively (AWS). It affects us all positively by providing a sustainable business model to support additional development and support of an open-source product we use. Win-win if ever there was one. I'd like to see more open-source and closed-source companies consider this model." ^ Really well put.

bithavoc 6y ago
Can this license be used to, say, create a Datadog-like SaaS powered by TimescaledDB?
- akulkarni 6y ago
  It depends on the amount of access to TimescaleDB the services provides. If you're really curious, I'd be happy to chat: ajay (at) timescale.com
- mfreed 6y ago
  In most cases, yes, the license will permit this. (There is discussion elsewhere in this threads about whether you give DDL access to your users, i.e., they themselves define schemas, tables, indexes, etc. Otherwise, Datadog is primarily a Value Added Service over just the database; huge numbers of companies utilize Timescale for building their SaaS services.)
jcims 6y ago
I'm a huge fan of Splunk but always want to keep my eye open for alternatives. My use case is mostly security analytics against event content and patterns, and for that the Splunk Processing Language is very well suited. That said I find it's fairly tedious to do a lot of time-series analysis and pattern discovery/anomaly detction across rich event models (think aws cloudtrail events). Anything TimescaleDB can help with here? Are there case studies you can point us to? It feels like there is probably home for both just in my domain and quite obviously in the broader context of large enterprise ops/security.

kev009 6y ago

I think you are being a bit generous on the causes and effects. The #1 concern of a product like this is adoption. Not in some unsustainable subsidized taxi or food delivery type thing, just that data stores are naturally sticky and come with long term opportunity as usage grows. If they dominate the time series use case, and there is good reason to believe they will, earning revenues will fall out of that in a multitude of ways. I will believe the license proves prophetic if a major cloud or minor cloud with deep pockets does a SaaS license. Until then, this is a pretty standard FOSS+support business model that became popular in the past decade.

eloff 6y ago
I don't think it's FOSS+support, more like a cloud database service offering. Time will tell I suppose as to which business model dominates. And one could make the argument the service is a form of support.
- kev009 6y ago
  My own experience is the majority of people are using it on their own cloud instances, on prem, or embedded. It's not obvious the first-party aaS will catch on right now, just like the novel license. I don't mean any of this negatively, it's clearly a well run business by smart people that are experimenting with revenue models and trying to achieve the fair outcomes for customers and the business.

ecnahc515 6y ago

I kind of agree. The argument of go 100% FOSS or not reminds me of the argument of free market vs regulation. Yes a free market sounds ideal, but in practice, a few major players take advantage and everyone who isn't them is left out in the cold. The same applies to FOSS vs Proprietary software. If everyone did FOSS to the fullest extent, and anyone building products on FOSS made their product 100% FOSS, then it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal if Amazon took TimescaleDB and sold it, because anything they did would be available to everyone else. But that isn't how it works. They just wait until a market establishes itself and swoop in and do something someone else is already doing successfully, but better by using their massive resources behind it. Honestly it's a lot like embrace, extend, extinguish. I'm not saying this to shit on Amazon, I don't necessarily think it's intentionally malicious, it just often ends up hurting a lot of organizations building FOSS. I think of it this way: A lot of people agree that tech giants are increasingly becoming more powerful as they expand their reach, often due to their ability to simply buy or kill the competition through undercutting with their massive cash stockpiles accumulated through their primary business. For FOSS, it is the same strategy except the competition isn't being "bought", it's simply being taken (FOSS) and made into something "better" with their nearly unlimited resources, and then undercutting the original proprietors.

pritambaral 6y ago

> The additional restriction in the timescaledb license that you can't run a paid database as a service offering affects hardly anyone negatively (AWS). That's not the only additional restriction. The Timescale License does not give you the freedom to run modified versions of the code in production. Pretty big difference compared to Open Source.

bglusman 6y ago

I think I agree with this sentiment with one caveat: (I didn't read their license in detail, but really for licenses like this which seems to be the broader topic) Today Timescale offers Timescale-as-a-service, so this allows them a kind of soft-monopoly on being a paid provider for this, but do these licenses generally contain a provision such that if they no longer provide that service themselves, whether from going out of business or a pivot to another product, then someone else could step in and offer it in the future? Closed source products have often had a kind of source-code escrow arrangement so that if they go out of business, you're not stuck unable to fix your own bugs, but similarly, if part of the value in adopting it is that the paid service IS available, knowing that someone else can offer a compatible service if they disappear might be a nice reassurance for the license to offer.

massaman_yams 6y ago
They're not actually providing it themselves - Aiven actually runs the backend. Seems like that points to it having some longevity. https://kb.timescale.cloud/en/articles/2752585-timescale-cloud-and-our-partnership-with-aiven https://kb.timescale.cloud/en/articles/2752585-timescale-clo...

ensignavenger 6y ago

I think you greatly misunderstand the implications of the Timescale License. Others have pointed out additional restrictions, but as to the restriction you mention, if it were the only additional restriction: If I build my product on such software, host it on the official service, and latter their business model changes to no longer be a good fit for my business model (or if my model changes), I am stuck hosting the fork myself- I can't pay some one else to host it anymore. Now lets say that I am not alone- but there are several other customers in this situation- we can't band together to create a fork with a thriving, healthy community, including hosting options. Avoiding vendor lock-in is my number one reason for choosing Open Source software! If your non-open source "Diet" Open license license leads to vendor lock-in, it is not much better to me than any other proprietary license.

solidasparagus 6y ago

What this doesn't touch on is the reality of selling enterprise software as an early startup - being open source is a hard requirement for many buyers. > It affects us all positively Except for users who want the highest quality hosted Timescale possible and see this license as an attempt to prevent others from creating better offerings. The open source companies that compete with cloud offerings are not exactly struggling. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with them using their position to prevent competition, but when people sell it as 'best for all the users', it feels disingenuous.