Submitted via IRC for SoyCow9088
In 2019, multiple open source companies changed course
Free and open source software enables the world as we know it in 2019. From Web servers to kiosks to the big data algorithms mining your Facebook feed, nearly every computer system you interact with runs, at least in part, on free software. And in the larger tech industry, free software has given rise to a galaxy of startups and enabled the largest software acquisition in the history of the world.
Free software is a gift, a gift that made the world as we know it possible. And from the start, it seemed like an astounding gift to give. So astounding in fact that it initially made businesses unaccustomed to this kind of generosity uncomfortable. These companies weren't unwilling to use free software, it was simply too radical and by extension too political. It had to be renamed: "open source."
Once that happened, open source software took over the world.
Recently, though, there's been a disturbance in the open source force. Within the last year, companies like Redis Labs, MongoDB, and Confluent all changed their software licenses, moving away from open source licenses to more restrictive terms that limit what can be done with the software, making it no longer open source software.
The problem, argue Redis Labs, MongoDB and others, is a more modern tech trend: hosted software services. Also known as, "the cloud." Also known as Amazon AWS.
Amazon, for its part, came out swinging, releasing its own version of the code behind Elastic Search this spring in response to licensing changes at Elastic (the company behind Elastic Search). And besides a new trademark dispute over Amazon's naming convention, Elastic has a very different response from that of MongoDB and Redis—it hasn't said a word in protest.
MongoDB the company is built around the open source "NoSQL" database of the same name. MongoDB's database is useful for storing unstructured data, for example images, which it can handle just as well as it handles more traditional data types. Data is stored in JSON-like documents rather than the columns and rows of a relational database. Since there's no structured tables there's no "structured query language" for working with the data, hence the term "NoSQL."
MongoDB is not the only NoSQL database out there, but it's one of the most widely used. According to industry aggregator, DB Engines, MongoDB is the fifth most popular database, with everyone from Google to Code Academy to Foursquare using MongoDB.
MongoDB is also leading the charge to create a new kind of open source license, which CTO Eliot Horowitz believes is necessary to protect open source software businesses as computing moves into the new world of the cloud.
The cloud, argue Horowitz and others, requires the open source community to re-think and possibly update open source licenses to "deal with new challenges in a new environment." The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service, and reselling it. The problem with AWS or Azure wrapping up MongoDB and offering it as part of a software as a service (SaaS) is that it then competes with MongoDB's own cloud-based SaaS—MongoDB Atlas. What's threatened then is not MongoDB's source code, but MongoDB's own SaaS derived from that source code, and that happens to be the company's chief source of revenue.
To combat the potential threat to its bottom line, MongoDB has moved from the Gnu Public License (GPL) to what it calls the Server Side Public License, or SSPL. The SSPL says, in essence, you can do anything you want with this software, except use it to build something that competes with MongoDB Atlas.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:27PM (5 children)
you don't make money off your software by giving it away for free.
How many times have other companies learned this over and over? People seem to have finally realized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:48PM (1 child)
No, but you can reduce development cost by using open source solutions and placing your code as open source means that others may improve it at no cost to you. I gather from TFA that's what Mongo wanted to do - allow others to contribute enhancements so long as they were not directly competing with it in the marketplace.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @09:12PM
Otherwise known as trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Sounds pretty one-sided. "Work for me for free, and don't dare try to make money from your work, but I can make money from yours."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:53PM (2 children)
This is a broken window(s) fallacy.
Free software makes people save money. Money saved is still money. Those guys pushing bad software until it's dominant and collecting license money lose money. Guys writing useful software with a FOSS infrastructure make money.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)
Speaking of fallacies...
You imply that you always save money by going with free versus paid.
Are you saying then that I will come out ahead by using a "free" volunteer programmer in my company (maybe a highschooler who needs the working experience) versus paying for an experienced programmer? Why not?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday October 18 2019, @12:03PM
No, I didn't imply that. Problem being, serious software labs with talented devs were driven off the market by shitty overpromising bank backed hot air vendors, they survive in specialized markets.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday October 17 2019, @01:47PM (1 child)
The problem is that free software turned out to be superior for mainstream uses, and many niches. This caused the adoption of FOSS by those disinterested in freedom. This caused these guys to find wiggle room in the licenses to make money. Plus, hardware manufacturers had to cope with workstations that free software made essentially eternal so they found their own countermeasures.
Now you have software released with a free license that is not de facto free to modify and adapt, because somewhere it hits proprietary hardware bits, trusted bits, secure boot, and utter chaos in many projects infiltrated by people who have no love for stable, documented, environments.
Then there is systemd which would merit an analysis on its own.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:02PM
Ummm... this describes pretty well a good chunk of open-source authors.
OSS coders who take care not to break the API spec from one minor release to the other are more like the exception than the rule and, by Jove, have you seen many coders loving to write docos?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:02PM (1 child)
The challenges are, essentially, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which are all capable of taking open source software, wrapping it up as a service, and reselling it.
There is a GNU Affero license for that IIRC. But anyway in a just world there also should be a judge that says "oh wait, if you offer a cloud service you essentially lease your own computing/storage to the user, so you are still distributing a software stack, not geographically but logically. You can get paid for that, but, you must publish all modifications if required by the original licenses, morons".
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:11PM
GPL Affero says "If you adjust the code so that you use the software as a service to the public, do release your adjustments too" (while GPL says "if you use it yourself for any purposes, but you don't distribute the binaries, you don't need to distribute the source").
Even Affero won't stop Amazon taking your code and competing with your services.
But then again... I doubt the OSS is about stopping competition when so much of it is created by cooperation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:08PM (4 children)
Wholesale making GPLed stuff closed source, or some kind free-for-toy-use restrictive license, will be much easier with FSF comprehensively defanged.
Whatever drones remaining are likely too busy quaking in their boots at prospect of unpersoning, to raise their voices against anything the nice corporations choose to want.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday October 17 2019, @10:04PM (3 children)
I don't know what the social safety net is like in Massachusetts, but his 401k can't be too healthy. Probably eligible for welfare and food stamps.
We're programmers - we're supposed to be able to foresee well-known issues like "gotta make a living." If you're willing to write software and depend on donations (donor ware), or beerware, or chocolateware, at some point you're going to have to deal with the need for a real job.
With all those who are concerned about privacy, there's probably a growing market for proprietary software that runs entirely locally. Sort of like the win31 days when you could buy a program that took dictation and saved it as text in your editor of choice, and you could operate your computer by voice commands, and turn light and the tv on and off via computer (that last predates Windows).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @11:46PM
Which as I observed is your normal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 18 2019, @04:08AM
Sounds like he's not relevant to the discussion then. It's not just that he's "failed" to make money, but he hasn't even tried.
(Score: 1) by ThatIrritatingGuy on Friday October 18 2019, @11:56AM
Stallman did nothing wrong and anyone telling you otherwise is lying. You can read details here [github.io].
Someone deciding to not make money is not relevant to the discussion on how to make money.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:14PM
The whole point of the GPL is to prevent vendor lock to the developer on certain hardware and compilers and to the customer on certain developers. MongoDB's first mistake was getting into the SaaS vendor lock game in the first place. They should have just approached the likes of Amazon and offer them corporate licensing deal where Amazon fronts some costs and they'll prioritize their tickets. This is how most of the linux eco-system operated for decades. But they got greedy and wanted to vendor lock customers into their service. So, naturally, someone with more money that could scale hardware costs better won. And that's really what it all comes down to: You can't win against hardware scale with software. Every corporate developer will tell you throwing hardware at a problem is almost always cheaper than optimizing. So why on earth would you compromise on your professional freedom as a developer and customer for the chance to compete against hardware with superior software?
There's no winning against scale. Only vendor lock mitigation.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:23PM (9 children)
does the programmer have a responsibility to see that this doesn't happen?
The GPL doesn't do this.
Recent history with Google suggests that there are programmers who have an expectation of socially responsible use of their code.
I will always regard Richard Stallman as a hero, and I hope that he recovers quickly from his recent bought of beaver blight. The legal defense of the GPL certainly warrants a Nobel prize. (easily more important than many other endeavors that have gotten it)
But there is a next level to what the GPL started. Which is a source code license that forms a lawful framework for a more peaceful society.
Software licensing is the path towards a completely new system of law. The GPL was the first stone in that path.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:47PM (2 children)
Sounds utterly idiotic. "People I don't like can't use my code to do bad things." Don't forget the anti-ICE clause. Coming to a GPLv4 near you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday October 17 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)
“This software shall not be used in environments containing frozen water”?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 18 2019, @06:14AM
That's not it. It is: "This software shall not be used to resolve the inefficiencies causing human suffering" Basically, anyone adopting anti-ICE clauses want to increase human torment by ensuring an overloaded process stays overloaded. They refuse to allow their software to help people in need.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday October 17 2019, @04:30PM
Yes. But currently I prefer the AGPL for most code, and the GPL3 for the rest. BSD license for the interfaces.
OTOH, *none* of those restrict domain of use. The folks who abuse the code have fancy lawyers, so I couldn't stop them anyway.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @04:32PM (2 children)
You're going to stop "BAD" guys with a license? Like, "Using this code to terrorize innocents or overthrow governments is a violation of its license and rescinds all rights to use." So the big bad guys will have to think carefully if they want to be liable for killing thousands, overthrowing world governments and, on top of all that, copyright infringement. Assuming you can prove they used your code.
I'm not so sure licensing your code so its illegal to use by people generally breaking the law all over the place anyway is going to be very effective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @06:42PM
When this is mentioned I think it is a license to push more of what they feel is ethical than just law-abiding. Different people have their own idea of what is ethical. So it is to prevent law-abiding people/companies from using the software in a way the authors would view as unethical but still legal.
Kind of always seemed like a bad idea to me. This would be a nightmare for dependency license compatibility and that is just the beginning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 17 2019, @07:35PM
Actually yes,
"breaking the law all over the place" is criminal law. Software licenses are civil law. Do a little reading before you douche all over the place.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by barbara hudson on Thursday October 17 2019, @10:25PM (1 child)
Not much of a plan, but he always lacked the foresight to deal with realities like how to make money. Most people wouldn't want to have his lifestyle, but that's what poor life choices do - they accumulate and they catch up to you.
He's not really relevant any more. He got old and failed to adapt. So one day he won't come out of his latest borrowed room and someone is going to have to deal with it.
Or he'll end up in a shelter, then get tossed for complaining that it doesn't meet his conditions.
He probably has a martyr complex about all the privations he has to deal with to stay pure to his cause.
Pay nothing for using software that runs on a server and harvests your data, or a modest one-time license to run proprietary software locally that keeps your data yours locally ? Your choice, but the free version I compromised your freedom far more. The GPL was one of the elements behind moving everything to the cloud. Thanks for nothing.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by PlasticCogLiquid on Thursday October 17 2019, @10:34PM
Oh shut the hell up. All you do is talk shit. He's more relevant than you'll ever be.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday October 17 2019, @02:49PM
Are you trying to build a useful tool or are you trying to take control over other people and make them dependent on you?
If you are trying to do the former, then FOSS is for you, if you are trying to do the latter then it is not.
The trouble here is that people trying to do the latter want, as always, to pose as FOSS for the advantages with none of the disadvantages.
Garbage people will make garbage, we can't always stop them but we can make sure they dont conveniently mislabel themselves.
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hwertz on Thursday October 17 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
Well, this happens pretty regularly. Company works on some open source software; changes their mind. Software is forked at last open source release.
There's 4 main scenarios that then occur... 1) The company did most development on the software, so the open source fork stagnates. 2) The 3rd parties did most development, so the "original" now closed source version stagnates, while the "fork" essentially gets all the improvements (new features, bug fixes, speedups, etc.) 3) Both company and 3rd party worked a lot on the software, the original and fork gain features and bug fixes virtually in lock-step with each other. 4) Both company and 3rd party worked a lot on the software, and the original and fork fairly rapidly diverge; they might maintain compatibility for pre-fork features, but post-fork development is essentially totally seperate between the two.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday October 17 2019, @10:30PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday October 18 2019, @04:12AM
Richard Stallman recognized this problem as early as 2000, when the roots of the Affero GPL were sown. Alas, not enough FOSS developers knew or cared enough to use the AGPL.
If you don't fight for your freedom, you don't deserve it.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!