Why do we apply this standard to MongoDB but not to Apache, Linux, Postgres, or MariaDB? One purpose of an open source license is to allow many providers to provide the service. As I've talked about here previously, Elasticsearch wasn't able to provide the service I needed, so I had to move to AWS.
It's weird to me that the Hacker News community doesn't think that sort of competition is good. The narrative seems to be that all these businesses are somehow victims of AWS, when it seems the truth is much more straightforward: they provided open source software and people used it. The fact that their business had no working plan to actually monetize that foundation should not be taken out on the community.
Many support breaking up Amazon so others could compete not killing small entities and growing Amazon.
They took software that others gave away for free without restriction and did what they wanted with it. It took time but the community figured out this exploit path and patched it in subsequent license versions.
From a moral/ethic one, its still shit.
You're legally allowed to do a whole lot of things. You can still be called an asshole for doing them.
But you're right communities are now having to concoct a wild-growing collection of semi open-source licenses to protect themselves from abuse by a few big players.
Free Software was designed to avoid this, and has become stricter as the technology changed. Open Source was deliberately designed to thwart this. The entire intention of it was to allow businesses to resell work that was done for free. When you fork Free Software, your fork is also Free Software.
Also, Amazon were already contributing code back when these companies changed their licenses, the companies don't care about code contributions, just money.
This is pretty much a distinction without a difference. There are licences that qualify as one but not the other (per the FSF and OSI's determinations), but none are in widespread use.
> When you fork Free Software, your fork is also Free Software.
That would be copyleft. [0] Not all Free Software licences are copyleft licences.
I think the GPL has become somewhat obsolete because of this causing it create to completely nonsensical scenarios. For instance I can't comply with the GPL and add vanilla Stockfish (the currently strongest chess engine, licensed under GPL) to a chess app released on the Apple store, yet somebody can slightly modify the engine, keep all those modifications proprietary, and sell access to the engine on the same App store, without source access, so long as the computer is done through a middle-man server instead of being done locally.
The GPL no longer suffices to maintain the spirit of intent of the GPL. Like a peer comment mentioned it seems (??) that AGPL is their update to resolve this.
The only people with any justification for hurt feelings are the community contributors.
Just try a little bit of understanding.
Usually a community can tolerate changes only when it's not already near the bottom. When you're near the bottom, almost any destabilisation can kill your little system.
[0] https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/aldi-closes-west-pullman-c...
Even if it weren't AWS, someone else with enough determination could use the same open source code to create a compelling alternative taking away business from the original authors. Trying to use social norms to make people not do that is not effective. You need mechanisms that can be enforced via legal procedures to be effective.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
We are supportive of 3rd party ink cartridges, and there's little concern for the business model of the printer manufacturers. We instead care about the rights of the folks using the printers.
With Postgres, no one bats an eye that there are thousands of hosting companies providing Postgres as an offering, and they give nothing back to the project. Same with Apache, Nextcloud, Linux, Nginx, Sqlite, and thousands of other pieces of open-source software. Are folks against hosting companies like https://yunohost.org/?
It's only when (1) the software is open-source, and (2) the entity behind it doesn't know how to sustain itself with open-source, that we suddenly change positions and view the project as a victim. This doesn't happen with printers, it doesn't happen with other open source software. I'm not even against a change in the license, but claiming that AWS is evil for doing this doesn't track.
Also, many of them predate hyperscalers and developed governance/economic structures that make them harder for AWS to capture or destabilize, whereas AWS free-riding a vendor-controlled project can destroy the economic engine sustaining the project itself.
Quite ironically, the only example from your list that doesn't predate hyperscalers (Nextcloud) is fundamentally a self-hosting/federation product. It exists largely as an alternative to hyperscaler-native platforms, not as a cloud primitive AWS can easily commoditise into its own stack.
So, treating PostgreSQL, Linux, Elasticsearch and Nextcloud as interchangeable "open source projects" ignores the completely different institutional and economic realities behind the projects.
But even if we factor that in, we have to remember it only applies to new models and it's only being added because some megacorporation stepped in, so that's not getting me to change sides.
i’m only familiar with the postgres side, but it seems like a more nuanced view of this debate would be to discuss aws monetizing open source relative to their upstream, community-beneficial contributions.
"More efficiently" means procurement efficiency, not operational efficiency. They're not the same thing.
We were going through a process to make vendor management more standardised and it reached a point where we couldn't even consider adding new vendors.
Adding new services to an existing vendor had minimal paperwork and approvals. As long as you had budget for it, you're unlikely to get any push back.
New vendors required tons of back and forth with legal. Infosec reviews. Additional costboards. Having to justify the vendor to multiple groups. Working out how you get them onboarded into the finance system. Once they're onboarded, we would then have additional paperwork to do periodic reviews to rate the vendor and make sure they're not a critical dependency that will bite us in the ass.
I've only worked with AWS and GCP, but they also throw training and credits at us, too. This could be personalised 2-day classroom events just for our company. There's a huge amount of perceived value for funnelling money through a cloud provider.
Ok, then don't be surprised when the most popular license becomes the FairSource license. Under this license, you have no rights, no ability to fork and no ability to modify, no ability to legally change the software in any way, but hey...you can see the source right. I feel like you don't understand the tragedy of the commons somehow.
> The Fair Core License, or FCL, is a mostly-permissive non-compete Fair Source license that eventually transitions to Open Source after 2 years.
I cannot possibly fathom how you're getting from "I deployed some GPLv3 software as part of my hosting service" to "sociopath that think(s) they have a right to steal from others."
Copyright, by default, reserves all rights for the author. The authors then chose to license under a license that explicitly gives all those rights back, and when users leverage those rights, it is being cast as theft. That's...not coherent.
These companies want it both ways: open-source to gain traction, closed-source to monetize. In other areas, we call this "enshittification", and that's what it is here, too.
More and more people are just focused on making a quick buck.
I'm getting a feeling that these people would gladly rip off a lemonade stand, and then defend themselves by saying the lemonade stand deserves it.
It's not 'competition'.
It's carnivorous, predatory.
Consider shifting gears and seeing all of this through the lens of 'power'.
There is no such thing as open/free markets when there is massive power asymmetry.
Anything that a weaker entity produces, will be 'taken' by a more powerful entity via all sorts of mechanisms.
The 'point' of IP/Open Sources liscencing can be whatever anyone wants it to be ...
but consider this: if the 'game' is on a tilted field, then almost all of the economic value goes into the hands of those with the power to reap the surplus - not the creator.
The 'owner' is who has power.
The Kings didn't rule by arbitrary decree - their money came from owning all the land. It doesn't matter how hard you work, how hard you innovate, how much surplus you create - if the landlord says 'I want all of that' and you have no choice.
Your Rent = All The Value of the Stuff You Create with a bit leftover for you to survive.
That is entirely done through legal ownership - not through some kind of forceful cocercion.
Control of distribution, access to financing, entrenched supplier / buyer relationships, barriers to entry, regulatory capture, economies of scale - all of that makes some systems unassailable without some degree of power.
Purely through the lens of power - Open Source is like 'commoditizing' a tiny little part of the system, where the surpluses will get pulled in by the most powerful entity.
In this case: Amazon.
Anyone writing software and 'making it free' - that Amazon can use - is working for Amazon for free.
Again: if you want to see it way.
If you just like 'making stuff' that's perfectly fine as well.
But - the moment you see this as a 'means to income' - then - it's a 'power dynamic'.
This is why better/smarter IP laws should help smaller players.
The whole point of these things is to try to enable actual competition - which is not 'feed David to Goliath' - its supposed to give David a chance.
The 'changing of license terms' by some small vendors is the result of Amazon suffocating them - it's the power system finding it's 'equilibrium' - where the 'creators' are snuffed out - or 'better yet for Amazon' keep working for free.
P.S. I think East India Company's history should be a mandatory lesson for everyone on the ability of a single company to take over a subcontinent. At its peak they had their own army, ruthless efficiency due to a largely meritocratic structure, and was successful in taking over multiple kingdoms.
Negative externalities. The company makes money using a free resource and disincentivises future development.
I'm sure you can see why killing the most popular business model for open source companies is bad for the ecosystem, right?
I do see issues with monopolies pushing inferior products onto users. But that would be a completely different issue, nothing to do with open source.
According to the original license they are both entitled to do that, that's the problem. Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?
It's because the business model for ES is direct competition with AWS and others, and they got out competed. So they had to play licenses games to try and level the field.
It is?
- MongoDB went from AGPL to SSPL
- Redis went from BSD to SSPL
- Elasticsearch went from AGPL to SSPL
- CockroachDB went from Apache to BSL
- TimescaleDB went from Apache to Apache + TLS
- Graylog went from GPL to SSPL
> It's because the business model for ES is direct competition with AWS and others, and they got out competed. So they had to play licenses games to try and level the field.
That's why intellectual property law exist. If I spent years writing a book and you were allowed to copy it and sell it then obviously you're going to "out compete" me by default. You didn't incur any costs in producing the thing you're selling, duh!
But other databases don't need it, and stayed truly open source, because their business model doesn't rely on being the only hosting provider.
> You didn't incur any costs in producing the thing you're selling, duh!
Indeed, you gave it away for free, saying I could sell it... It doesn't take a business genius to know AWS can undercut your hosting services.
It goes to show that most of these companies don't really care about open source. They cared more about making money and open source was a useful facade to get people to contribute for free.
Exactly. You can sell the products of your work all the way you want.
But pretending to share with the world and then push back when the world actually use it under these same open terms is a hypocrisy.
And even that's overstating it because there's no prohibition of any kind. Cloud providers are free to use SSPL licensed software as long as they release all associated platform code.
After all we're sharing, right?
Other databases are already funded by cloud companies, predate the cloud, or they're too niche to bother.
I really don't see how Amazon is to blame for this problem, they weren't the ones who picked the license.
> Do you think it's sustainable for one company to make the software for free and another one to sell it for profit?
They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.
Are you sure that's the case with AGPL? Cause they can sue them and enforce the contribution. I doubt that's the case. And those who went with MIT/BSD openly allow distribution without contribution.
Because parasitic antisocial behavior is viewed negatively.
> They both sell it for profit, let the most profitable one win.
Trying to apply market dynamics to selling things you didn't produce (or pay for) is fascinating...
Amazon doesn’t really have a leg to stand on in objection here. Building a platform to re-sell an open source project may end up fracturing that open source community’s user base, that’s a consequence of their own actions.
Open source companies should pick open source licenses that support that business model. They don't. It's short term thinking.
Then why did they advertise themselves as open-source efforts when they weren't? They should have been the best possible providers of managed service offerings given they wrote the software they'd be managing, no?
Why are monopolies OK here but not elsewhere? Choosing a hard-to-win business model is not supposed to be a choice that guarantees you business income.
"free to pick by yourself" is the equivalent a proprietary freeware product, not an open-source product, because it excludes the idea of others picking strawberries. If that's your thing then by all means license it as such. But call it proprietary rather than open source.
Some companies make a living off a model of "free to pick as needed for as long as you agree to help tend the future strawberries held in common, even if your competitors pick strawberries. Or you can pay $10 for your own exclusive plot of land and no requirement to let others past your fence".
But that's not the model Redis was trying to use.
But if your point is that "open source" is a bad license that most people who use it come to regret later, then yes, I agree, and they probably shouldn't have advertised as open source from the beginning.
I didn't see the PHP or SquirrelMail contributors having a conniption when Dreamhost started offering free webmail with their hosting offering.
Maybe the business model / community-governance model does matter after all...
AWS RDS, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, etc. are all "pro" / "officially supported" deployments of PostgreSQL.
On top of that the PostgreSQL official website even lists a whole table full of vendors from whom you can get commercial support at https://www.postgresql.org/support/professional_support/nort...
Bringing faux open source into the world isn't a justification for adopting an infeasible business model and then complaining that your business doesn't compete very well.
I'm not going to knock people for charging money to write proprietary software. If that's how you want to approach business dynamics as a software author, then by all means.
But trying to make money by extracting rent through a proprietary hold on your "open source" property, even as you claim to be open source, is too cute by half. Which one is it? The OSI definition hasn't substantially changed since the 90s, it's not like people can act surprised by what counts as open source.
There are ways to try to make money from open source, but they often involve leaning into the commons aspect and then offering a proprietary license as a relief valve for organizations not ready to have to pitch in, but who would be willing to offer up money instead.
Absent that, if you're literally going to be outcompeted on a business perspective on software you wrote, I can scarcely imagine what to tell you.
"Our consultants are recognizable from their many contributions to PostgreSQL"
"Our co-founders have written several books ... [co-founder] is also a core developer and project steering committee member on PostGIS and pgRouting projects"
"With a strong focus on PostgreSQL, they recently launched Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL, which delivers a single source, enterprise-grade, open-source installation of PostgreSQL Core Distribution." (Custom sales on software products based on the open-source original? Sounds almost like what AWS did with Redis)
Obviously these companies are likely to give back monetarily to the things needed by the open-source team, if only because their viability of their own business relies on having the open source product to sell expertise around. But a lot of companies simply use PostgreSQL and pay nothing, and that's fine too. It's all part of what it means to be an open-source product.
There's ultimately no reason Redis Labs couldn't have been successful as the Percona or KDAB of their own product's ecosystem. I guess they figured there was more money in hosting than services, or maybe Redis was simply too foolproof to need consultants?
They're all just rug pulls when the creators want to get rich off of their open product and realize they can't after raising tens of millions.
I'd have a lot more sympathy if the story wasn't "closing an open project so we can pay investors"