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I know how their license negatively impacts me, I don't need some company to tell me that "all is well". I know that thier license means that if my requirement

I know how their license negatively impacts me, I don't need some company to tell me that "all is well". I know that thier license means that if my requirements and Coackroach Labs business model diverge, I will be unable to fork the code and build a proper open source community around it. I know that I will (likely) never be able to buy a managed coackroach DB service from any vendor other than CoakroachLabs, no matter who acquires them or how badly they manage their service or how well their managed service and term offerings match what I need. I know that no matter how much I may want to pool resources with some one else to build features I need or fix bugs that I need fixed, I only have on viable option and that is to go through Cockroach, because there is no way to create a viable community fork of the project. Them pretending that their use of the BSL doesn't impact end users and end-user freedom is marketing department BS. They are free to license the software they develop under whatever license they want. I appreciate their past and future open source contributions and the technical achievements they have made, but their use of the BSL license rather than an open source license makes their product highly undesirable in my business.

vvern 6y ago
I don't think your points are totally wrong. I especially think that your points hold water if you were to feel the need to set out to build your community fork or competing hosted offering in the next couple of years. Secondarily, I think that if your company had the resources to staff developers to build out a whole hosted offering, I can tell you that CRL would love to be a partner and understand what's going wrong. Maybe that's unacceptable for some sort of other reason but it's not obvious to me what that is. Yes the license means that real-time development of the project, on some level, relies on coordinating with its developers, which do, on the whole, work for a company. All this being said, it sounds like you've got a better vision for how projects like this should get funded and built. How should society fund projects like CRDB? I think there's a very wide range of reasonable answers that fall in different parts of the fantasy spectrum. For now, in 2020s American capitalism, the BSD license approach, at least to my tastes (which are hecka biased), feels pretty good.
- ensignavenger 6y ago
  I appreciate your thoughts. A company doesn't have to have the resources to run a managed service in order to benefit from the guaranteed possibility for such an alternative to exist. I don't need to fork a project to benefit from the guarantee that I can fork it and do whatever I like with it. There is a concept in many open source communities of a "benevolent dictator" project leader. It doesn't matter if the project leader is an individual, or a company. Many open source projects are lead by a single company that dictates how it is ran. The thing that keeps such dictators benevolent is the Freedom To Fork. Without the Freedom To Fork, how do we guarantee benevolence? The current CRL folks could be the nicest, most wonderful people in the world, but there is no guarantee the company won't change hands, the current folks won't retire or move on, or their motivations don't change and they begin to lose their benevolence. Sure, CRL may be interested in partnering and playing nice- now. But they hold the keys to the kingdom, and can lock the door anytime they want to. I simply want the possibility, that if things don't work out, I have options. But you are right- I do have ideals about how projects like this should get funded and built. And you are right, there are a wide range of reasonable answers. I disagree with them being a fantasy though. I think Postgres is a great example! There is a long list of companies that are "significant" contributors to Postgres. https://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors/ https://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors/ This list included consultants, hosting providers (Even the much maligned AWS is a sponsor), and companies that use Postgres. WordPress/Automatic is another successful example, one with a strong business as community leader. They do well with their consulting and hosting business. The Linux Foundation umbrella also has a variety of supporters and manage a lot of open source projects. There are a variety of open source projects that are developed by companies that use them, much of the Apache Foundation projects fall into this category. Another model that works well for many (I'm not a huge fan of this model) is the Open Core model. If as a user I stick to relying only upon the open source editions of projects like GitLab, I get all the benefits of using open source. (This does not prevent me from buying a commercial license from the company to gain support- if they are willing to support my use of their open source edition in an acceptable manner). RedHat is pretty successful at selling support and consulting. Other open source developers do well selling a hosted managed service of their product. There are a lot of different ways to fund open source projects.

vvern 6y ago

I don't think your points are totally wrong. I especially think that your points hold water if you were to feel the need to set out to build your community fork or competing hosted offering in the next couple of years. Secondarily, I think that if your company had the resources to staff developers to build out a whole hosted offering, I can tell you that CRL would love to be a partner and understand what's going wrong. Maybe that's unacceptable for some sort of other reason but it's not obvious to me what that is. Yes the license means that real-time development of the project, on some level, relies on coordinating with its developers, which do, on the whole, work for a company. All this being said, it sounds like you've got a better vision for how projects like this should get funded and built. How should society fund projects like CRDB? I think there's a very wide range of reasonable answers that fall in different parts of the fantasy spectrum. For now, in 2020s American capitalism, the BSD license approach, at least to my tastes (which are hecka biased), feels pretty good.

ensignavenger 6y ago
I appreciate your thoughts. A company doesn't have to have the resources to run a managed service in order to benefit from the guaranteed possibility for such an alternative to exist. I don't need to fork a project to benefit from the guarantee that I can fork it and do whatever I like with it. There is a concept in many open source communities of a "benevolent dictator" project leader. It doesn't matter if the project leader is an individual, or a company. Many open source projects are lead by a single company that dictates how it is ran. The thing that keeps such dictators benevolent is the Freedom To Fork. Without the Freedom To Fork, how do we guarantee benevolence? The current CRL folks could be the nicest, most wonderful people in the world, but there is no guarantee the company won't change hands, the current folks won't retire or move on, or their motivations don't change and they begin to lose their benevolence. Sure, CRL may be interested in partnering and playing nice- now. But they hold the keys to the kingdom, and can lock the door anytime they want to. I simply want the possibility, that if things don't work out, I have options. But you are right- I do have ideals about how projects like this should get funded and built. And you are right, there are a wide range of reasonable answers. I disagree with them being a fantasy though. I think Postgres is a great example! There is a long list of companies that are "significant" contributors to Postgres. https://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors/ https://www.postgresql.org/about/sponsors/ This list included consultants, hosting providers (Even the much maligned AWS is a sponsor), and companies that use Postgres. WordPress/Automatic is another successful example, one with a strong business as community leader. They do well with their consulting and hosting business. The Linux Foundation umbrella also has a variety of supporters and manage a lot of open source projects. There are a variety of open source projects that are developed by companies that use them, much of the Apache Foundation projects fall into this category. Another model that works well for many (I'm not a huge fan of this model) is the Open Core model. If as a user I stick to relying only upon the open source editions of projects like GitLab, I get all the benefits of using open source. (This does not prevent me from buying a commercial license from the company to gain support- if they are willing to support my use of their open source edition in an acceptable manner). RedHat is pretty successful at selling support and consulting. Other open source developers do well selling a hosted managed service of their product. There are a lot of different ways to fund open source projects.