Freedom 0 is the most important one, otherwise the program is just old fashioned freeware/shareware. And yes, that means granting that freedom to AWS as well.

Freedom 0 is the most important one, otherwise the program is just old fashioned freeware/shareware. And yes, that means granting that freedom to AWS as well. The purpose of the GPL and other copyleft FOSS licenses wasn't to make people “play nice”. That's nonsense. The purpose of copyleft licenses is to prevent the software from becoming proprietary. The real issue at play is that FOSS doesn't make a good business model. But it's surely nice marketing. So companies like MongoDB first achieve popularity by advertising the project as FOSS, then change to proprietary, pulling a bait and switch. And it's all possible due to requiring copyright assignments from all contributors. The article, like all others before it, mentions MariaDB. MariaDB is always mentioned. But MariaDB is still GPL, as the copyright of MySQL is still Oracle's. If MariaDB wouldn't be GPL, nobody would know about it. The fact that MariaDB, the company, is creating other software packages under BSL is of no consequence, as those packages did not exist before. Out of the pack, MariaDB is doing it right (probably due to them being forced to). But I hope MongoDB and Elasticsearch slide into irrelevance for fooling people. And before you claim that “BSL code will turn to FOSS in a couple of years”, consider this … it's the freedom to fork that keeps FOSS honest and thriving. Forking is about being able to take control. Forking can happen for many reasons, like disagreement with the project's direction. You can't really fork BSL/SSPL source code, and source code that's a couple of years old is already too old for many purposes, making competition with the main project difficult. BSL/SSPL strikes at the heart of what makes FOSS what it is. E.g., MariaDB couldn't have happened if MySQL wasn't developed under a FOSS license. BSL and SSPL are just old-fashioned proprietary, “shared source” licenses. --- If you're building a company, only pick FOSS licenses if you can find a sustainable business model. Don't pick FOSS just for the market appeal. And don't lie to people that your product is Open Source when it isn't. Proprietary licensing is most often better for growing a business. You can open source your complements [1] or pick an “open core” strategy, later. There are good examples of the “open core” in the wild, like Jetbrains. [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/