24 ms·

We Are Changing the License for Akka

• josephcsible 4y ago
  tl;dr: It's changing from the Apache License, which is FOSS, to the Business Source License, which is neither free nor open source. Hopefully someone starts a copyleft fork of the last FOSS version of Akka and drives Lightbend out of business with it.
  • leosarev 4y ago
    You are very welcome to invest your own resources to maintain this.
  • mpol 4y ago
    To be fair, after 3 years it reverts to the Apache License. I don't think there is much reason for a fork. It is like Ghostscript has always done. I can understand the change might feel a bit sour, but wanting to drive them out of business is a bit much I think. Also, this software sounds like it is mostly used by big companies, they can pay up to keep this software going.
    • JonChesterfield 4y ago
      Or the three year statement is to discourage a fork and in three years' time they'll reconsider that part and keep it closed.
      • tkfu 4y ago
        The reversion to Apache is part of the BSL license, including the specific timeline of the reversion. So although they could decide later on to change the license again (for example, making it completely proprietary), all of the code released under the BSL will eventually become open source.
    • josephcsible 4y ago
      > It is like Ghostscript has always done. No it isn't. Releases of Ghostscript are entirely FOSS from day 1. There's a huge difference between a FOSS project that sells exceptions, and a proprietary program that businesses have to buy a license for to use it all.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• pjmlp 4y ago
  Yet another sign that the pre-FOSS models of Whateverware are back. As it happens, everyone doing free beer software at the kolkhoz isn't sustainable.
• pqyzwbq 4y ago
  I planned to write a series of articles about how to build distributed applications on Akka Clustering, now, there's no need for that. I wish I didn't recommend Akka to my friends. Thanks.
• eecc 4y ago
  Shareware is back (sort of.) Not a bad thing per se, by the way…
  • pjmlp 4y ago
    Indeed, turns out living from donation isn't sustainable long term, specially when other companies build products on top without return to upstream.
• tus666 4y ago
  > Production use of the software requires a commercial license from Lightbend I.e. it's not free anymore. That's what the title should say, instead we get an history lesson.
  • makeitdouble 4y ago
    The license change is prominent in the title, even if digging into the exact price and terms part comes a few paragraphs down. History lessons are always weird in these kind of announcements, but I think this one isn't that bad or deceptive in its approach.
  • Dylan16807 4y ago
    It's not free any more for companies >$25M in annual revenue.
    • josephcsible 4y ago
      It's not gratis anymore for companies >$25M in annual revenue. It's not free as in speech anymore for anyone.
      • Dylan16807 4y ago
        If we consider the idea of "free speech FOR x" then is it really free speech for nobody? Most people can do anything they want with it.
        • josephcsible 4y ago
          I can't combine it with GPL'd programs.
          • Dylan16807 4y ago
            Not even locally? And even then that's mostly because the GPL won't let you. You can combine it with MIT license programs, right?
• morsch 4y ago
  2000 USD per core per year. https://www.lightbend.com/akka https://www.lightbend.com/akka
  • capableweb 4y ago
    $2000 USD for companies earning more than $25M USD Revenue per year. However, it's quite telling that the new blogpost discusses the new pricing but never actually shares the pricing, but only shares the condition for when it's free (as in gratis). Do lightbend themselves think its expensive?
    • threeseed 4y ago
      If you need to know the price then I doubt you are Akka's target customer.
      • capableweb 4y ago
        What? Their target customer should be the one who has to pay, otherwise they are gonna focus on acquiring customers that won't pay? How does that make sense?
        • threeseed 4y ago
          It means that they are targeting enterprise customers. And for them the price is irrelevant if it solves their problem.
          • bb1298 4y ago
            How is it irrelevant? Operating a single node would be $10k+ per year. That makes no sense for a large corporation to adopt. They’re better off rewriting the entirety of Akka.
            • deleted 4y ago
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• bamboozled 4y ago
  You'd have to pay me to use it.
  • EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Yeah, as far as actor systems went, it's no Erlang. The same "DON'T BLOCK, IT'LL DO BAD THINGS BECAUSE IT BLOCKS THE THREAD" approach that you find in things like Vert.x. Letting my actor's function block was the best bit about Erlang.
    • seer-zig 4y ago
      Java is getting that through project Loom.
      • EdwardDiego 4y ago
        Yep, I can't wait.
• hedora 4y ago
  I hope this works out well for them. One issue with the BSL is that old versions of the software are open source. So, with this change, you can still use a 3 year old version of Akka for free. Does akka change rapidly enough these days to justify the price?
  • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Presumably the issue for enterprises is security patches. If you use a three year old version of code which the source is available for inspection, the likelihood you are using already-compromised code is high.
  • miragecraft 4y ago
    That’s the benefit of BSL license - it forces the developer to continuously deliver value in each release because they are competing with themselves from 3 years ago.
• xanathar 4y ago
  > Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, which shows that we are prone to act in our self-interest, Like, when somebody releases something open source, then notice that they can actually make money out of it and they change the license at the last minute. Oh the hypocrisy. Seriously if you're bothered by people making money out of your product, keep it closed source, nothing wrong with it. On the contrary a plague of the latest years is this pressure that everything should be open source: it doesn't need to. If you're not comfortable with it, keep it closed source. But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what.
  • MrBuddyCasino 4y ago
    > But if you decide to open source something, keep your promises, no matter what. I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? More of their free time & money to hold up something you call a "promise" but is just their choice of license made many years ago? They are being reasonable about it, you still get the source, you can still use it for free on a revenue < $25M. Companies making significant amounts of money now have to pay for it, instead of freeloading. Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions projects when your young, its also fine to demand money for shouldering much of its development when said project grows large many years later and you have obligations towards your family. Its called being an adult.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      > I don't understand the sentiment of "once something is OSS, it has to be so forever". They owe you what exactly? If I contributed to the project, I did so under the premise of the LICENSE that was active when I contributed. If I didn't like OSS, I wouldn't have contributed to a OSS project. Them changing the license is a middle-finger to me as a contributor. > Its fine to spend your nights and weekends on passions projects when your young [...] Its called being an adult With all due respect, fuck you. Equaling "open source" to "young people can waste their time" and "software needs to earn money" to being an adult is a really shitty opinion to put out there. Me (40+ years old) and many others do open source because we want the world to be about more than just money. Just because you cannot understand that nor want the same thing, doesn't mean that we're wrong and you're right.
• chsreekar 4y ago
  It's not just about revenue generation. I bet they are doing this to prevent Amazon from deploying a version of Akka as a service on AWS.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    > I bet they are doing this to prevent Amazon from deploying a version of Akka as a service on AWS. Yes, it's pretty clear they no longer want to participate in the Open Source ecosystem, as allowing people to run the software however you see fit is a integral part of Open Source, together with being able to modify and reshare said software.
    • echelon 4y ago
      > Open Source ecosystem Free money and labor for Amazon ecosystem. Honestly I'd love to see a license that was "Apache for everyone but Amazon (or other $100B+ companies and their subsidiaries)" Open source is being weaponized in ways that Stallman never predicted.
      • capableweb 4y ago
        > Free money and labor for Amazon ecosystem. "Free software for everyone" is precisely what Open Source is > Honestly I'd love to see a license that was "Apache for everyone but Amazon (or other $100B+ companies and their subsidiaries)" Yeah, that's basically what the BSL license Akka is moving to is. Only projects earning over X amount per year need the business license, for others it's free.
      • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
        That's more or less what SSPL is. The problem is the OSI and FSF are basically religious pharisees, so dedicated to their texts, they're missing the actual point. People backing the OSI/Amazon over Elastic/Mongo/etc. are literally killing open source.
        • dwaite 4y ago
• capableweb 4y ago
  It seems like Lightbend have decided themselves to redefine what "Open Source" means for them, a slight warning sign of whats to come. > Sadly, open source is prone to the infamous “Tragedy of the commons”, [...] This situation is not sustainable and one in which everyone eventually loses. > So what does sustainable open source look like? I believe it’s where everyone—users and developers—contributes and are in it together, sharing accountability and ownership. > This means that companies using the software for profit need to give something back, either code, documentation, community work, or money. In sustainable open source, participants feel the need and moral obligation to contribute. They even go so far to say they believe BSL to be Open Source, which means they fundamentally misunderstand the idea behind Open Source: > We believe the BSL 1.1 with our open source grants and Apache re-license is a form of productive and sustainable open source. They also seem to not know of any big Apache projects that are sustainable, even though there are many examples out in the wild. Apparently none of those projects are sustainable, just because Lightbend didn't manage to actually get major contributors to their own project? > Apache 2.0 is a very liberal license well suited for early, small open source projects establishing community. > With Akka now considered critical infrastructure for many large organizations, the Apache 2.0 model becomes increasingly risky when a small company solely carries the maintenance effort. Just because you didn't manage to build a company around a Open Source library/ecosystem, doesn't mean Open Source is not sustainable. It just means that your company is not sustainable. But I guess it's hard to blame yourself when you see others using your code without paying for it.
  • nine_k 4y ago
    I think they clearly state that the fresh versions are not open source, they are "source available". After 3 years since release the code automatically gets relicensed under Apache 2.0 and becomes open source. This is a nice provision that prevents the code from being completely lost if the company loses interest in it.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      They state that BSL + Apache re-license after 3 years is "open source". It's not, it's delayed open source if anything. But doing BSL is not open source, at least as what we know open source to be today.
• nightfly 4y ago
  "Akka: enables organizations to execute their most digitally transformative strategies, no matter how complicated" Thanks video
• bmitc 4y ago
  Does Akka.NET have any licensing dependencies on Akka? I wonder if this will push people there (please go to F#) or Elixir and Erlang.
  • pbz 4y ago
    My understanding is that the .NET version is a port and only related in the style/approach. However, if I was them I'd consider renaming the lib. Looks like the name "Akka" is tainted at this point.
  • whaleofatw2022 4y ago
    Akka.net is a bit behind from the scala version in features... This will make it more difficult to catch up however, as the JVM version and code is obviously used as a starting point for bringing functionality over. The main part of it I can think of that was home-grown was the original Akka.Net Split brain resolver, but once light bend open sourced theirs, the project ported that over anyway.
  • pjmlp 4y ago
    Akka.NET is written in C#.
    • bmitc 4y ago
      I know.
      • pjmlp 4y ago
        By the F# reference didn't seem like it.
        • bmitc 4y ago
          Just wishful thinking of an influx of .NET and Akka developers coming to F# instead of C#.
  • Aaronontheweb 4y ago
• keewee7 4y ago
  Isn't Akka an important component in various Scala projects like Apache Spark? What are they supposed to do?
  • capableweb 4y ago
    Other libraries depending on Akka shouldn't have to change, as they are merely published as "libraries", not deployed to "production". Libraries generally never have "annual revenues more than US $25m", so it should be free for them to use the code as well. Realistically though, they force you to contact them to get a "Additional Use Grant" in case you want to use Akka for other open source projects: > I use Akka for an OSS project. What does this mean for my project? > The license offers a customizable “Additional Use Grant” that grants production usage for other OSS projects including Play Framework. > If you are running an OSS project using Akka, please contact us at akka-license@lightbend.com and we will do our best to continue to support your project. I wish them luck on their endeavour, but I know what I'd do if I was building a OSS project needing distributed actors, and it's not to send them an email asking if I could please use their software.
    • JonChesterfield 4y ago
      And if the library using akka is in production? Presumably then fees time, as otherwise a thin shim called 'akkalib' that forwards calls would be an escape hatch.
    • detaro 4y ago
      I guess that depends if other libraries are fine with only having commercial users willing to pay that much for using Akka. (E.g. since GP mentioned Spark, doesn't that have quite a commercial ecosystem around it that probably won't be happy to suddenly pay thousands per node extra?)
    • closeparen 4y ago
      Clearly the OSS developers don't have to pay something per core. The risk would be that anyone with a production Spark or Flink cluster now has to license Akka, e.g. those products are themselves not open source anymore.
• markeibes 4y ago
  I feel sorry for anybody who ever used this.
• tasubotadas 4y ago
  I would argue that akka is successful because of the permissive licence. Now that that's changed, it will create growing space for other projects.
  • that_guy_iain 4y ago
    I would say it helped with early adoption. But at this point, it's got quite a bit of adoption. It's proven and for companies making over $25 million a year a proven piece of tech is generally more likely to be used than an unproven one.
  • hocuspocus 4y ago
    Other projects in the Scala world are already out there. I used the whole Akka shebang at my previous job (streams, persistence, cluster sharding, ...) and I would argue most people don't need that. It encourages over-engineering and you can usually do the same thing with simpler libraries. Now, Akka came out at the right time and deserved to get popular. It's built on a solid and battle-tested foundation and there is a real community-driven ecosystem around it, or at least there was. It totally made sense. Also Lightbend was on a seemingly good trajectory, and Akka looked like a safe bet. I guarantee there are small teams out there, at big companies making well over $25m, who are probably overstretched already and now need to plan an unexpected migration. I love Scala but the maintenance burden is real.
• braingenious 4y ago
  I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It seems like people come out of the woodworks acting like they have been personally affronted by this, or that this is somehow directly affecting their lives. Is everybody here (planning on?) using this software to build companies with more than $25 million in revenue… and they can’t use something else with a more permissible license… and don’t think they could or should pay a licensing fee when they (inevitably?) hit that revenue target?
  • ramchip 4y ago
    It's a problem for people who use Akka already, not those who won't adopt it. The choices are to rewrite the service, pay a massive licensing cost ($2k _per core_!), or live with 3-year old releases with no security updates. It's very disruptive.
    • camgunz 4y ago
      I hear you, but this was always the deal. If anyone ever said, "and we can use this for free forever and it will be updated for us for free forever" they were wrong. Akka devs are 100% within their rights to set the terms of use for their product and thus their work. There was no bait and switch here. This is just how licensing works.
      • ramchip 4y ago
        I agree. It's still a very disruptive change for enterprise Akka users.
        • chii 4y ago
          but is it more than $2k per core disruptive? if so, why not just pay up, and not have the disruption?
          • ramchip 4y ago
            Sure? Which option is better totally depends on your use case. If it's a microservice running on 500 cores ($1M/year licensing), and a rewrite would cost 1 person-year (say $300k), then the rewrite is clearly worth it. But if you're running on 10 cores, and a rewrite would take 10 person-years... then it makes more sense to pay.
• deleted 4y ago
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• bb1298 4y ago
  The commercial license is $2k per vCPU LMAO, aka an 8 core node would cost $16k annually to operate. This is about to be an absolute shit storm, don’t see how this will make a lick of financial sense for corporations to pay this.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • miragecraft 4y ago
    It’s free for companies with less than 25m annual revenue, just so you know.
    • rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      Today.
  • KingOfCoders 4y ago
    I have limited experience, but had some licensing costs in my budget over the years, and $2k/vCPU seems to be at the lower end of such systems. The lever some companies pull is to let you pay for test and developer systems. Then $2k/vCPU gets expensive very fast (from another comment it sounds that you only pay for production systems).
    • nilsm_ 4y ago
      It can add up quickly if you use a couple of libraries and also have to license the OS and perhaps other software. Some proprietary software companies can be quite aggressive with what they consider as cores, e.g. if you have a large VMWare Cluster they consider every single CPU of that cluster for license costs, not just the ones the software runs on - because you could potentially scale the system up or down or do a live migration. I'm not sure how that would even work with cloud providers, at the worst you would have to pay for the max number of cores you have used in a year (however, it's not even clear what a core is in that context with SMT and preemptable cores).
• avalys 4y ago
  A lot of “open source means I get to use the software for free and tell the authors what to do, forever, while not contributing a thing in return” in this thread.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • exnot 4y ago
    That's bullshit and you should know it. The owners got a shitload in return with developers investing time and money into learning their product and suggesting it be used, fueling any side-businesses that the Akka folks had. This was never open source in the true spirit of open source and yet they touted this strong brand. The same thing has happened several times, especially in the database space. Use the "fake open source" strategy to lure developers and then bait and switch. It's good business, but disingenuous. They remove a core implied premise, akin to a lie. If they were upfront from the beginning regarding eventually cashing in with heavy fees or cutting off contributions, community, etc, then it would be a very different case and there would have been no deception. This is deception.
    • avalys 4y ago
      Anyone working on an Apache-licensed project should expect this might happen, since it is explicitly allowed by the terms of the license. If they are going to get upset about it they could decide to only contribute to GPL-licensed software?
• miragecraft 4y ago
  I’m actually a big fan of the BSL license, as if it gains popularity for commercial software there would be a lot less risk of vendor lock-in like with Adobe and Autodesk. I don’t mind paying for good software, but too many companies abuse their market position once they get big.
  • that_guy_iain 4y ago
    Yea, this is the licensing I think we should have in place of many open source licesenses. I'm going to be using it with my commerical software very soon.
• ArneBab 4y ago
  it’s basically a cc by-nc? https://www.draketo.de/light/english/politics/free-culture-danger-noncommercial https://www.draketo.de/light/english/politics/free-culture-d... NC covered works trick people into investing in a dead end. They can do that, for sure. It is legal and I don’t see reason to complain. You cannot trust a project to stay free if it is licensed without copyleft or requesting that you assign them your code without guaranteeing that it stays free.
• perceptronas 4y ago
  I wonder if this is mainly aimed at Java Akka use. In my humble opinion, Akka is becoming less relevant in Scala community. I don't see new projects picking it up as there are better alternatives.
  • dastbe 4y ago
    akka-core or the libraries built on top of it?
  • morsch 4y ago
    What are the alternatives?
    • perceptronas 4y ago
      Depends on what we are replacing. From what I have encountered: Akka was mostly used as Http server (akka-http). There is Http4s which can replace that and I think is great. Also its easy to use it with tagless final or zio's IO. Actors computation model depending on use case can be replaced with message brokers or Scala libraries. Like cats-effect or zio for composable concurrency primitives and fs2/zio-streams for stream computations. I know there are actor use cases beyond that, but I am yet to encounter project these days where picking akka would be my first choice. I have nothing against akka and I definitely enjoyed developing with it 5 years ago.
    • haspok 4y ago
      If you want Scala-specific and production grade... hmmm... So there is Loom comig from one side, and effect libraries like cats and zio from the other side... great promises, but would I trust them with production code?... Hmmm... But there is always the option to lean back on Java and Spring and JEE - the old and boring but tried and tested ways on the JVM.
      • discodachshund 4y ago
        You can absolutely trust them with production code. Disney Streaming (CE and ZIO) and ITV (just CE) run them
• hrpnk 4y ago
  Is it clear which exact OSS components will get the license change? For example, is akka-http [0] part of these changes? [0] https://github.com/akka/akka-http https://github.com/akka/akka-http
  • gortiz 4y ago
    Yes. It is very clear. They have changed the license in the repository: https://github.com/akka/akka-http/commit/3e82a2811e853ece3b492940a56cbc12e63b315b#diff-d0ed4cc3fb70489fe51c7e0ac180cba2a7472124f9f9e9ae67b01a37fbd580b7 https://github.com/akka/akka-http/commit/3e82a2811e853ece3b4...
• morsch 4y ago
  So presumably 2.6.20, released yesterday, is the last free version: https://akka.io/blog/news/2022/09/06/akka-2.6.20-released https://akka.io/blog/news/2022/09/06/akka-2.6.20-released
• dastbe 4y ago
  imo this is probably the most comprehensive usage of bsl so far. cockroach and couchbase use it to exclude dbaas, and mariadb only uses it for non-core features. lightbend has put everything under bsl. this includes the core actor system that a lot of companies use. i can think of a few companies whose total spend with this license would justify a two pizza team to maintain a fork of akka or replace it outright.
• rockyj 4y ago
  It all started with Scala which was a decent, functional Java (at the time) and then they formed a commercial organisation called "TypeSafe" around it. Then it took on VC money and then also renamed itself to "Lightbend" (for some reason). In this time, Akka which was one of the special library of Scala was also included in the Lightbend fold with many of the prominent devs. While I understand that open source developers also need to make money, I do not think this mode of operation is my favorite. When a programming language / library / tool takes on VC money it is just inevitable that they will need a mode of revenue in the near future and this is one way to do it. Anyways, between this and the Scala 2 -> 3 migration, I do not think I would recommend Scala to anyone now or touch it myself.
  • hocuspocus 4y ago
    The trajectory of Lightbend has been raising doubts for a while, some would argue since the renaming. One important change coming with Scala 3 is precisely that its future doesn't depend on Lightbend's financial success anymore.
    • morsch 4y ago
      How so? Aren't they the most significant contributor by far?
      • hocuspocus 4y ago
        Not directly no. The last major contribution from Lightbend employees was the big collections rewrite in the standard library (shared by Scala 2.13 and 3.x). The Scala 3 compiler and core tooling is developed by the LAMP, the Scala Center, VirtusLab and a few other people. Lightbend is maintaining Scala 2 compilers (2.11, 2.12, 2.13).
      • weego 4y ago
        They've always floundered around trying to find something that stuck that could also have a path to profit. Being around the edges of the tech orgs that went in early on Scala it often felt like the Scala ecosystem initially thrived (the likes of Twitter releasing genuine quality oss in particular) despite the lack-lustre job of Typsesafe / Lightbend to cement themselves at the center. With play being given to the community, lagom being underwhelming and a bit of a catch-the-wave thing, it's only really Akka that endures on top of the core language, which isn't really a great showing after so long.
• abrookewood 4y ago
  I fully support their decision to change their licence, but they could be a bit more honest about their intentions. "the Apache 2.0 model becomes increasingly risky when a small company solely carries the maintenance effort". Really? Then why are you reverting to that licence after 3 years? Other projects changing the licence have at least spelled it out honestly: Cloud companies like Amazon are seen as parasitic and the developers of highly successful open source projects want a slice of the pie.
• hugofirth 4y ago
  As a data point, this change will mean a lot of work for us (we built cluster discovery on top of Akka Cluster at Neo4j). I'm not thrilled, but I respect their right to make these changes, and personally think that BSL with a timed revert to Apache 2.0 is a meaningful compromise. Enterprises have to be sustainable. If you're furious with Lightbend for making this change to protect their bottom line, then you can always fork one of the last open source versions and maintain/fix that yourself. But most people won't do that, because if they did they'd likely have been active contributors to the project before now, reducing the ongoing maintenance burden on Lightbend and potentially avoiding them feeling the need to close-source in the first place.
  • dejung 4y ago
    Neo4j made a similarly deceptive play with their "open source" product, did they not?
• mk89 4y ago
  Who is ever going to use Akka after the "3 years"? It says a lot about the company. An despite the fact I love the technology and its community, I wouldn't recommend it anymore, at all. The pricing is simply not right. I mean, it came so suddenly that you literally have no choice than to pay for at least 1 year, before you port your services to something else (if you can, at all), unless you want CVEs going wild in your production systems. I wonder what's their long-term vision? Getting rid of Akka as the main business model (subscriptions / support) and focus on something that is maybe based on Akka (I guess Kalix and similar cloud-only services)? Well, if that's the case, it's a brilliant idea: squeeze as much money now as you can, pivot your company to something different. (SAAS, yay, another one) Unethical? Maybe yes, a tiny bit.
• deleted 4y ago
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• PeterZaitsev 4y ago
  Yet another "We're saving Open Source by Ditching Open Source" announcement. Open Source license does not fit every business model, in fact models around true Open Source were always hard, really hard. Yet lets be real and call things the way they are - you decided what Open Source is not right business license for your project and choosing to use Proprietary (Source Available) license instead.
• haspok 4y ago
  Can someone explain how this sudden change of license is even possible (legally)? I mean, what if I contributed to the project back when it was Apache licensed, in good faith that my changes would be freely available (as in free beer)? Now they decide that they ask money for something that includes my contribution? Don't they have to ask for the contributors permissions to be able to do that? (Just a hypothetical example, I am not an Akka contributor.)
  • fatherzine 4y ago
    [Not a lawyer] That's what CLAs are for. As a prerequisite of having your PR accepted, you grant the mothership corporate entity the rights to do whatever they want with your contribution, including asking money. https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/cla https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/cla https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com https://cla.opensource.microsoft.com
    • gregwebs 4y ago
      To elaborate on this, a CTA would directly transfer the contribution of the copyright to the project. A CLA is much more common than a CTA. A CLA is more complicated: the submitter maintains the copyright, but a sublicense is granted to the project. That sublicense grants rights similar to having copyright, one of them being the ability to relicense. It is possible for the CLA sublicensing agreement to restrict the ability to relicense, but most do not do that.
  • NobodyNada 4y ago
    Apache 2.0 is a permissive license, so if you contributed to the project under the Apache license you gave them permission to use your code in closed-source projects (as long as they follow the terms of the license, such as giving you credit). Of course, they can't un-license code that they've already released, but they can re-release the old code under a new license, and ship all new code under that new license going forward.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    I'm not a lawyer and I haven't read the Apache license lately, but I think it's a permissive enough license that they probably can sub/relicense it as long as they keep everybody's copyright notices intact. That is, effectively just leave all the code under the Apache license but also add additional terms and conditions because it doesn't prohibit that. This is in sharp contrast to, say, GPL, which would have prevented such a maneuver. (Or, as a sibling, notes, if they required a CLA then they legitimately have the ability to relicense everything at will.)
• beached_whale 4y ago
  It’s too bad they didn’t lookup what BSL is, but it’s the Boost license and a super liberal(explicitly keeping source attritubtion) vs whatever this is.
• dllthomas 4y ago
  The "Tragedy of the Commons" is not the same thing as the "Free-Rider Problem" - in the former case, individual overuse is the issue, where in the latter (as in F/OSS) the problem is the failure to muster the necessary resources.
  • andrewstuart2 4y ago
    Tragedy of the Commons is essentially impossible for software, which can be copied and redistributed an unlimited number of times. If the supply is not limited, it can't be disproportionately abused by certain entities and the supply depleted.
    • dllthomas 4y ago
      It can easily be a thing in systems of which software is the major component (most notably SaaS), but as you say it it's at best unusual and probably impossible for it to apply to the software itself.
• ccleve 4y ago
  To everyone who thinks that $2k/vCPU is a lot of money, it's not. First, if you're running it on an 8-core server, that's $16k per year, which is about what many companies are paying for an enterprise support contract. It's not much when you consider that it gives you access to Akka engineers at the cost of 1/10 of an FTE. Second, the $2k number is a list price. All large enterprise deals are negotiated, and nearly all are discounted from the list price. Akka probably won't discount small deals, but they'll be forced to discount larger ones if the buyer has an alternative. Plus, the buyer will demand SLAs, dedicated support, and will often demand changes to the license and custom work on the software itself (tweaks to make it work with X, etc.) Akka and their larger customers will make it work. The purpose of this license change is to give Akka the ability to get their customers to the table in the first place.
  • xani_ 4y ago
    You can buy a hell lot more computing at 2k/vCPU to offset performance tho. And hiring a consultant for few months to fix your performance problems is also a hell lot cheaper than paying that much per core, forever. > Akka and their larger customers will make it work. The purpose of this license change is to give Akka the ability to get their customers to the table in the first place. Translation: They depend on our software enough that the rewrite is no alternative, they don't have enough onboard talent to fork it, and they have enough money to pay the price.
  • duskwuff 4y ago
    > First, if you're running it on an 8-core server, that's $16k per year, which is about what many companies are paying for an enterprise support contract. Which is exactly why this is so unreasonable. The minimum spend for the "standard" license is 40 cores -- which means you're paying at least $80k/yr for a support contract which won't even assign you an account manager or guarantee a response any faster than "4 business days" (yes, really). And as you scale up, it only gets more expensive, and you don't get anything more for your money.
    • ccleve 4y ago
      I did not see the part about the minimum spend. You're right; they'll probably run into significant resistance on that from the smaller customers.
• xani_ 4y ago
  Pre reading: Is it because VC funded company needs to show returns ? https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/typesafe-series-d--33b0250b https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/typesafe-series-d--... post-reading: ...probably
  • origin_path 4y ago
    All companies need to show returns, otherwise they run out of money and die. Not sure what VC funding has to do with this except, perhaps, making the "live open or die" model seem attractive at the start.
    • mikl 4y ago
      Privately owned companies just need modest returns. VCs tend to demand lavish returns.
• ttymck 4y ago
  A few (probably naive) thoughts: - I will be excited to see if a new jvm actor system emerges as a competitor. Or perhaps a fork. - I would be excited to see more consideration given to Elixir and OTP, where previously Akka may have been favored.
• emperorcezar 4y ago
  Would have been nice to have some lead time. I feel like the sudden change is too bait and switch.
• didgetmaster 4y ago
  I have a side project in data management that I have worked on for years (https://www.Didgets.com https://www.Didgets.com) and it is finally reached the point where it is an MVP with real value. I have considered adopting an open source license for it, but there are so many to choose from (I read somewhere that there are over 100 accepted kinds of OSS licenses). Stories like this one make me nervous about choosing the wrong one. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, there is no putting it back in. You can change the license for future versions, but some big company has the right to fork your code at that point and bury you with their superior resources. How do you choose a good license without shooting yourself in the foot?
  • demonshreder 4y ago
    AGPLv3 or GPLv3 is a good choice to ensure that all changes stay out in the open. Then the competition becomes who can change the code faster and reach more customers.
    • didgetmaster 4y ago
      >Then the competition becomes who can change the code faster and reach more customers. That is not very reassuring advice for a small developer who has limited resources. By opening your source code, you have just given up any head start you might have over the competition. They now have access to every line of code you spent hours agonizing over to get it right. Now they can out market you and leverage their vast resources to steal away any of your potential customers.
• closeparen 4y ago
  How will this affect open source projects that have Akka as a dependency? Flink? Spark?
  • jaebinyo 4y ago
    https://flink.apache.org/news/2022/09/08/akka-license-change.html https://flink.apache.org/news/2022/09/08/akka-license-change...
• wmf 4y ago
  Translation: "I'll never pay for software and maybe Akka should never have been created in the first place."
  • homarp 4y ago
    You forgot to translate first part: "Hey we are _giving_ this software as open-source. Build with us, build on us. Help us beat commercial libraries."
    • homarp 4y ago
      see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32786158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32786158
  • rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Hey, don’t forget that half of Scala ecosystem is built on top of Akka one way or another.
• cutierust 4y ago
  It's easy to dictate morals for others. How about let oss be voluntary and thank people for giving what they did in the past?
  • colordrops 4y ago
    Build a free bridge across a river, which allows a town to grow on the other side, then shut down free access to the bridge. The builders are entitled to do this, but doesn't make it the right thing to do.
    • beebmam 4y ago
      What is the problem with wanting to be paid for your labor?
      • colordrops 4y ago
        I don't understand how your question leads from my comment. I didn't say anything about there being something wrong with being paid for labor.
      • TAForObvReasons 4y ago
        The example is flawed. What really happens in open source is that the users contribute bug reports and fixes, then the project maintainers privatize the use after extracting value. Should the users who contributed code and issues be paid as well? For better or for worse, the success of many large open source projects is driven by a community of evangelists that just wouldn't exist if the project weren't open source in the first place.
        • colordrops 4y ago
          Could update the example by saying that the villagers have been contributing to bridge maintenance before it went private.
          • 4y ago
• BonoboIO 4y ago
  Create a sub company with no revenue. Problem solved.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  It seems to me that open source/ free software might be in its death throes. Can anyone name a recent open source library or program that is widely used and community controlled beside Linux? Open source now mainly serves as a way for trillion dollar companies to pool resources to develop software they all need and minimize how many developers they need to hire (see Linux). We have seen again and again how open source developers and maintainers are giving the short end of the stick and have seen over and over again companies try to have make an open source business model and fail. RedHat is basically the exception that proves the rule.
  • wmf 4y ago
    a way for trillion dollar companies to pool resources to develop software they all need and minimize how many developers they need to hire I don't see any problem with that as long as the companies are paying the developers, which they are in most cases. Major open source like Linux and k8s haven't been developed by volunteers for decades.
  • stonemetal12 4y ago
    If we are using Linux as a time frame reference then quite a few. PostgreSQL, Apache web server, python, and Blender are all younger than Linux.
    • tannhaeuser 4y ago
      Are you sure? PostgreSQL/Postgres was started before 1986 as successor to Ingres, while Python was released in February, 1991 (vs Linux in September, 1991), based on the older educational programming language ABC. Moreover, Apache httpd was based on NCSA Mosaic released in 1993, but it isn't clear when development started.
      • stonemetal12 4y ago
        Sure, no I used Wikipedia's Initial release dates. It says Postgres 8 July 1996, Apache http server 1995, Blender January 2, 1994. I guess I miss remembered python I thought it was 93 for some reason, maybe that is java.
• duffpkg 4y ago
  I have been a strong supporter of free software (GPL) and open source since Linux was created and remain so. The company I started and system we created, ClearHealth, was the only open source EMR to receive the necessary federal certifications and other partner certifications (SureScripts, Payers, DEA, etc) to be used in real large scale institutions. Unfortunately the fact that is was open source, the cons dramatically outweighed the pros in terms of contracts (it is difficult/complicated to get sole source contracts typical for software when you are open source) and investment (health tech investors at the time all wanted lock in). We were fortunate to have a strong business model around our healthcare management operations that had nothing to do with the EMR but if I had to do it again speaking from a business standpoint only, I don't think I would do it as open source that way. As recently as 5 years ago open source was viewed with extreme suspicioun if not outright disdain in the largest health institutions, I think that is changing but still has 10-15 years to go.
• a_c 4y ago
  I had used akka several years before for a commercial project. It worked wonder for me. Personally I have no issue with their change of license. Author has authority, as simple as that. I'm willing to pay for something useful. People seem to take a moral high ground when it comes to software. If someone decide to make some useful project opensource. Full respect. If they changed their mind later to make the project proprietary, still full respect. It's like some kind neighbour decides to clean the street for free because it makes the neighbourhood cleaner for everyone. We are not in position to demand the status quo but be grateful of. There are many projects I would happily pay for. Nginx, zeromq, django, react, elasticsearch, to name a few.
  • TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    The "moral high ground" is a recognition of the true dynamic in open source. What really happens is: 1) Project is open source 2) People use the project because it is open source 3) People contribute bug reports and fixes, creating value and improving the open source project because it is open source 4) People spread the word about the project, free marketing because it is open source 5) Maintainers decide to relicense, privatizing the value created by the community. The "success" was a social phenomenon, not merely the efforts of the maintainers. Relicensing is a betrayal of the community that was built around the software.
    • OrvalWintermute 4y ago
      I view open source as a key question around maintainability, and access to talent with experience. When I see open source projects getting relicensed, I automatically assume there is some monetization campaign underway which exploits the community's contributions.
    • sidlls 4y ago
      People who give their labor away for free aren’t entitled to anything. They should stop engaging in the farce that is open source these days if they feel that strongly about it
    • res0nat0r 4y ago
• rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  That’s going to pull the rug from underneath the whole of Scala ecosystem. There are so many major top level Scala libraries using Akka one way or another. Basically, anything containing Akka at those new versions cannot be used without breaking Akka license.
  • virtualwhys 4y ago
    Not entirely true, Play framework for example will continue to depend on Akka without restrictions placed on its users -- mentioned in the blog post, see "usage grant".
    • rad_gruchalski 4y ago
      Okay, so Play Framework has this grant now in place. But everything else? Each and every maintainer is required to request such grant, and Lightbend needs to agree. Friction, a lot of friction. The problem with what’s happening is that for software in Scala, as soon as I see Akka anywhere in my dependencies, I have to assume license violation. Of course, I can check if that particular dependency has a grant. But will there be a formal method to validate this? Will automated license scanners be able to infer this? Another point… what does the grant actually imply. Is there some sort of way a product with Akka-dependent dependency supposed to be used? Will people be able to work around BSL by pulling in a dependency that brings Akka in just as a mechanism to sneak Akka itself in? That would be a silly oversight by Lightbend[1] [1] the faq answers this: “ I am using Play and parts of Akka that are included with Play? If you are using Play and are directly using Akka components as part of your implementation you will be required to have a license for production use.” As someone who came to Scala from Erlang and adopted Scala because of Akka, … it’s disappointing. Fortunately alternatives exist and hopefully someone will adapt them for Scala. Here’s one: http://docs.paralleluniverse.co/quasar/ http://docs.paralleluniverse.co/quasar/. This is used by Clojure’s Pulsar Erlang-influenced actors. For me, this is the end of the road for Akka in any future Scala code. It’s a shame because the technology is great. However, maintenance is going to become a hassle. From an observer’s perspective: Typesafe, later Lightbend, never managed to find a great fit for themselves. They always kept developing Akka and promote Akka-based systems like all the alpakka stuff, http, streams. People used it because it was Apache 2.0. Now, everyone who uses Akka, and wants to continue using it, has a liability on their hands. What about all contributions submitted under the old license? The FAQ doesn’t specify if existing code will be BSL and convert to Apache 2.0 in 3 years (or maybe more, faq says each version may have its own convert date…), or only new code will be BSL. Depending on the answer, some contributors may feel a bit let down: https://github.com/akka/alpakka/graphs/contributors?from=2016-05-08&to=2022-09-08&type=c https://github.com/akka/alpakka/graphs/contributors?from=201.... They all contributed under Apache 2.0. So many questions, it’s a minefield. In my head, this is a minefield worse that AGPL. Their faq says a company with a revenue below USD25m/annum receives a free license. What if said company sells to a USD100m business and is using Akka indirectly? Forget about direct, explicit use. What if a product uses stuff indirectly?
• longrod 4y ago
  Does DCO prevent this kind of thing from happening? I think moves like this demotivated and discourages a lot of potential contributors and spreads fear. That's not a good thing. Imagine a contributor who's first contribution to Open Source was this project. I am not sure he'd be very happy about a move such as this (or maybe he won't care).
  • Reitet00 4y ago
    Not having CLA or equivalent prevents this kind of thing. DCO is for projects that want minimal legal process without copyright assignment. For the record akka has CLA.
    • fweimer 4y ago
      CLA is sort of neutral in this regard. You can have DCO-style CLAs with incoming == outgoing licensing, where the contributor and the project organization end up with the same rights. But like with DCO, switching to proprietary is still possible in principle if the license is sufficiently permissive. And admittedly, such symmetric CLAs are somewhat rare; DCO has mostly taken over this space.
• cheriot 4y ago
  I only worked with the Akka ecosystem a little, but if I had made a major career or business investment in it I'd be pretty unhappy about this. There's nothing wrong with closed source software and I want the authors to make money. It's changing the terms on users that pulls the rug out from under people.
  • galaxyLogic 4y ago
    It is not changing the terms for the users of the current version of AKKA. You will be free to use your current version with whatever terms you already have. You can fork the current version, that's the whole idea of Open Source. But you cannot take away the rights of the AKKA team to create their commercial "fork" either. That much was clear from the beginning I assume. License does what it says it does, it doesn't give you free access to all future forks. AKKA coming out with a commercial license does not make things worse for you, you can keep on using what you have under the license terms attached to it. Imagine if AKKA STOPPED making any software. Would that be morally wrong? They are not doing that but they will be providing more software with a different license. Take it or leave it, or fork the existing version with the same license. Ah the beauty of Open Source.
    • cheriot 4y ago
      I'm not talking about legal rights. Surely they've managed the contributor agreement to make this option possible. However, they also built a community around open source software and there's more to that relationship than legalities. > AKKA coming out with a commercial license does not make things worse for you If I had invested my career in becoming an advocate for their product I'd now be worse off. It can't be introduced without going through legal and procurement. I can't take it home and build a small business without wondering what next year's pricing model will be. I hope Akka's owners succeed. I also hope none of the tools I invest my time learning and introducing at work do this.
      • galaxyLogic 4y ago
        If you had invested your career in AKKA I would feel your pain and disappointment, and the feeling of being cheated with lofty talk about open source. But you might still have a strong career in supporting customers who use the commercial version of AKKA, they are the ones who could pay your salary. And you could fork it, and be the leader of that community. Until perhaps you decided to make a commercial fork as well. :-) I think it is in a way a good sign when an open-source project creates a commercial fork of itself, it shows there are paying customers for the software, it validates its existence. And I think it shows these guys believe in their product.
• Floegipoky 4y ago
  Man, this is so disappointing. Sure, there are probably businesses out there whose entire livelihood is built on akka, and I get that the creators might be upset that they're not contributing to the project. But there are a lot of other businesses out there where this might be a great solution for a very small part of the problem space, and they are just never going to use this tech now. A few years ago I used akka at my current gig for a project that ended up fizzling, and had always hoped to re-introduce it if another appropriate opportunity emerged. This change makes that a non-starter. I also think this is a big blow in terms of the future of computing. The actor model is so useful, and it's taken so long to come close to mainstream. And now the biggest implementation shoves a giant stick in its own spoke.
  • FromTheSteppe 4y ago
    The biggest and most battle tested implementation is certainly Erlang OTP and not Akka. I'm actually happy more attention will be given to ol' boring Erlang now.
    • Floegipoky 4y ago
      I guess I shouldn't have said that without checking, I'm not sure who's on top. My point still stands though. Most dev shops are already operating on the JVM, trying out akka was a much easier sell than adopting BEAM. Whether or not akka is more widely deployed than erlang, IMO akka was driving more adoption of the actor model.
• s17n 4y ago
  You don't get to say both: "FOSS is just not a good business model. But when making decisions about what libraries to use, or where to invest my time, such concerns are simply not my problem." and: "It’s morally wrong to make the product popular, by advertising it as Open Source / Free Software, and then doing a reversal later." If their business model isn't your problem, then what you think about their license isn't their problem.
  • croes 4y ago
    > their business model isn't your problem, then what you think about their license isn't their problem. The problem is not the license but the switch of it after they benefited from being Open Source
    • sieabahlpark 4y ago
  • naniwaduni 4y ago
    The key word here isn't "license", it's "advertising".
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jiggawatts 4y ago
  Does this affect akka.net?
  • Aaronontheweb 4y ago
    Maintainer of Akka.NET here - I don't think so. Posted another comment earlier in the thread with some more details.
• trenchAlmond 4y ago
  I read this whole discussion. Here's what I think. What I realized is that there are two groups of people here. One group considers Open Source a religion. The other thinks of it as business. The "religion" folks liken Open Source to the work of saints and prophets. The creators of Open Source do it because they love the work and helping people. And it's not cool if they stop being saints one day, much like the actual religious people wouldn't like seeing their icons turn into something else. The "business" bunch say there's freedom in Open Source to change anything on a dime, including for money. The fact you offered software as an Open Source is a strategy, and no matter how much it helped and how many people and for how long, you absolutely have the right to nail them one morning. What I would say here is this: Open Source was a reaction to actions of Giants, like Microsoft, Oracle and others. That's all it was. It was the Software Woodstock, which then turned into goo and spilled everywhere. Now, we're all snickering and crying from joy in the back of our heads whenever we get some cool piece of Open Source software. It's like God granting wishes. And nowadays, Open Source is a big business with the currency made of influence and worship of followers. And just like real religion, there's a hat on a pew where money somehow shows up every Sunday, at least for those whose gospel greases the wheels of commerce. That said, it's high time to at least acknowledge this, rather than endlessly wax philosophical about the Soul of Open Source. And what about the millions who labor in and around Open Source, and don't even get recognition? They count on Divine Accounting to give them their fair share back one day. But they're getting restless. So in short, Software Woodstock has turned into What The Hell Is This. But it's just Religion and Business, all wrapped together. And with ominous clouds of resource scarcity, inflation and geopolitics from hell, it will soon turn into Check Please! Time to separate Religion from Business. It's all Business, folks!
• graphex 4y ago
  I contributed a bit to Akka over the years, both in terms of commits (nothing huge but a few here and there) and in terms of community building. I introduced a number of developers to the Actor Model and did several presentations on how cool Akka Streams was, to several hundred people. I'm not "akka royalty" but I _was_ an Akka proponent. I definitely consider this a big middle finger and am pretty sad about what I and others are being forced to do as a result of this. I don't care to debate open source or license changes, I care mostly about the developers this affects. I care about the people who I got excited about using the actor model with Akka now having to put in a serious amount of effort to rip it out. Mostly these people are at places I no longer work and just inherited codebases where akka happened to win the particular decision on the project. In most of those projects, it could just as easily have been Spring, or Dropwizard, or Kafka Streams, or dozens of other libraries and frameworks. For those of you who work for companies that don't have over $25m in revenue, please never choose Akka. A company looking to acquire your company is going to do their due diligence looking for poison pills, and Akka became one of those today. For those of you who work for companies making over $25m in revenue, you probably know that the way scaling works, your company is very likely to have a loss rather than a profit. You're also likely to have lots of people in accounting, and requisition, and many levels of management, and not a single one of them will ever consider $2k per vCPU for even a second. Most companies that have that much revenue are building on pretty rough margins that have gotten a lot rougher this year, and the expectation from the market is to start showing a profit right away. Many companies are finding smaller margins at the same time, and working with a scale of many tens of thousands of vCPUs running in cloud environments, earning only a small amount above the opEx (or maybe even below) of the cloud bill. These companies are also likely to have to follow regulations like SOC2 or SOX, and have requirements for patching CVEs, so it isn't an option to just keep the same version of Akka once a CVE has been discovered. This is particularly true if you're using akka-http as those servers might be handling traffic that isn't even going through a WAF. Developers in this situation are going to be absolutely screwed. There's no way the company will justify a license that costs more than the physical hardware something is running on, but there is no way they can just not upgrade, either. Maybe the company decides that it'll license, and only have to lay off 50 people as a result. Maybe the company decides it'll fork and 5 people have to maintain that fork until the company can migrate to something else. I know if I were one of those people, I'd quit. I think the best scenario here is to just drop everything you were doing, and either rewrite your akka components or try to swap in something like ZIO and hope you can complete the project before a big CVE hits. And if a >8 CVE does hit Akka soon, maybe that would be a good thing, as it might foster the creation of one particular fork that could actually gain traction, rather than a diffuse set of hundreds of forks that never gain critical mass.
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  It's hard to want to build anything on open-source when you see stuff like this. Every open-source project is surrounded by people and corporations trying to charge you rent to use it.
• thdespou 4y ago
  Great, one more reason to invest in modern open source Java 17. No more of these risky frameworks.