Hacker News Reader

Comment by sytse | Hacker News Reader

SSPL is based on the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compare...

So apart from adding the cloud non-compete clause (don't offer Elastic as a Service) there are many more restrictions added compared to Apache 2. For example I think linking can only happen with GPL3 code and it is copylefted instead of permissive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-so...

View on HN

I'd say that similarly to Common Law where rights always come paired with counterpart obligations; the "restrictions" added by GPL vs Apache come with counterpart advantages: they keep forks open source (vs proprietary) and favor contributions feeding back to the OS Community. I believe we should consider them altogether: disadvantages and advantages.

Both permissive and copyleft licenses play important roles in the Open Source ecosystem. Different story are proprietary licenses.

This doesn't add non-compete clause.

What will this entail for when you're building Elastic Plugins?

> This change does not affect how you build or license plugins to Elasticsearch or Kibana. For the avoidance of doubt, building a plugin to be used in Elasticsearch or Kibana does not constitute a derivative work, and will not have any impact on how you license the source code of your plugin.

- https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing#im-building-plu...

FAQ is not the license, it's their rosy interpretation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com