Comment by marknadal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marknadal | Hacker News Reader

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According to their https://www.scylladb.com/open-source/ page:

Server License:

- Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0

- Commercial licenses are also available. Contact us for more information.

Driver Licenses:

- Apache Cassandra drivers: Apache License v2.0

Third-party drivers:

- Licenses will vary. See the individual driver documentation for details.

Documentation License:

- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

This angers me very much, they are lying about being OSS which was started by OSI (https://opensource.org/) as a response to GPL/AGPL/FSF/RMS's non-open policies, when in reality only their client drivers are OSS but their servers are commercial or AGPL.

I say this, as someone who has spent years working on and consciously giving away popular DB software as zlib/MIT/apache2 with my project - which is now run in production by Internet Archive, top 300 global site, and others (https://github.com/amark/gun) - just to see more and more other DBs steal "OSS" label to falsify marketing, and more and more DBs become "open core" crippleware. We need more people to keep campaigning against these outright license lies and the faux-humble "I can't survive as OSS unless you pay for commercial license" junk, if you can't survive doing OSS then just don't do OSS!! Lying you are OSS but actually AGPL instead is just a shady ploy to get more dev/biz clicks.

AGPL is an open source license as per OSI definition which you yourself point to!

You don't have to take my word for it, just check out their own site:

https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0

The licenses you are talking about, such as MIT or Apache, are called _permissive licenses_ whereas AGPL is a _copyleft license_. However, both types of licenses can be open source licenses, if they fill the OSI requirements.

Really? Would have helped to check out: https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

All the licenses(Except the Third-Party Driver licenses) look opensource to me.

What the heck? You are right, AGPL is listed, yet clearly violates https://opensource.org/osd-annotated definition. Could somebody explain this to me?

It conforms with OSD for the same reason GPL v2/v3 does. As I understand it, AGPL simply treats "networked access" as a subset of "linking".

There's a ton of legal grey area that hasn't been tested or has been hand waved away (do I have to open source my web application if it connects to a database that is AGPL licensed?)

AGPL treats "networked access" as "distribution", not "linking".

With the GPL, you are required to make your modifications available as GPL if you distribute the modified program. This creates a loophole for ASPs, which can modify GPL’d code, but because they offer it as a service (and don’t distribute the program), they don’t have to share the modifications. AGPL closes this loophole by explicitly saying that network access is considered as “distribution”.

So no, you don't need to make your web application AGPL. Just like you don't make all your applications running on Linux GPL just because they happen to communicate with the kernel over system calls. Copyleft licenses are relevant only if your code is a derivative work of the original.

There is no clear violation, AGPL is a copyleft license based on the GPL v2 (one of the most prominent OSS licenses) but closes the application service provider loophole.

Open Source Software (OSS) ensures users have access and can freely modify source code for software they use which the AGPL does, it’s even even more copyleft than the GPL as it ensures modifications to software by ASPs are also made available.

What part of the AGPL violates the open source definition?

As for mangodb, I still qualify this as open source. I don't care about what OSI says. For me as long as I can read the source, and modify it for my business, it's fine. It doesn't need to be free as in free beer.

If you are interested in our CEO's take on the Mongo SSPL, we published this blog a few months ago.

https://www.scylladb.com/2018/10/22/the-dark-side-of-mongodb...

I think it's possible to still be very critical of MongoDB's licensing, and not have issues with Scylla.

Well that's exactly the issue...you can't modify it or use it for your business if you compete with Mongo corp

The “if you compete with mongo corp” is probably exactly what the parent comment means. It doesn’t effect a lot of people who would use that.

I thought I could modify as long as I either pay or give money to mongodb?

Michael from MongoDB here again. MongoDB Community is still free to view, download, modify, etc. The SSPL change affects no-one besides those offering the licensed software (MongoDB) as a public service.

Michael: Would love to speak with you about this very point. Ping me via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petercorless/

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