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Open sourcing Pixie under Apache 2.0 license

108 points by nserrino 5y ago

nserrino 5y ago
Pixie maintainer / OP here. There's a lot of debate right now about licensing in the open source community. We made the call to go with Apache 2.0, and the lead of our project wrote in the post about why we made that decision.
- remram 5y ago
  And your CLA [1] does not reassign copyright, ensuring that you can't re-license later. Good on you! [1]: https://github.com/pixie-labs/pixie/blob/main/CLA.md https://github.com/pixie-labs/pixie/blob/main/CLA.md
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pabs3 5y ago
    The CLA gives permission to sublicense, but it isn't clear to me if this allows proprietary relicensing or not.
    - zasgar 5y ago
      Lead maintainer of Pixie here. Pixie will remain licensed under Apache 2.0. We are also working on moving Pixie over to the CNCF, to maintain this guarantee. This is being tracked here: https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/651 https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/651 In addition, we will likely move to a DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin). We are still trying to figure out the exact logistics, but this will allow commits to happen without signing a CLA.
    - remram 5y ago
      It seems pretty good to me: > We agree to license the Contribution only under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using on the Submission Date for the Material
jhgb 5y ago
Presumably a completely different Pixie from the open-source one at https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixie/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixie/ ?
- nserrino 5y ago
  Correct, this project is unaffiliated with that one.
- Agentlien 5y ago
  It's interesting to see these names which are used by several projects. When I saw Pixie my first thought was the component of PIX[0] which installs itself on the Xbox. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/pix https://devblogs.microsoft.com/pix
  - pabs3 5y ago
    Pixie gets a lot of use both within tech and outside of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_(disambiguation)
- wedesoft 5y ago
  Yes, I also was confused because this Pixie [1] already is open source. [1]: https://pixielang.org/ https://pixielang.org/
- kungito 5y ago
  I thought of https://www.pixijs.com/ https://www.pixijs.com/
haolez 5y ago
A little off topic, but if you are going with mostly managed services and you don't use k8s, what would you do to have decent tracing and observability? I'm currently using a combination of FaaS and cloud queues, for example.
- afrodc_ 5y ago
  Have you looked into instrumenting zipkin or opentracing? I instrumented zipkin in a Java project and found it generally pretty easy
  - pranay01 5y ago
    You can check out DataDog or NewRelic - they do a decent job if you are looking for SaaS. If you are looking for open source products - checkout SigNoz (https://github.com/signoz/signoz https://github.com/signoz/signoz) Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of SigNoz
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
asim 5y ago
Having just seen JBD from AWS mention now working on this project full time my complete assumption is that AWS will offer it as a service and this isn't possible if the licensing goes in the direction of blocking commercialisation. Since the startup that was building this got acquired by New Relic and Peter Fenton serves on that board I assume they're trying to attack this strategically in a different way. If that's not that case then this is otherwise a fairly naive effort or moreso about drive large scale adoption with open monetisation around it by everyone who wants to.
- pranay01 5y ago
  So, does that mean that AWS and New Relic can both offer a cloud version of Pixie. In that case, won't that be a bad deal for New Relic - since they acquired Pixie?
  - asim 5y ago
    You can basically do anything with an Apache 2.0 licensed project and that's the point of this entire industry revolt. AWS is basically picking up prominent projects and hosting them for profit with little to no interaction with the entity that created it. Years of R&D and capital go into building these things from the ground up. For AWS at their scale to just lift it and contribute nothing back is a slap in the face. So yes with Pixie, similar possibilities, but New Relic is not stupid. They know this and are likely working directly with AWS on some sort of deal. I know Microsoft has done a better job in this avenue especially with the likes of Hashicorp. AWS actually has no choice but to do better given their lawsuit with Elastic.
    - pranay01 5y ago
      I see. Can you shed more light on lawsuit between AWS & Elastic? I thought from a legal angle - AWS is completely fine to lift Elastic code and offer it as a service. What's the ground for a lawsuit here?

108 points by nserrino 5y ago

Pixie maintainer / OP here. There's a lot of debate right now about licensing in the open source community. We made the call to go with Apache 2.0, and the lead of our project wrote in the post about why we made that decision.

remram 5y ago
And your CLA [1] does not reassign copyright, ensuring that you can't re-license later. Good on you! [1]: https://github.com/pixie-labs/pixie/blob/main/CLA.md https://github.com/pixie-labs/pixie/blob/main/CLA.md
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pabs3 5y ago
  The CLA gives permission to sublicense, but it isn't clear to me if this allows proprietary relicensing or not.
  - zasgar 5y ago
    Lead maintainer of Pixie here. Pixie will remain licensed under Apache 2.0. We are also working on moving Pixie over to the CNCF, to maintain this guarantee. This is being tracked here: https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/651 https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/651 In addition, we will likely move to a DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin). We are still trying to figure out the exact logistics, but this will allow commits to happen without signing a CLA.
  - remram 5y ago
    It seems pretty good to me: > We agree to license the Contribution only under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using on the Submission Date for the Material

jhgb 5y ago

Presumably a completely different Pixie from the open-source one at https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixie/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/pixie/ ?

nserrino 5y ago
Correct, this project is unaffiliated with that one.
Agentlien 5y ago
It's interesting to see these names which are used by several projects. When I saw Pixie my first thought was the component of PIX[0] which installs itself on the Xbox. [0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/pix https://devblogs.microsoft.com/pix
- pabs3 5y ago
  Pixie gets a lot of use both within tech and outside of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixie_(disambiguation)
wedesoft 5y ago
Yes, I also was confused because this Pixie [1] already is open source. [1]: https://pixielang.org/ https://pixielang.org/
kungito 5y ago
I thought of https://www.pixijs.com/ https://www.pixijs.com/

haolez 5y ago

A little off topic, but if you are going with mostly managed services and you don't use k8s, what would you do to have decent tracing and observability? I'm currently using a combination of FaaS and cloud queues, for example.

afrodc_ 5y ago
Have you looked into instrumenting zipkin or opentracing? I instrumented zipkin in a Java project and found it generally pretty easy
- pranay01 5y ago
  You can check out DataDog or NewRelic - they do a decent job if you are looking for SaaS. If you are looking for open source products - checkout SigNoz (https://github.com/signoz/signoz https://github.com/signoz/signoz) Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of SigNoz

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

asim 5y ago

Having just seen JBD from AWS mention now working on this project full time my complete assumption is that AWS will offer it as a service and this isn't possible if the licensing goes in the direction of blocking commercialisation. Since the startup that was building this got acquired by New Relic and Peter Fenton serves on that board I assume they're trying to attack this strategically in a different way. If that's not that case then this is otherwise a fairly naive effort or moreso about drive large scale adoption with open monetisation around it by everyone who wants to.

pranay01 5y ago
So, does that mean that AWS and New Relic can both offer a cloud version of Pixie. In that case, won't that be a bad deal for New Relic - since they acquired Pixie?
- asim 5y ago
  You can basically do anything with an Apache 2.0 licensed project and that's the point of this entire industry revolt. AWS is basically picking up prominent projects and hosting them for profit with little to no interaction with the entity that created it. Years of R&D and capital go into building these things from the ground up. For AWS at their scale to just lift it and contribute nothing back is a slap in the face. So yes with Pixie, similar possibilities, but New Relic is not stupid. They know this and are likely working directly with AWS on some sort of deal. I know Microsoft has done a better job in this avenue especially with the likes of Hashicorp. AWS actually has no choice but to do better given their lawsuit with Elastic.
  - pranay01 5y ago
    I see. Can you shed more light on lawsuit between AWS & Elastic? I thought from a legal angle - AWS is completely fine to lift Elastic code and offer it as a service. What's the ground for a lawsuit here?