8 ms·

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 p

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.
- braingenious 4y ago
  This is where I’m confused. Are the average current users of Akka making more than $25 million in revenue? Or is the average Akka user on track to hit $25 million before they can figure out costs or other options?
  - ramchip 4y ago
    The users I know personally work on internal services in large companies. They didn't necessarily choose it, some did but some just inherited a codebase and have to deal with it. I work in a large company though, so I have no idea if this is average or just my personal bubble :)
kryptiskt 4y ago
Bait and switch is never nice, whether Google does it or putative open source projects. A lot of developers work for companies that has more than $25M in revenue, and now a ton of them is going to get shit from management because they added this cuckoo egg dependency back when it used an open source license. I have no problem with companies using whatever license, I do have trouble with them getting traction being open and then turning around as soon as they can squeeze a little money out of the people who were fooled. I don't use Akka, but I feel the pain of the people who did that and now has to tear the thing out. Because I don't see how anyone would want to use it, that pricing is completely ridiculous. No one should pay per vCPU, much less those extortionate amounts.
- bb1298 4y ago
  $2k per vCPU is 16k for a pretty standard 8 core ec2. The ec2 itself might cost ~$300 a month or $3600 a year. Where the hell did they come up with this pricing model lol.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Sounds like Oracle.
  - disruptiveink 4y ago
    This comment is really buried in the discussion. $2000 per vCPU for a library is absolutely insane pricing, unless you're running Akka on a single bare metal server, this is a non-starter for anyone. Really unsure what Lightbend is trying to do here, this seems like the death of Akka.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > unless you're running Akka on a single bare metal server A tiny single bear metal server, at that; most server hardware I use has 48 cores!
      - xani_ 4y ago
KingOfCoders 4y ago
I was once working for a company who had stellar growth to $100M+ revenue and millions of users, started with a "open source" framework for distributed caching, needed to buy the enterprise version for support, the vendor got bought up by a large evil enterprise and the licensing costs got 10x without pre-warning, and it was a very complicated task to get that core technology pulled (mostly because it was too complicated, but also because it was to expensive) out over years, replaced by Redis. I would be very careful to use "open source" technology from companies that depend on sales from this piece of technology. Did this particular piece help get the company to $100M+? Yes, and people too often forget where technology got them to, when blaming said technology. Could something other have work too? (Yes, see Redis)
- arinlen 4y ago
  > I would be very careful to use "open source" technology from companies that depend on sales from this piece of technology. I feel your comment is a gross misrepresentation of the problems posed by replacing a FLOSS license like Apache with a proprietary one. Software that was released yesterday under a license like Apache will remain FLOSS today, and usable under the exact same terms. Subsequent releases won't, but the one version you've been using to sell your product/service will remain usable under the old terms.
  - KingOfCoders 4y ago
    I've used many open source projects in the past, several of them had critical bugs, that did not get fixed (e.g. either the core developer abandoned it, or the BDFL said WONTFIX). A software without someone fixing the problems is - YMMV - too risky to use. And fixing a bug on your own in something complex and complicated like Akka without breaking things is no easy task (essentially creating and maintaining your own fork). To me chosing an open source framework to base my future on the framework needs a healthy community of committers.
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > I've used many open source projects in the past, several of them had critical bugs, that did not get fixed (...) And that's perfectly fine. FLOSS assures you have access to the source code so that you can dig in and fix any issue you feel strongly about. What FLOSS does not grant you is a right to demand maintenance and unpaid work from third parties. If your view on FLOSS is so militant about the right to maintenance,you should also be mindful of the fact that it's you and people like you who are expected to do said maintenance.
Sander_Marechal 4y ago
It's not the change, it's the way the sell it. If they have just been up front about it ("Look, OSS isn't working for us so we are going to take it closed source.") then there would be much less drama. Instead they always try to weasel-word how they believe they are still open source when they are not in a lame attempt to not scare away their contributors.
- abrookewood 4y ago
  Completely agree. The wording and justification is just terrible.
ArneBab 4y ago
I think people don’t take the license of projects they use seriously. The license allows such relicensing. Use a copyleft-licensed project with outside contributors if you want the project to stay free.
- orangeoxidation 4y ago
  I don't think the license is too important as there's always a chance the software gets abandoned instead. Rather look at how many organizations are paying for contributions. If it's all resting on a single back there's increased danger. Still, the only way to guarantee continued development is paying for it (or doing it yourself).
josephcsible 4y ago
Because we're unselfish? Society would be a way worse place if nobody ever opposed anything bad unless it harmed them personally.
fabian2k 4y ago
The problem isn't usually charging for something, it's when the price model changes in a fundamental way. Especially when the pricing model scales in a way that is very expensive for some subset of users. Pricing models contain assumptions about how people use the software, you can easily get priced out if you use it in a bit of a different way than usual. If you have all the information about the pricing model up front you can make good decisions about using the software or not. If the pricing model changes your decisions can get invalidates and might require serious effort to remove the dependency on that piece of software.
andrewstuart2 4y ago
The reason it brings people out of the woodworks is the way that it erodes trust. How many more people will decide that they deserve more money, and relicense their software, leaving me in a bind? I used to know that software licenses were generally stable, and an Apache2.0 project was safe to use, and I could contribute and use the software knowing generally that my contributions would be part of something that continued to become greater over time. Now, I don't know if I can contribute (which includes usage, because the more I use it, the better I understand it and the more confidently I can recommend it and help others to use it) to software that's trying to do the OSS paid support model, because that company might decide at any point that they're not "getting enough value" and relicense to terms that don't work for me, thus causing me to need to either live with the software as is, no bugfixes or new features, or rework it out of my architecture.
- braingenious 4y ago
  This is where I don’t fully understand what “trust” means here. It kind of sounds like it’s “trusting” that users will be able to profit from the software in perpetuity at the expense of the developer. Isn’t one of the core ideals of FOSS forking? If you’re certain that no other person could possibly fork a piece of software and provide bug fixes and new features, isn’t that a tacit admission that the primary maintainer is the only person on earth that could do so? If I were the only person on earth that could write a bit of software, I would not do that for free. It would be downright weird and entitled to expect that from me. If I wasn’t the only person on earth that could write such code, I would happily watch and encourage the people that prefer to have an Apache 2.0 licensed derivative of the original work.
  - andrewstuart2 4y ago
    Interesting that you went to profit immediately. Much of my use of OSS is personal and for fun and because I believe it makes the world a better place that I can run things like Linux and postgres and get so much out of my computer that would never be possible if I had to pay for all of this. Furthermore, I don't like doing things many different ways, because it's a waste of time and energy, so I try to bring my experience with me when I work somewhere. And I give back in the form of my own free and generously licensed software contributions. Akka may have been steered by a group of people incentivised financially to support it, through support agreements or whatever, but it currently has 774 contributors. And frankly, never would have become what it is if it started closed source. Probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground honestly, as something open source would have eaten its lunch. I don't use it, but the idea that I can use something anywhere in perpetuity is part of why I choose to use and give back to FOSS. Many feel the same. Sure. Anybody can fork the software and maintain it. I love that OpenSearch did exactly that when Elastic decided it wanted money for something built on the efforts of a community. But I also know that forks are another waste of energy. Maintaining two branches that do similar things is silly if I can let you do your job while I do mine. I'm not maintaining my own OS, or my own database, or my own terminal, etc etc. Add to that, how many individuals would be willing to fork when one branch has demonstrated a willingness to make choices in favor of money? It makes me wonder if they'll also push for patents or law suits against those who might add features to Akka Prime or some cleverly named fork. Frankly, I don't use Akka and I'm definitely not going to now, so as far as I'm concerned, Akka is more than welcome to sign their own death warrant. But this trend of building software with community contributions and then trying to profit from it is worrisome and frankly, pretty close to theft. I don't see any of these companies retroactively paying their contributors, so it's definitely not about "what's right." It's a cash grab branded as sustainability, and it has a chilling effect for me, that pushes against the ideals of OSS.
the_af 4y ago
> I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It's bait and switch, and nobody likes that. They used a true open source license, earning them developer good will, until it stopped serving their purposes. It also undermines open source as a concept.

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.
braingenious 4y ago
This is where I’m confused. Are the average current users of Akka making more than $25 million in revenue? Or is the average Akka user on track to hit $25 million before they can figure out costs or other options?
- ramchip 4y ago
  The users I know personally work on internal services in large companies. They didn't necessarily choose it, some did but some just inherited a codebase and have to deal with it. I work in a large company though, so I have no idea if this is average or just my personal bubble :)

kryptiskt 4y ago

Bait and switch is never nice, whether Google does it or putative open source projects. A lot of developers work for companies that has more than $25M in revenue, and now a ton of them is going to get shit from management because they added this cuckoo egg dependency back when it used an open source license. I have no problem with companies using whatever license, I do have trouble with them getting traction being open and then turning around as soon as they can squeeze a little money out of the people who were fooled. I don't use Akka, but I feel the pain of the people who did that and now has to tear the thing out. Because I don't see how anyone would want to use it, that pricing is completely ridiculous. No one should pay per vCPU, much less those extortionate amounts.

bb1298 4y ago
$2k per vCPU is 16k for a pretty standard 8 core ec2. The ec2 itself might cost ~$300 a month or $3600 a year. Where the hell did they come up with this pricing model lol.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  Sounds like Oracle.
- disruptiveink 4y ago
  This comment is really buried in the discussion. $2000 per vCPU for a library is absolutely insane pricing, unless you're running Akka on a single bare metal server, this is a non-starter for anyone. Really unsure what Lightbend is trying to do here, this seems like the death of Akka.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > unless you're running Akka on a single bare metal server A tiny single bear metal server, at that; most server hardware I use has 48 cores!
    - xani_ 4y ago

KingOfCoders 4y ago

I was once working for a company who had stellar growth to $100M+ revenue and millions of users, started with a "open source" framework for distributed caching, needed to buy the enterprise version for support, the vendor got bought up by a large evil enterprise and the licensing costs got 10x without pre-warning, and it was a very complicated task to get that core technology pulled (mostly because it was too complicated, but also because it was to expensive) out over years, replaced by Redis. I would be very careful to use "open source" technology from companies that depend on sales from this piece of technology. Did this particular piece help get the company to $100M+? Yes, and people too often forget where technology got them to, when blaming said technology. Could something other have work too? (Yes, see Redis)

arinlen 4y ago
> I would be very careful to use "open source" technology from companies that depend on sales from this piece of technology. I feel your comment is a gross misrepresentation of the problems posed by replacing a FLOSS license like Apache with a proprietary one. Software that was released yesterday under a license like Apache will remain FLOSS today, and usable under the exact same terms. Subsequent releases won't, but the one version you've been using to sell your product/service will remain usable under the old terms.
- KingOfCoders 4y ago
  I've used many open source projects in the past, several of them had critical bugs, that did not get fixed (e.g. either the core developer abandoned it, or the BDFL said WONTFIX). A software without someone fixing the problems is - YMMV - too risky to use. And fixing a bug on your own in something complex and complicated like Akka without breaking things is no easy task (essentially creating and maintaining your own fork). To me chosing an open source framework to base my future on the framework needs a healthy community of committers.
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > I've used many open source projects in the past, several of them had critical bugs, that did not get fixed (...) And that's perfectly fine. FLOSS assures you have access to the source code so that you can dig in and fix any issue you feel strongly about. What FLOSS does not grant you is a right to demand maintenance and unpaid work from third parties. If your view on FLOSS is so militant about the right to maintenance,you should also be mindful of the fact that it's you and people like you who are expected to do said maintenance.

Sander_Marechal 4y ago

It's not the change, it's the way the sell it. If they have just been up front about it ("Look, OSS isn't working for us so we are going to take it closed source.") then there would be much less drama. Instead they always try to weasel-word how they believe they are still open source when they are not in a lame attempt to not scare away their contributors.

abrookewood 4y ago
Completely agree. The wording and justification is just terrible.

ArneBab 4y ago

I think people don’t take the license of projects they use seriously. The license allows such relicensing. Use a copyleft-licensed project with outside contributors if you want the project to stay free.

orangeoxidation 4y ago
I don't think the license is too important as there's always a chance the software gets abandoned instead. Rather look at how many organizations are paying for contributions. If it's all resting on a single back there's increased danger. Still, the only way to guarantee continued development is paying for it (or doing it yourself).

josephcsible 4y ago

Because we're unselfish? Society would be a way worse place if nobody ever opposed anything bad unless it harmed them personally.

fabian2k 4y ago

The problem isn't usually charging for something, it's when the price model changes in a fundamental way. Especially when the pricing model scales in a way that is very expensive for some subset of users. Pricing models contain assumptions about how people use the software, you can easily get priced out if you use it in a bit of a different way than usual. If you have all the information about the pricing model up front you can make good decisions about using the software or not. If the pricing model changes your decisions can get invalidates and might require serious effort to remove the dependency on that piece of software.

andrewstuart2 4y ago

The reason it brings people out of the woodworks is the way that it erodes trust. How many more people will decide that they deserve more money, and relicense their software, leaving me in a bind? I used to know that software licenses were generally stable, and an Apache2.0 project was safe to use, and I could contribute and use the software knowing generally that my contributions would be part of something that continued to become greater over time. Now, I don't know if I can contribute (which includes usage, because the more I use it, the better I understand it and the more confidently I can recommend it and help others to use it) to software that's trying to do the OSS paid support model, because that company might decide at any point that they're not "getting enough value" and relicense to terms that don't work for me, thus causing me to need to either live with the software as is, no bugfixes or new features, or rework it out of my architecture.

braingenious 4y ago
This is where I don’t fully understand what “trust” means here. It kind of sounds like it’s “trusting” that users will be able to profit from the software in perpetuity at the expense of the developer. Isn’t one of the core ideals of FOSS forking? If you’re certain that no other person could possibly fork a piece of software and provide bug fixes and new features, isn’t that a tacit admission that the primary maintainer is the only person on earth that could do so? If I were the only person on earth that could write a bit of software, I would not do that for free. It would be downright weird and entitled to expect that from me. If I wasn’t the only person on earth that could write such code, I would happily watch and encourage the people that prefer to have an Apache 2.0 licensed derivative of the original work.
- andrewstuart2 4y ago
  Interesting that you went to profit immediately. Much of my use of OSS is personal and for fun and because I believe it makes the world a better place that I can run things like Linux and postgres and get so much out of my computer that would never be possible if I had to pay for all of this. Furthermore, I don't like doing things many different ways, because it's a waste of time and energy, so I try to bring my experience with me when I work somewhere. And I give back in the form of my own free and generously licensed software contributions. Akka may have been steered by a group of people incentivised financially to support it, through support agreements or whatever, but it currently has 774 contributors. And frankly, never would have become what it is if it started closed source. Probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground honestly, as something open source would have eaten its lunch. I don't use it, but the idea that I can use something anywhere in perpetuity is part of why I choose to use and give back to FOSS. Many feel the same. Sure. Anybody can fork the software and maintain it. I love that OpenSearch did exactly that when Elastic decided it wanted money for something built on the efforts of a community. But I also know that forks are another waste of energy. Maintaining two branches that do similar things is silly if I can let you do your job while I do mine. I'm not maintaining my own OS, or my own database, or my own terminal, etc etc. Add to that, how many individuals would be willing to fork when one branch has demonstrated a willingness to make choices in favor of money? It makes me wonder if they'll also push for patents or law suits against those who might add features to Akka Prime or some cleverly named fork. Frankly, I don't use Akka and I'm definitely not going to now, so as far as I'm concerned, Akka is more than welcome to sign their own death warrant. But this trend of building software with community contributions and then trying to profit from it is worrisome and frankly, pretty close to theft. I don't see any of these companies retroactively paying their contributors, so it's definitely not about "what's right." It's a cash grab branded as sustainability, and it has a chilling effect for me, that pushes against the ideals of OSS.

the_af 4y ago

> I’ve never quite understood the amount of rancor that changes like this elicit here. It's bait and switch, and nobody likes that. They used a true open source license, earning them developer good will, until it stopped serving their purposes. It also undermines open source as a concept.