(Timescale founder)
We actually designed the Timescale License to be _less_ restrictive than AGPL. It contains no virality. It just prevents public clouds from offering TimescaleDB-aaS.
We actually designed the Timescale License to be _less_ restrictive than AGPL. It contains no virality. It just prevents public clouds from offering TimescaleDB-aaS.
Timescale license does not provide that, so obviously it's more restrictive than even the most viral of open source licences.
To be specific, the sentence "the customer is prohibited, either contractually or technically, from defining, redefining, or modifying the database schema or other structural aspects of database objects," spits in the face of all the ideals of open source. I can respect your decision to choose such a license, there are understandable practical arguments for that, but I can't respect you calling that open source - if you consider that users should be restricted with what they can do with their data schemas, if you include an explicit anti-user-freedom clause, legally mandating software developers to be hostile to their own users - then at least have the guts to openly say that you are against open source (because of all the valid reasons you have, I'm not denying that, you don't have a duty to be pro-open-source), instead of misleadingly labeling your license as such.
Incidentally, that clause exists as a clear line for value added products and services. Some companies have a restriction that says, "You can't compete with us." That approach struck us as arbitrarily blurry. We took a clear approach that says DML (inserting, querying data) is permitted, but not DDL (creating tables). Again, this is to clearly restrict TimescaleDB-aaS providers and not other companies building true value added products / services on top (e.g., IoT platforms, SaaS companies).
The sentence you quote is actually meant to -technically- establish a basis for what it means for somebody to run/offer TimescaleDB as part of a value added service (very much allowed) versus a company like AWS offering TimescaleDB purely as a DBaaS offering (not allowed).
There are many, many thousands of companies that use or embed TimescaleDB as part of their service or product offerings, serving huge numbers of customers. We're extremely supportive of their ability to do so. We have no "enterprise features" that are excluded or held back only to paid users.
What we aren't supportive of is AWS running "TimescaleDB-as-a-Service" as part of AWS RDS. Because we know they do that!
The clause you are quoting helps define some of the legal nuances how we get there, ideally in ways that an engineer would understand. In particular, what it means to be a value added service/product versus just "TimescaleDB-as-a-Service".
The alternative legal formulations of this can be found in, e.g.
- Confluent Community License ("Licensee is not granted the right to, and Licensee shall not, exercise the License for an Excluded Purpose. For purposes of this Agreement, “Excluded Purpose” means making available any software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other similar online service that competes with Confluent products or services that provide the Software.")
- Polyform "Shield" License ("Any purpose is a permitted purpose, except for providing any product that competes with the software or any product the licensor or any of its affiliates provides using the software.") https://polyformproject.org/licenses/shield/1.0.0/
These are all getting to similar places, but just putting more emphasis of the legal definition of "competition", which we thought would frustrate engineers with its vagueness.
That restriction makes the license not Open Source. Open Source licenses MUST allow anyone to run the software, for any reason, by definition. Even "as-a-Service". It's a perfectly fine restriction to have, but it shouldn't be called an Open Source license.
(Timescale engineer here)
While AGPL is a value-add for many, TSL isn't as ambiguous in some regards and provides a lot of nice "we won't sue you for this" clauses for users. Clear communication regarding its FOSS status will only help!
That's why Open Source came up in the first place - pointing out that one of the basic reasons for the Timescale license to exist in the first place is to restrict one of the major reasons Open Source licenses exist.
There were also no claims about whatever definition of restrictive you were using. It was just a short statement that the Timescale license was designed to be less restrictive than the AGPL. You can't really be that surprised when somebody comes along and starts judging it by Open Source standards after that, can you?
Comparisons to Open Source and discussions of the pros and cons of both approaches are, of course, fair.
I think Timescale employees should remember to preface "This is our belief on the definition of restrictive" when describing the license as more open than open source licenses, given much of the community might disagree (sometimes vehemently) about that take.
Why not toss in an AGPL license option? You wouldn't be discounted off-the-bat by folks like me. I build open source. Timescale is not open source. Timescale won't mix with GPL code. I use plenty of GPL code. GPL/AGPL are known quantities. Your license requires legal review.
As a footnote, I do pay for hosted versions of most of the databases I use.
> TimescaleDB is a relational database for time-series, with some features licensed under the Apache 2.0 License but many of the features you know and love are licensed via the Timescale License (including continuous aggregates, compression, data retention policies, actions, multi-node, and more). The "Apache 2.0" version of TimescaleDB offered by Microsoft, Digital Ocean, and others includes only the features in the Apache license. The Timescale License prohibits cloud providers from offering the "community version" of TimescaleDB-as-a-service.
But I don't find any links to download the Apache 2.0 version, there or elsewhere…
By the way, I really hope you guys are able to strike a deal with the cloud providers for them to re-sell Timescale Licenses, so people can get all the great features and pay you without having to add a new vendor relationship!
Re: Apache 2.0 only version, it is on our Github readme (but yes, probably could be made more prominent):
Apache-2 licensed binaries can be built by passing -DAPACHE_ONLY=1 to bootstrap.
It's ubiquitous ("it's me, not you"), but I hate it.
I'd much rather get a straight "no."
To answer the non-answer: I don't want a crippled version of the product with features held back for paying customers. I don't know which other features will be held back in the future, or what the evolution of the system will be. My expectation is that at some point, I'll need e.g. features to comply with a law like GDPR, and some critical feature may be withheld in an attempt to monetize me.
When that happens, I end up in limbo.
With a half-open-source project, what do you do? Do you fork the system and build the feature yourself? It will never move into mainstream since it undermines your revenue source. Do you maintain a fork? No one will use your fork over mainstream and you have competing communities. Etc.
Having built systems which have been used and maintained for decades, those sorts of considerations matter much more for picking a long-term viable solution than which technology happens to be ahead this year. I'm not saying you're going to burn me (and usually by the time this happens, you've been acquired by Oracle like Java, went bankrupt and got picked up by vultures, like SCO, hired a massive number of mediocre people, like Google), but if you make a dozen decisions like this, someone WILL burn you, and that WILL cost you more than the other 11 decisions combined.
Make it easy on customers like me.
Heads up: calling out the virality of copyleft licenses as a "restriction" is a common tactic used by the anti-FOSS brigade — this includes the likes of Microsoft under Steve Ballmer that famously called the GPL "a cancer". So it seems like you're re-using old FUD tactics, even if you don't intend to.
Putting that aside, what you claim also happens to be an established point of argument that has been already heavily debated upon in the FLOSS community, specifically by the permissive licenses' side; and they actually have some truth to the claim. Your claim, instead, is nowhere near as strong as theirs.
Permissive licenses take away virality, sure, but add little-to-no restrictions of their own. Your license, OTOH:
1. Doesn't take away nearly as much virality — Derivative Works of code under the TSL are still subject to the TSL; and
2. Adds its own set of restrictions — quite a few of them, actually.
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If your argument was that you "designed the Timescale License to be less restrictive than AGPL _specifically on the question of virality_", you'd be right. Because the TSL also adds a bunch of restrictions, your original claim does not quite stand up.
And to those who keep downvoting my comments simply because they don't agree with them - I always welcome thoughtful discussions. :-)