> All of these capabilities are being released under the Timescale License, our source-available license that permits broad usage, except for where organizations are providing TimescaleDB-as-a-service.

Maybe someone can give clarification on this, but the line between using TimescaleDB to build a product and providing TimescaleDB-as-a-service seems incredibly blurry. If I have a product that in some way let's you query time series data, and that product is powered by a TimescaleDB, would that count as providing TimescaleDB-as-a-service?

I used to work for Heap which is an analytics tool. In a way you can view Heap as just a wrapper around Postgres. We stored event data in Postgres and provided a UI that allowed you to express queries (e.g. count the number of logins over the past month). We would take the query in the UI, compile it into a SQL query, and run the SQL against Postgres. If Heap was powered by TimescaleDB, would that violate the Timescale License? In fact, you could technically view any dashboarding product that queries TimescaleDB as providing "TimescaleDB-as-a-service".

I looked at the actual license[0] to see what it says, and it seems really unclear. The license gives you permission to use TimescaleDB to develop "Value Added Products or Services" which it defines as a product that uses TimescaleDB as part of a larger offering. One of the requirements for a product or service to be considered "Value Added" is:

> (ii) such value-added products or services add substantial value of a different nature to the time-series database storage and operations afforded by the Timescale Software and are the key functions upon which such products or services are offered and marketed

This seems incredibly vague. What exactly does "substantial value of a different nature" mean? In the end, tons of products are just wrappers around DBs. If products like Heap or Datadog were to be backed by TimescaleDB, would they add "substantial value of a different nature" on top of it? In the end, Heap and Datadog are products designed for querying time series data. I could definitely make a case that they don't provide value of a different nature from TimescaleDB. This vagueness seems like a huge risk and without further clarification, makes me want to stay far away from TimescaleDB.

[0] https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/master/tsl/LIC...