Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

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__blockcipher__

So, let's pretend I'm Amazon and I'm offering a SAAS Elasticsearch product. You need someone to manage your Elasticsearch for me, so you pay me. Internally, I'm running vanilla, unmodified Elasticsearch, which talks to a management layer of proprietary code that interfaces with the rest of AWS.

What right is being violated here? You as a user can run your own Elasticsearch software; I haven't modified it and thus I don't need to publish anything specific. What the SSPL says is I must publicize my entire SAAS product - but the user isn't paying me to run their own Elasticsearch SAAS product, they're paying me to run Elasticsearch.

So to call SSPL copyleft is totally absurd.

Now, there's a broader discussion that you raised of whether the open source definitions are out-of-date or not. Personally, I don't believe so. I don't see how any of the newer developments in the space (public clouds, managed offerings, etc) materially change anything; indeed the whole point of OSS is it's based off of deep principles.

According to Stallman at least, the principles of "Open Source" are much less deep that the principals of "free software". His opinion says the "Open Source" philosophy is based off watering down "free software" principles.

"The terms “free software” and “open source” stand for almost the same range of programs. However, they say deeply different things about those programs, based on different values. The free software movement campaigns for freedom for the users of computing; it is a movement for freedom and justice. By contrast, the open source idea values mainly practical advantage and does not campaign for principles. This is why we do not agree with open source, and do not use that term."

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

I guess you and Stallman agree there, and that permissive open source licenses are totally up-to-date with modern cloud computing businesses and business practices and that Elastic and their choice of Apache2 are getting exactly what they signed up for. And that "free software" licences especially the viral ones exemplified by GPL/AGPL are also still relevant in 2021, and having chosen one of those would have given Elastic.co what they claim to be demanding... (I think I agree there too.)

> And that "free software" licences especially the viral ones exemplified by GPL/AGPL are also still relevant in 2021, and having chosen one of those would have given Elastic.co what they claim to be demanding... (I think I agree there too.)

I think we agree up until this point, at which you fall into a trap. This is the same trap I was trying to avoid by giving my SSPL scenario above.

A copyleft license like GPLv3 does not prevent a business from operating a SAAS business.

AGPL would apply, but it only triggers upon modification. So as long as Amazon doesn't modify Elasticsearch itself, they don't have to publish anything (because there's nothing to publish), and if they do modify, they have to share just those changes. Which is very fair to me from a copyleft perspective.

Now SSPL tries to go further and say for merely using the software in a certain way, you must release not just any changes to the software itself but also everything around the software. That is what makes the SSPL neither open source nor free. (I guess I don't actually know how "free" is defined, so I can only say for certain that it's not open source, but I don't think SSPL even counts as copyleft)

A much better description would be "distributing usage to others" instead of just "using". Which is much better analogy for what is going on here.

> What right is being violated here? You as a user can run your own Elasticsearch software; I haven't modified it and thus I don't need to publish anything specific.

I as a user can no longer fix bugs in the Elasticsearch that I'm using. So I don't have the four freedoms that copyleft is all about protecting.

> What the SSPL says is I must publicize my entire SAAS product - but the user isn't paying me to run their own Elasticsearch SAAS product, they're paying me to run Elasticsearch.

That's like "I'm not blocking you from going into the building, I'm just blocking you from going through the gate outside". The point of copyleft licenses is that you need to give the user everything they need to run (or hire someone else to run) the same software (or their patched version of it) the same way.

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