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> All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. [

> All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. […] It's a very measured and thoughtful way to ensure the long term progress and continuity of these projects. Ahem: Grafana Labs Brings In $50M Series B For Open-Source Developer Platform: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/grafana-labs-brings-in-50m-series-b-for-open-source-developer-platform/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/grafana-labs-brings-in-50m-... I completely support the right to chose your own license and how you want to sell and use your own code, but let's be honest here. This is done because investors have discovered that it's possible to earn money on services around Open Source products, and Grafana Labs has gone all-in on this approach. Now they need the relicensing in order for the business model to remain viable. We're lucky that the code remains AGPL, but notice that they are still not committed to ensuring that all the code will remain AGPL (i.e. they still want CLA so they can relicense later).

staticassertion 6y ago
> Now they need the relicensing in order for the business model to remain viable. This is exactly what the parent is saying though. They're going through this process to ensure that their business remains viable and they can continue to build and support the project.
- judofyr 6y ago
  I still think this sentence here is not quite precise enough: > All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. To me this sounds like the relicensing is done so that a few programmers finally can get paid for their hard labor while maintaining critical software we're all using. What's actually happening here is that some creators have convinced a few investors that they'll be able to give a huge return on invest by building up a sales department around the product. And now the realize that they're not able to accomplishing that with their original license. It's a perfectly acceptable business strategy, but it's not necessarily the only way of running an open source project. I'm still hoping that we (the open source community) can find even better ways of ensuring high-quality software remain open source without being so dependent on current mindset of investors.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
mqus 6y ago
I agree. AGPL is nice and all but for contributors this does not really matter at all because of the CLAs. I will never contribute to projects which reserve the right to relicense, e.g. take ownership over my contributions, however small or big they are. I think companies will do the same. If they would remove the CLAs, they would signal to companies and contributors that they are serious in providing an open ecosystem, to which other people contribute willingly "for free". But currently they are not, likely because they fear competition.
- nopzor 6y ago
  thanks for saying the AGPL is nice; we think it strikes the right balance. but, i'm curious to understand your perspective here. do you mean to say that you'd never contribute to an apache licensed project? anything that is apache licensed can be relicensed by the project, even if there isn't a CLA [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]
  - SuperQue 6y ago
    The problem is CLAs. They are a much higher barrier to entry for a lot of contributors. No, they're not all the same, but they make it harder. Each CLA needs to be reviewed and approved by company lawyers. It's kinda like creating a brand new OSS license that way. To use a concrete example, the Google open source CLA is awful. At my previous job our lawyers refused to sign off the Google CLA. One of my engineers wrote a patch that we wanted to get upstream. Since, it would be generally useful. Basically, the patch could never be merged, because we had a legal stalemate between us and Google. I would highly recommend using https://developercertificate.org/ https://developercertificate.org/ instead. This is what we use for Prometheus. It's also used for GPL projects like Linux. It's simple, standard, and used widely.
    - __david__ 6y ago
      Does clause (d) allow the project to relicense its code? Because as far as I understand, that is the reason that GNU tends to have CLAs on their projects.
nopzor 6y ago
do you think that earning money or having a viable business model is a bad thing? look at our actions since the inception of the company, as well as our "big tent" philosophy; i think they speak for ourselves. we built a sustainable business over the course of 4 years, prior to raising a dollar of VC money. we raised VC money to go even faster. most of our VC money goes to paying our employees. most of our employees are engineers. most of what our engineers do is open source. if we don't build a sustainable business, who will develop the software? the overwhelming majority of development on things like grafana, loki, tempo are done by grafana labs employees. plus, we are the main contributors behind other OSS projects that we didn't create and don't own (like prometheus and cortex). [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]
- andrewstuart2 6y ago
  Neither earning money nor having a viable business model are bad things, but that's about as straw as a strawman argument comes. A business model existed before these changes. As far as I can tell, though, it's not _captured_ the value that the founders and investors seem to think ought to be their wealth. Grafana Labs and all these other companies have recieved both value add and goodwill free marketing from open source contributions and communities, and I don't see these companies being at all interested in figuring out who/what they've gained value from, beyond the currently existing company, in order to make a profit and benefit the founders and shareholders. I'm not against AGPL. I'm against the relicensing of software made in good faith against one model of OSS being discontinued and basically forked by the most prominent for-profit company that have hitherto received the significant benefits of both contributions and goodwill that being more freely open source brings. By relicensing you've probably significantly reduced the number of companies willing to run future versions of your software, and the number of companies willing to build businesses off of extending it and offering that value add, while still potentially contributing changes upstream. You're going to slowly eat away at that good will and the number of people asking for your product internally, since fewer and fewer people will remember the benefit from their last gig. I could be wrong here, only time will tell, but I honestly don't think this is a move that increases the long term sustainability of your business model. If anything, I think it's going to be detrimental in the long term. Perhaps even in the short term.
ec109685 6y ago
Not remain viable. To maximize shareholder value. Nothing is arguing it wouldn’t be a tidy little business with the previous license.

staticassertion 6y ago

> Now they need the relicensing in order for the business model to remain viable. This is exactly what the parent is saying though. They're going through this process to ensure that their business remains viable and they can continue to build and support the project.

judofyr 6y ago
I still think this sentence here is not quite precise enough: > All of the most important software of our lifetime is going through this relicensing effort as the creators attempt to capture the value of what it enables. To me this sounds like the relicensing is done so that a few programmers finally can get paid for their hard labor while maintaining critical software we're all using. What's actually happening here is that some creators have convinced a few investors that they'll be able to give a huge return on invest by building up a sales department around the product. And now the realize that they're not able to accomplishing that with their original license. It's a perfectly acceptable business strategy, but it's not necessarily the only way of running an open source project. I'm still hoping that we (the open source community) can find even better ways of ensuring high-quality software remain open source without being so dependent on current mindset of investors.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mqus 6y ago

I agree. AGPL is nice and all but for contributors this does not really matter at all because of the CLAs. I will never contribute to projects which reserve the right to relicense, e.g. take ownership over my contributions, however small or big they are. I think companies will do the same. If they would remove the CLAs, they would signal to companies and contributors that they are serious in providing an open ecosystem, to which other people contribute willingly "for free". But currently they are not, likely because they fear competition.

nopzor 6y ago
thanks for saying the AGPL is nice; we think it strikes the right balance. but, i'm curious to understand your perspective here. do you mean to say that you'd never contribute to an apache licensed project? anything that is apache licensed can be relicensed by the project, even if there isn't a CLA [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]
- SuperQue 6y ago
  The problem is CLAs. They are a much higher barrier to entry for a lot of contributors. No, they're not all the same, but they make it harder. Each CLA needs to be reviewed and approved by company lawyers. It's kinda like creating a brand new OSS license that way. To use a concrete example, the Google open source CLA is awful. At my previous job our lawyers refused to sign off the Google CLA. One of my engineers wrote a patch that we wanted to get upstream. Since, it would be generally useful. Basically, the patch could never be merged, because we had a legal stalemate between us and Google. I would highly recommend using https://developercertificate.org/ https://developercertificate.org/ instead. This is what we use for Prometheus. It's also used for GPL projects like Linux. It's simple, standard, and used widely.
  - __david__ 6y ago
    Does clause (d) allow the project to relicense its code? Because as far as I understand, that is the reason that GNU tends to have CLAs on their projects.

nopzor 6y ago

do you think that earning money or having a viable business model is a bad thing? look at our actions since the inception of the company, as well as our "big tent" philosophy; i think they speak for ourselves. we built a sustainable business over the course of 4 years, prior to raising a dollar of VC money. we raised VC money to go even faster. most of our VC money goes to paying our employees. most of our employees are engineers. most of what our engineers do is open source. if we don't build a sustainable business, who will develop the software? the overwhelming majority of development on things like grafana, loki, tempo are done by grafana labs employees. plus, we are the main contributors behind other OSS projects that we didn't create and don't own (like prometheus and cortex). [note: am co-founder/ceo at grafana labs]

andrewstuart2 6y ago
Neither earning money nor having a viable business model are bad things, but that's about as straw as a strawman argument comes. A business model existed before these changes. As far as I can tell, though, it's not _captured_ the value that the founders and investors seem to think ought to be their wealth. Grafana Labs and all these other companies have recieved both value add and goodwill free marketing from open source contributions and communities, and I don't see these companies being at all interested in figuring out who/what they've gained value from, beyond the currently existing company, in order to make a profit and benefit the founders and shareholders. I'm not against AGPL. I'm against the relicensing of software made in good faith against one model of OSS being discontinued and basically forked by the most prominent for-profit company that have hitherto received the significant benefits of both contributions and goodwill that being more freely open source brings. By relicensing you've probably significantly reduced the number of companies willing to run future versions of your software, and the number of companies willing to build businesses off of extending it and offering that value add, while still potentially contributing changes upstream. You're going to slowly eat away at that good will and the number of people asking for your product internally, since fewer and fewer people will remember the benefit from their last gig. I could be wrong here, only time will tell, but I honestly don't think this is a move that increases the long term sustainability of your business model. If anything, I think it's going to be detrimental in the long term. Perhaps even in the short term.

ec109685 6y ago

Not remain viable. To maximize shareholder value. Nothing is arguing it wouldn’t be a tidy little business with the previous license.