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I guess NuBank (Cognitect's owners) have concluded that the paid licensing business wasn't worth the hassle compared to having the developer time involved spent

by mst 3y ago

I guess NuBank (Cognitect's owners) have concluded that the paid licensing business wasn't worth the hassle compared to having the developer time involved spent on other things. Releasing only binaries, while I understand people being grumpy about it, seems like an interesting way of keeping their options open going forwards. Since it was always closed source, it now being 'closed source but free' is still a net win. The Datomic/Cognitect/NuBank relationship is an interesting symbiotic dynamic and while I'm sure we can all think of ways it might go horribly wrong in future I rather hope it doesn't.

motoboi 3y ago
Very probably they understood that having a property database makes hiring and onboarding more difficult than necessary. Open sourcing the database helps on that.
- elteto 3y ago
  They didn’t open source the DB, just the binaries.
  - remram 3y ago
    How can you "open source" something that doesn't include the sources?
    - Thorrez 3y ago
      Yeah, they didn't open source anything. They just made it free.
      - elteto 3y ago
        Ah! Yes, but not quite! It’s not freeware. The binaries are technically open sourced, you can do with them as you please within the confines of the Apache license.
        sitkack 3y ago
        I take that means reverse engineer, decompilation and extracting and reusing any bytecode you want.
        dunham 3y ago
        It seems like it, which is a bit of a change in direction for them. I've poked at the data from the clojure side in the past (inspecting objects), just to learn how it works, but the license was strongly worded against reverse engineering. I've also taken a look at generated clojure bytecode. It looked like the codegen is pretty straightforward with minimal optimization. It looked like it wouldn't be too hard to reverse with maybe a little bit of backtracking (essentially a parsing problem, I believe). You'd then need a separate step to redo the macros. It sounded like it might be a fun little project (just to see if it can be done and try my hand at decompiling), but I would have wanted to decompile datomic to make it interesting and the license precluded that.
        elteto 3y ago
        That’s my take as well. It is definitely an odd license for a binary, I’ll grant you that.
        remram 3y ago
        The Apache license says I can do things with the source of it. > You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and **in Source or Object form**, provided that (...)
        jolux 3y ago
        …only if you have the source
    - croes 3y ago
      That's parent's point, they didn't. They only made the binaries available under the Apache 2.0 license
    - elteto 3y ago
      Well, _technically_ you are now free to modify the binary and redistribute the result as per the Apache 2.0 license. That’s different than giving something as freeware, which would not allow/cover modification/redistribution.
      - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
        Which actually does make a difference for JARs because the bytecode is portable and modifiable, not trivially so but definitely way more easily than native code.
- bananapub 3y ago
  they haven't open sourced the database though?

by mst 3y ago

motoboi 3y ago

Very probably they understood that having a property database makes hiring and onboarding more difficult than necessary. Open sourcing the database helps on that.

elteto 3y ago
They didn’t open source the DB, just the binaries.
- remram 3y ago
  How can you "open source" something that doesn't include the sources?
  - Thorrez 3y ago
    Yeah, they didn't open source anything. They just made it free.
    - elteto 3y ago
      Ah! Yes, but not quite! It’s not freeware. The binaries are technically open sourced, you can do with them as you please within the confines of the Apache license.
      - sitkack 3y ago
        I take that means reverse engineer, decompilation and extracting and reusing any bytecode you want.
        dunham 3y ago
        It seems like it, which is a bit of a change in direction for them. I've poked at the data from the clojure side in the past (inspecting objects), just to learn how it works, but the license was strongly worded against reverse engineering. I've also taken a look at generated clojure bytecode. It looked like the codegen is pretty straightforward with minimal optimization. It looked like it wouldn't be too hard to reverse with maybe a little bit of backtracking (essentially a parsing problem, I believe). You'd then need a separate step to redo the macros. It sounded like it might be a fun little project (just to see if it can be done and try my hand at decompiling), but I would have wanted to decompile datomic to make it interesting and the license precluded that.
        elteto 3y ago
        That’s my take as well. It is definitely an odd license for a binary, I’ll grant you that.
      - remram 3y ago
        The Apache license says I can do things with the source of it. > You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and **in Source or Object form**, provided that (...)
        jolux 3y ago
        …only if you have the source
  - croes 3y ago
    That's parent's point, they didn't. They only made the binaries available under the Apache 2.0 license
  - elteto 3y ago
    Well, _technically_ you are now free to modify the binary and redistribute the result as per the Apache 2.0 license. That’s different than giving something as freeware, which would not allow/cover modification/redistribution.
    - xmcqdpt2 3y ago
      Which actually does make a difference for JARs because the bytecode is portable and modifiable, not trivially so but definitely way more easily than native code.
bananapub 3y ago
they haven't open sourced the database though?