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Flagged for misleading headline. SSPL is open source. It's just not the open source you want. It meets all the criteria and the only difference from AGPL is ho

Flagged for misleading headline. SSPL is open source. It's just not the open source you want. It meets all the criteria and the only difference from AGPL is how much source code you have to release and when - which is also the difference between GPL and AGPL. It has problems, but being closed source isn't one of them. The OSI will never certify it, of course, because that would go against the business interests of the OSI members. The OSI is a consortium of companies who receive free labour from permissively licensed projects and to a lesser extent GPL projects, and it would like that to continue, which it cannot in practice under SSPL. The OSI article linked in a reply does not make a single point against the open-sourceness of the SSPL, and essentially just says they don't like it, and that some companies won't be able to comply, which is true of every free software license. The FSF, Debian, etc haven't decided one way or another because it's not a very widespread license and they can just use valkey instead of wasting the effort.

kstrauser 2y ago
This is not a widely accepted claim. I do not see SSPL as open source, and neither do OSI[0] or FSF[1] or Debian[2]. [0]https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... [1]https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html [2]https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  We need to stop taking the OSI or FSF's positions on anything as particularly valuable. The OSI is captured entirely by corporate sponsors. Amazon was paying a full-time salary a year to the OSI when the SSPL issue happened, the OSI had no ability to take a moral pro-labor stance without crippling their own operations. They still do not meaningfully answer to individual users: The OSI recently refused to disclose who won their board election and installed their preferred candidates. And it will be inherently unethical to even consider the position of the FSF as long as it lacks the moral fortitude to permanently punt RMS from the board. If the OSI wasn't owned by corporate interests, and had rightfully declared SSPL as a copyleft license... nobody would argue it isn't. The problem is we've let an extremely problematic organization "define" something in a way that does not serve our interests.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Which part of their explanation for rejecting it do you specifically disagree with?
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      The entire claim of https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... holds down to "the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor" and the SSPL does not prohibit the use of software in any field of endeavor. The OSI then strays into a lot of nonsense that demonstrates just how bought and paid for they are, such as "the understanding that their work was going towards the greater good", like apparently... being used by a company which does not open source it's platform and treats its employees so poorly they have to pee in bottles. And of course, they immediately claim that "now... contributions are embedded in a proprietary product" because of course, the OSI believes they own the term and definition of open source, and that everything they don't agree with is inherently "proprietary". And then of course, they suggest "relicensing is not evidence of any failure of the open source licensing model" even though it is very clear that businesses being unable to survive producing open source is kinda big flaw in the goal of promoting the public software commons. (Taking it a step further, if the FSF argues free software is a moral imperative, not fixing this is outright immoral.)
      - jhatemyjob 2y ago
        Thank you and immibis for bringing this issue up. Always thought this was fishy. I don't fully understand this yet and will need to do more research. I bet these comments are unpopular because SSPL hurts GCP/AWS, which hurts YC. Not saying the mods of HN are conspiring to bury these comments. But the fish rots from the head in upvote-ordered comment trees
        ocdtrekkie 2y ago
        I have had my disagreements with dang over the years, but to be clear: I think the HN mods do incredible work. I disagree with some of their choices, but I don't think they moderate with an eye on YC's bottom line. The OSI and the FSF are still extremely popular organizations despite their very big issues, I fully expect to upset some people when I bring this up. ;)
jwitthuhn 2y ago
The difference is that SSPL is a license that was written in bad faith with the explicit intent that people can't comply with the parts about running a hosted service. https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-license https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-l... See section 13, "Offering the Program as a Service". To comply with that you need to release all software used "to make the Program or modified version available as a service" under the SSPL. For something like redis this includes: redis itself, the os you are using to host redis, the drivers and firmware for the hardware you are using to host redis, and more. Also your whole deployment stack up to and including the mouse drivers you use to click on the "deploy" button. It is an absurd condition that effectively makes section 13 say "you can't offer a hosted version" and the OSI and FSF are right to reject that fig leaf of "it is like the agpl, but more".

kstrauser 2y ago

This is not a widely accepted claim. I do not see SSPL as open source, and neither do OSI[0] or FSF[1] or Debian[2]. [0]https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... [1]https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html [2]https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/

ocdtrekkie 2y ago
We need to stop taking the OSI or FSF's positions on anything as particularly valuable. The OSI is captured entirely by corporate sponsors. Amazon was paying a full-time salary a year to the OSI when the SSPL issue happened, the OSI had no ability to take a moral pro-labor stance without crippling their own operations. They still do not meaningfully answer to individual users: The OSI recently refused to disclose who won their board election and installed their preferred candidates. And it will be inherently unethical to even consider the position of the FSF as long as it lacks the moral fortitude to permanently punt RMS from the board. If the OSI wasn't owned by corporate interests, and had rightfully declared SSPL as a copyleft license... nobody would argue it isn't. The problem is we've let an extremely problematic organization "define" something in a way that does not serve our interests.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Which part of their explanation for rejecting it do you specifically disagree with?
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    The entire claim of https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... holds down to "the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor" and the SSPL does not prohibit the use of software in any field of endeavor. The OSI then strays into a lot of nonsense that demonstrates just how bought and paid for they are, such as "the understanding that their work was going towards the greater good", like apparently... being used by a company which does not open source it's platform and treats its employees so poorly they have to pee in bottles. And of course, they immediately claim that "now... contributions are embedded in a proprietary product" because of course, the OSI believes they own the term and definition of open source, and that everything they don't agree with is inherently "proprietary". And then of course, they suggest "relicensing is not evidence of any failure of the open source licensing model" even though it is very clear that businesses being unable to survive producing open source is kinda big flaw in the goal of promoting the public software commons. (Taking it a step further, if the FSF argues free software is a moral imperative, not fixing this is outright immoral.)
    - jhatemyjob 2y ago
      Thank you and immibis for bringing this issue up. Always thought this was fishy. I don't fully understand this yet and will need to do more research. I bet these comments are unpopular because SSPL hurts GCP/AWS, which hurts YC. Not saying the mods of HN are conspiring to bury these comments. But the fish rots from the head in upvote-ordered comment trees
      - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
        I have had my disagreements with dang over the years, but to be clear: I think the HN mods do incredible work. I disagree with some of their choices, but I don't think they moderate with an eye on YC's bottom line. The OSI and the FSF are still extremely popular organizations despite their very big issues, I fully expect to upset some people when I bring this up. ;)

jwitthuhn 2y ago

The difference is that SSPL is a license that was written in bad faith with the explicit intent that people can't comply with the parts about running a hosted service. https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-license https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-l... See section 13, "Offering the Program as a Service". To comply with that you need to release all software used "to make the Program or modified version available as a service" under the SSPL. For something like redis this includes: redis itself, the os you are using to host redis, the drivers and firmware for the hardware you are using to host redis, and more. Also your whole deployment stack up to and including the mouse drivers you use to click on the "deploy" button. It is an absurd condition that effectively makes section 13 say "you can't offer a hosted version" and the OSI and FSF are right to reject that fig leaf of "it is like the agpl, but more".