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The "You may not use or adapt this material for any commercial purpose, such as to create a commercial database or database-as-a-service offering" language sugg

by yuubi 5y ago

The "You may not use or adapt this material for any commercial purpose, such as to create a commercial database or database-as-a-service offering" language suggests that they think the license covers more than just distributing the document, which I believe is an unusual interpretation of what a spec copyright allows the author to prevent. Lawyer repellent (I hope): The quote comes from https://github.com/mongodb/docs/commit/50e48200cde7e2eaffdc6b726a9cdf2659f0e073 https://github.com/mongodb/docs/commit/50e48200cde7e2eaffdc6... , and anyone who receives this comment may copy it as they like.

chippiewill 5y ago
I think they just stuffed up the wording. I think the whole "can't use it to create a commercial database" means you can't use the document itself (i.e. "this material") as part of your own commercial database offering but you can absolutely adapt the protocol and share the document that Mongo created under the same terms (i.e. share-alike). Because it's already in source form and isn't "compiled in" into a derived form I don't think it has the same potency from an infectious license perspective as GPL does. If you bundle this document as part of your commercial database I think they can't do diddly squat as long as you make clear that the document itself is still under the CC sharealike license.
- yuubi 5y ago
  I (not a lawyer) understand copyright law to mostly prohibit us from copying the spec document without permission, and then the license provides permission for some copying of the document. I'm pretty sure the authors really want to prevent competing implementations that make money for someone else, and the wording expresses their intent. I believe that copyright on the document won't let them stop a company that can afford decent lawyers from implementing the spec, but it certainly doesn't make me any more likely to touch anything related.

by yuubi 5y ago

chippiewill 5y ago

I think they just stuffed up the wording. I think the whole "can't use it to create a commercial database" means you can't use the document itself (i.e. "this material") as part of your own commercial database offering but you can absolutely adapt the protocol and share the document that Mongo created under the same terms (i.e. share-alike). Because it's already in source form and isn't "compiled in" into a derived form I don't think it has the same potency from an infectious license perspective as GPL does. If you bundle this document as part of your commercial database I think they can't do diddly squat as long as you make clear that the document itself is still under the CC sharealike license.

yuubi 5y ago
I (not a lawyer) understand copyright law to mostly prohibit us from copying the spec document without permission, and then the license provides permission for some copying of the document. I'm pretty sure the authors really want to prevent competing implementations that make money for someone else, and the wording expresses their intent. I believe that copyright on the document won't let them stop a company that can afford decent lawyers from implementing the spec, but it certainly doesn't make me any more likely to touch anything related.