Comment by pas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pas | Hacker News Reader

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> Open source is about contributing to the commons, such that your competitors can make a profit from your work. If your competitors aren't able to do that, then the software is not open source. Period.

This kind of first order reasoning is nice, but the reality of software economics is a tad bit more complex. The assumption that the market is large, that the commons helps everybody sort of equally are not true in a lot of sectors. Namely, as IT transforms itself a lot of things become almost zero-marginal-cost. Starting a new server? Setting up a new database? Backup/Snapshot? Load balancing? Scaling? Just click that AWS web console shit, and you're good to go. And this out-competes the others.

I'm not saying that changing licenses is super-A-OK, but the fact is the license was never good in the first place, because it failed to take into account what will happen when AWS starts to offer MongoDB.

Furthermore, I have no problem with anyone holding the view that MongoDB should then compete with AWS, and/or focus on on-premise computing, and/or slowly pivot away from building MongoDB itself to whatever. But anyone holding this view should recognize the aforementioned reality that cloud computing is happening, IT is not just a hydra, it's an ouroboros too, it's eating itself.

> "The assumption that the market is large, that the commons helps everybody sort of equally are not true in a lot of sectors."

Not sure what we are talking about, personally I don't make that assumption, although I recognize that others might.

Yes, roads and highways help big companies more than they help small companies. That doesn't mean that smaller companies don't benefit from the existence of roads and highways.

> "the fact is the license was never good in the first place, because it failed to take into account what will happen when AWS starts to offer MongoDB"

Without that license, let's be honest, MongoDB wouldn't have gotten popular in the first place. MongoDB has been plagued by technical issues too and without it being open source, one of the carrots being used, MongoDB wouldn't have been a blip on anyone's radar.

So this is a conundrum and I understand the reasons why MongoDB Inc has switched, I do, but I just don't care.

Because the nature of the thing has changed — and for example I would now need a lawyer to find if my own product is safe or not with an on-premises MongoDB solution, because I can no longer rely on OSI's definition to tell me if my use is OK or not. And yes, we've got random opinions on the Internet about what you can and cannot do, but that's not valid legal advice.

And even if my use of MongoDB is OK for now, who's to say they won't change the license again in the future to something even more abhorrent. This means that for me going forward is that MongoDB is no longer reliable from a legal standpoint.

I think companies experimenting with licenses like the AGPL are trying to suss out what open source means in the cloud age. When the GPL came to be and software ran on people's computers, there was no way to distribute software that didn't trigger the distribution clause and require modifications to be available under the same license. With the cloud, there is: cloud companies can and do host all sorts of GPL'd software, make modifications, do whatever they want and are under no obligation to release any of that because running a service was not accounted for at the time the GPL was created.

MongoDB Inc's license switch may earn them some hate but I think the bigger issue is what license terms will open source contributors be comfortable with? What license captures the same spirit as the GPL, should that spirit still be desired, as software moves to the cloud? When every piece of functionality, no matter how trivial, can be used by a cloud provider to bolster their closed ecosystem, are the developers that created that software comfortable with a license that allows providers to do so without giving back?

AWS et al. are committing no violation here of course, they are taking advantage of a market opportunity to offer hosted software, some open source and some not. The market is overwhelmingly saying that they value the convenience of having all of these services available at the click of a button and that the closed source nature and potential for Oracle-style vendor lock-in is not a concern.

There's certainly value there and some folks may feel perfectly comfortable contributing to such an ecosystem, as is their right. Others may desire a more reciprocating agreement, and perhaps the AGPL is a first step towards such a license. I think we as software engineers need to recognize just how high we're standing on the giant's shoulders and put some thought towards helping a community that is trying to adjust to the new cloud reality. "Fuck you give me your stuff for free" is unwarranted and not likely to encourage contribution.

The "spirit of the GPL" is invoked a lot here, however you have to consider that...

MongoDB Inc does NOT play by the same rules as everyone else because they own the copyright.

When a piece of software is useful on its own and survives, without dual licensing from the copyright holder, then and only then we can talk about the spirit of the GPL.

Also people here seem to be confused. The GPL is a super permissive license because it allows you to use it for whatever purpose. You can use it for commercial purposes, you can use it for controlling sharks with lasers to conquer the world, you can use it in combination with any other software or hardware package, doesn't matter. This was by design.

The GPL is just a copyright license, not an EULA and that's part of its genius.

Now you can say that this company or that have been circumventing GPL, but I think that AGPL licenses have been an abomination, a scurge on this industry, only used to lure developers into dual licensing deals and having nothing to do with actual Free Software.

And now we are seeing the effect of allowing AGPL. For one I see an entire forum of really smart individuals that don't really know what the spirit of GPL is, yet we talk about it.

> Without that license, let's be honest, MongoDB wouldn't have gotten popular in the first place

MongoDB with its current license - in my opinion - would have gotten just as popular as it is now.

Yes, the legal questions are real, and were MongoDB just starting up they would work with OSI and experts to clarify things, they would put up a FAQ and so on to get people to trust them.

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