4 ms·

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

by jchw 4y ago

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.

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

by jchw 4y ago

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

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.