4 ms·

Huh? What's an example of this? The author talks about the phenomenon like it's so widespread it hardly needs to be explained, but I honestly have very little i

Huh? What's an example of this? The author talks about the phenomenon like it's so widespread it hardly needs to be explained, but I honestly have very little idea what they're even talking about. Every major open-source project I'm aware of is still permissively-licensed

jchw 4y ago
MongoDB, TimescaleDB, ElasticSearch come to mind, as high profile examples.
- josteink 4y ago
  In the .NET world, the most recent example would be Identity Server. Used to be open-source, became the defacto OAuth implementation, but now it's closed source.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  I do want to note Timescale's license is extremely generous: https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/main/tsl/LICENSE-TIMESCALE#L62 https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/main/tsl/LICEN... There's a marked difference between what they allow you vs Mongo (SSPL) and Elastic (Elastic license) -- see (b). Also generally the Postgres ecosystem has in general seemingly found a way to strike a balance between creating immense value (point to a F/OSS DB that's better than Postgres) and enabling commercial success (Citus, 2nd Quadrant, EDB, Timescale, Supabase, Neon are all very successful) I do agree with the overall trend though -- I already think the future is going to be AGPL[0] (but that's based partially on a misunderstanding of what AGPL does). It remains to be seen if people will cynically make projects open source to start and then switch to something like SSPL/BSL/Elastic later, but the unintentional rug pulls will probably continue for a while. [0]: https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source-is-agpl/ https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...
  - LoriP 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing this point of view. For those interested, I wanted to share this blog post that explains the Timescale approach in detail. https://www.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-business-in-cloud-era-v2/ https://www.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-business... Timescale's community manager.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I'm personally not against the principle of a "super AGPL" that requires apps built on a system like a database to be open source. The problem with the SSPL, as I see it, is that it's incompatible with pretty much every other open source licence and software, possibly even running it on linux. Something similar that requires everything to be released under some kind of FOSS licence seems desirable, but I don't know if that could be defined legally.
mtone 4y ago
Recently Akka [0], a 12K star project. [0]: https://github.com/akka/akka/pull/31561 https://github.com/akka/akka/pull/31561
- Semaphor 4y ago
  There seems to be a fork trying to establish itself: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/PekkoProposal https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/PekkoP...
  - llimllib 4y ago
    I think github could do a lot better job in cases like this of highlighting active forks, to make it possible for communities to coalesce around OSS forks of projects that have switched to commercial licenses or have gone maintainer-less. For an example, jq has gone without maintenance for a long time now, but it's very challenging to gain critical mass around a maintained fork, so the un-maintained fork remains state of the art.
djha-skin 4y ago
Cockroach DB and MongoDB are some of the most famous examples.

jchw 4y ago

MongoDB, TimescaleDB, ElasticSearch come to mind, as high profile examples.

josteink 4y ago
In the .NET world, the most recent example would be Identity Server. Used to be open-source, became the defacto OAuth implementation, but now it's closed source.
hardwaresofton 4y ago
I do want to note Timescale's license is extremely generous: https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/main/tsl/LICENSE-TIMESCALE#L62 https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/main/tsl/LICEN... There's a marked difference between what they allow you vs Mongo (SSPL) and Elastic (Elastic license) -- see (b). Also generally the Postgres ecosystem has in general seemingly found a way to strike a balance between creating immense value (point to a F/OSS DB that's better than Postgres) and enabling commercial success (Citus, 2nd Quadrant, EDB, Timescale, Supabase, Neon are all very successful) I do agree with the overall trend though -- I already think the future is going to be AGPL[0] (but that's based partially on a misunderstanding of what AGPL does). It remains to be seen if people will cynically make projects open source to start and then switch to something like SSPL/BSL/Elastic later, but the unintentional rug pulls will probably continue for a while. [0]: https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source-is-agpl/ https://vadosware.io/post/the-future-of-free-and-open-source...
- LoriP 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing this point of view. For those interested, I wanted to share this blog post that explains the Timescale approach in detail. https://www.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-business-in-cloud-era-v2/ https://www.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-business... Timescale's community manager.
RobotToaster 4y ago
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I'm personally not against the principle of a "super AGPL" that requires apps built on a system like a database to be open source. The problem with the SSPL, as I see it, is that it's incompatible with pretty much every other open source licence and software, possibly even running it on linux. Something similar that requires everything to be released under some kind of FOSS licence seems desirable, but I don't know if that could be defined legally.

mtone 4y ago

Recently Akka [0], a 12K star project. [0]: https://github.com/akka/akka/pull/31561 https://github.com/akka/akka/pull/31561

Semaphor 4y ago
There seems to be a fork trying to establish itself: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/PekkoProposal https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/PekkoP...
- llimllib 4y ago
  I think github could do a lot better job in cases like this of highlighting active forks, to make it possible for communities to coalesce around OSS forks of projects that have switched to commercial licenses or have gone maintainer-less. For an example, jq has gone without maintenance for a long time now, but it's very challenging to gain critical mass around a maintained fork, so the un-maintained fork remains state of the art.

djha-skin 4y ago

Cockroach DB and MongoDB are some of the most famous examples.