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> Technically the Apache License that Elasticsearch was using allowed that, but ethics should have prevented it. The license conveys the intent of the authors.

> Technically the Apache License that Elasticsearch was using allowed that, but ethics should have prevented it. The license conveys the intent of the authors. If the license explicitly allows something like "reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form" then clearly the authors who picked that license wanted people to be able to do those things. If they didn't want that, they'd have picked a different license to begin with. If you don't want companies to take your work and close the source, distributing it only in object form, then don't use a license that indicates you want that to be possible. Cloud services are harder, since they don't involve distributing copies of the work, so an EULA like the AGPL is needed instead of just a copyright/patent/trademark license. But when they started they didn't pick one of these licenses, they picked a license that clearly indicated intent to allow their work to be closed & sold. They instead picked one license, then complained when companies did what they intended them to be able to do, and swapped to a different license. This is why people blame MongoDB and nobody blames AWS. It's a "bait and switch" on MongoDB's part, not on AWS's.

tzs 3y ago
> Cloud services are harder, since they don't involve distributing copies of the work, so an EULA like the AGPL is needed instead of just a copyright/patent/trademark license. Cloud services can also eat the lunch of companies that are using AGPL. AGPL just makes it so that the service's fork of the code is available to the company and the company can incorporate it or part of it if they wish. But in most cases I don't think it is being able to add proprietary things to their fork is what causes people to pick the service's offering over the company's offering when they decide they need to purchase support. Most will go with the cloud service's offering even if it has no proprietary things added because it is integrated with the other things they are using at the cloud service, and can be added to their existing support plan with that service.
skeledrew 3y ago
AGPL wouldn't help in this situation either, as it focuses on the sharing of modifications of the original. Imagine your child makes lemonade to sell and a friend drops by, they say it's OK for the friend to have some, and then said friend takes a good amount of that lemonade, sets up a stand beside your child's, and sells that lemonade which they just poured into their own container for less, or with cookies made by yet another. Is that OK? How would you feel? This is what large cloud providers are doing.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  So you put a nice restrictive license on the lemonade, and sure it makes your kid's customers unhappy, but at least it stops- oh wait, actually the other kid just made their own lemonade that's drop-in compatible and they still sell more.
  - skeledrew 3y ago
    The kid's customers have no reason to be unhappy. They come, pay for their lemonade and go. No problem if that other one goes off and makes their own; at least it's a more fair affair and they can honestly compete on actual merits. Although it still isn't even that fair IMO as the other is still using water and sugar that isn't theirs. They should be using all their own resources from scratch. If only the license change could be retroactive so said cloud companies had to either go to something totally different or build from scratch with their own hired team, instead of only having to fork from the last version before the change. They still have it really good, and that's why they continue to call for and abuse permissive licenses.

tzs 3y ago

> Cloud services are harder, since they don't involve distributing copies of the work, so an EULA like the AGPL is needed instead of just a copyright/patent/trademark license. Cloud services can also eat the lunch of companies that are using AGPL. AGPL just makes it so that the service's fork of the code is available to the company and the company can incorporate it or part of it if they wish. But in most cases I don't think it is being able to add proprietary things to their fork is what causes people to pick the service's offering over the company's offering when they decide they need to purchase support. Most will go with the cloud service's offering even if it has no proprietary things added because it is integrated with the other things they are using at the cloud service, and can be added to their existing support plan with that service.

skeledrew 3y ago

AGPL wouldn't help in this situation either, as it focuses on the sharing of modifications of the original. Imagine your child makes lemonade to sell and a friend drops by, they say it's OK for the friend to have some, and then said friend takes a good amount of that lemonade, sets up a stand beside your child's, and sells that lemonade which they just poured into their own container for less, or with cookies made by yet another. Is that OK? How would you feel? This is what large cloud providers are doing.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
So you put a nice restrictive license on the lemonade, and sure it makes your kid's customers unhappy, but at least it stops- oh wait, actually the other kid just made their own lemonade that's drop-in compatible and they still sell more.
- skeledrew 3y ago
  The kid's customers have no reason to be unhappy. They come, pay for their lemonade and go. No problem if that other one goes off and makes their own; at least it's a more fair affair and they can honestly compete on actual merits. Although it still isn't even that fair IMO as the other is still using water and sugar that isn't theirs. They should be using all their own resources from scratch. If only the license change could be retroactive so said cloud companies had to either go to something totally different or build from scratch with their own hired team, instead of only having to fork from the last version before the change. They still have it really good, and that's why they continue to call for and abuse permissive licenses.