Red Hat Rejects MongoDB's 'Discriminatory' Server Side Public License (zdnet.com) 106
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
MongoDB is an open-source document NoSQL database with a problem. While very popular, cloud companies, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Scalegrid, and ObjectRocket has profited from it by offering it as a service while MongoDB Inc. hasn't been able to monetize it to the same degree. MongoDB's answer? Relicense the program under its new Server Side Public License (SSPL).
Open-source powerhouse Red Hat's reaction? Drop MongoDB from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Red Hat's Technical and Community Outreach Program Manager Tom Callaway explained, in a note stating MongoDB is being removed from Fedora Linux, that "It is the belief of Fedora that the SSPL is intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory towards a specific class of users." Debian Linux had already dropped MongoDB from its distribution....
The business point behind MongoDB's license change is to force cloud companies to use one of MongoDB's commercial cloud offerings. This hasn't worked either. AWS just launched DocumentDB, a database, which "is designed to be compatible with your existing MongoDB applications and tools," wrote AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.
Open-source powerhouse Red Hat's reaction? Drop MongoDB from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Red Hat's Technical and Community Outreach Program Manager Tom Callaway explained, in a note stating MongoDB is being removed from Fedora Linux, that "It is the belief of Fedora that the SSPL is intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory towards a specific class of users." Debian Linux had already dropped MongoDB from its distribution....
The business point behind MongoDB's license change is to force cloud companies to use one of MongoDB's commercial cloud offerings. This hasn't worked either. AWS just launched DocumentDB, a database, which "is designed to be compatible with your existing MongoDB applications and tools," wrote AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.
Open source monetization (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been more discussions about monetization of open source projects. While coding as a hobby and helping projects as a philanthropy work is very good, long term stable projects need continuous funding.
This has worked for RedHat and other enterprise oriented companies with their support contract offerings. It also worked nice for existing companies -- including even Microsoft -- which uses open source partially. However if you only have a single offering, like MongoDB the situation was not as clear.
And it is not AWS's fault that they don't want to pay per-seat licensing fees: https://www.techrepublic.com/a... [techrepublic.com]
Re:Open source monetization (Score:4, Interesting)
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Exactly, you don't have to monetize the project to fund it. If there is significant value in using the software those who need it will fund development on it.
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Ummm... a lot of people use gcc. But when they don't... it won't really matter if it is funded.
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No, it is a great example. Nobody said developers couldn't be paid, he said the project doesn't need monetized. Companies paying developers to scratch their itches and fill their needs is a perfect example of one way a project can be developed and funded without being monetized.
Re:Open source monetization (Score:5, Funny)
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Emacs is so yesterday. These days, the obvious alternative to anything is called systemd.
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The Emacs lisp interpreter is sort of a nosql database. It was built before nosql was cool.
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Am I alone in feeling that open source vendor clouds feel somewhat contrary to open source? I can't express why, so perhaps its simply a no odder than the pro versions with additional features
While Mongo's hosted solution has the rather obvious problem that they don't have the scale to compete with cloud vendors. I suspect that most of the value they could offer for paid support on top of an AWS provided DB seems minimal - the common deployment and hardware scaling issues should be opaque really leaving onl
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The big concern is that if some company grabs one's open source software and turns it into a service, then any and all financial contributions will be focused on just that service, and not ported to the upstream source. It would be nice if a cloud provider donated to the software project that made the service they are offering. Even a relatively tiny amount from the profits would mean a lot for the open source project's continued existence.
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"Am I alone in feeling that open source vendor clouds feel somewhat contrary to open source? I can't express why"
I can, they can bypass the licensing and keep the source.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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"But it doesn't, and instead it goes for a "It's free (libre & gratis) until you use it" model... which just plain isn't going to work for any other company in the free software and open source communities"
Maybe their implementation isn't the answer but there does need to be one. Cloud vendors are using and modifying the software and don't contribute their modifications upstream.
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There are the Affero Public License and modified versions of the GPL for that.
There are two ways to monetize (Score:3)
Or you can monetize by entrapping your customers and charging them excessively. This works (at least it does for the seller) if you have a monopoly or near-monopoly (e.g. cable companies). But if you don't, it just makes your customers flee and switch to someone else's product. That's what we seem to be seeing here.
Making money from open source requires funding (Score:3)
Others have posted plenty of long-term stable open source projects with no direct funding to the project. So what's different about MongoDB? The MongoDB company, which is trying to make money from the project. *Making money* from open source requires that someone pay money, for something.
Plenty of open source projects work fine without anyone funding the project in any significant way - a developer who wants or needs a feature codes it, and makes a pull request. That developer might be at work or at home
Red Hat was bought by IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares? What system administrator cares what their says operating system in terms of databases?
From the article:
No, the business point was to prevent companies like Amazon from hosting MongoDB [theoretically] as-is, like they do with other products like Kafka and Elasticsearch, which have subtle changes and limitations compared to self-hosted instances, but they are largely good enough. In the case of AWS, they were apparently successful enough to force AWS to host a database with a MongoDB-compatible API rather than actually hosting a modified copy of MongoDB's code.
The obvious hope of that situation was that this would prevent those companies (AWS, IBM, Microsoft Azure, etc) from hosting compatible-enough layers, but that has proven unsuccessful with AWS' announcement (as well as CosmosDB on Azure, which was announced awhile before the license change and is closer to AWS DocumentDB than MongoDB).
As an open source developer and fan, I do not understand the hate toward MongoDB's move. It is not exactly an attractive move, but their hands have been forced by the likes of AWS and Azure taking without giving back. They've developed a successful, large business around their database. But because it's open source, Azure and AWS are going to get the lion share of profits without giving back a line of code.
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If AWS were hosting real MongoDB and providing it as a SaaS model, then AWS (and anyone else doing it) should give a cut to the company actually making the product.
Why?
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I'm under no obligation, ethically or morally, to actually do that.
It depends on the ethical system you adopt. For example, if you're going with Protestant ethics, then your affirmation is correct and you are under no obligation. If you go with Catholic ethics though, then it is incorrect and you're indeed under the obligation to do that. Similarly, at a more general level in Consequentialist ethics you're (usually) under no obligation, while on Virtue and Deontological ethics you are under the obligation.
As such, your affirmation says more about which ethical framework yo
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If you need to invoke an old magic book and cult mentality
Someone has difficulty understanding what's written and prefers to substitute their own straw-men for what was actually said.
PS: I'm not Christian.
PPS: Max Weber.
Who IS Max Webster? (Score:2)
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"but I'm under no obligation, ethically or morally, to actually do that."
You may be under no legal or professional ethical obligation to do so but you lose on the moral point. Failing to do so is a dick move and dick moves are moral fails.
"or hire our own Database experts"
It's a side note but running any serious DB is going to require this. Support exists so there is a place for shit to roll down to. It is a sad reality but a reality none-the-less that people in suits don't realize there are simply too many
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But because it's open source, Azure and AWS are going to get the lion share of profits without giving back a line of code.
Boohoo. If they wanted to be paid they shouldn't have made the software available under terms that it could be freely used without being paid. They should have sold it as proprietary software.
They don't get to have their cake and eat it, too.
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Re:Red Hat was bought by IBM (Score:4, Insightful)
Then MongoDB should have been charging from the beginning if they wanted to be paid. Also, you can get RHEL essentially free with CentOS just without any support.
So again, MongoDB should have used a proprietary license from the get go instead of using a GPL license where one of the terms of that "free software" license is:
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
MongoDB doesn't just get to ride the coattails of free software when they like but when people use the software in full compliance to both the spirit and letter of the license then start complaining.
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Why? If I recall correctly, everything you mentioned was at first FREE, and then paid support was tacked on.
Yeah, and all that software is still free. Red Hat isn't changing the license to the code like Mongo is trying to do here. Also, charging for support is perfectly legal under the GPL. Restricting what someone can do with GPL software is not. It violates the very foundational spirit of "free software."
So it's ok for redhat to sell a paid version with support, but mongodb can't? You are being very hypocritical.
Yes, it is perfectly okay what Red Hat does. It's even one of the ways in which Richard Stallman himself says is a perfectly valid way to monetize free software. On the other hand, Mongo is not charging for "su
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Also, if you want to use RHEL without paying you can use CentOS free of charge. Thus, further showing that what RHEL does is not the same as what Mongo is doing.
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They're selling support.
MongoDB sells support too. It just seems not enough people want to pay for it. If the speed of their website is any indication, I'm not surprised.
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It is not exactly an attractive move, but their hands have been forced by the likes of AWS and Azure taking without giving back. They've developed a successful, large business around their database. But because it's open source, Azure and AWS are going to get the lion share of profits without giving back a line of code.
Should HPe and Dell give MongoDB cash whenever I buy new servers to run their database on my premises? Does that make sense? Then why should AWS or Azure have to pay up when I buy my servers on their hardware?
Re: Red Hat was bought by IBM (Score:2)
AWS's hosted version of Elasticsearch sort of worked, but was not really "good enough". It has a bunch of annoying little undocumented differences from the real product. And the web UI gave poor visibility into and control over the ES cluster.
We recently switched to Elastic's own hosted version of ES. (Which runs in an Elastic-managed Kubernetes cluster atop AWS, GCE, and/or Azure.) So far we're happy with the change. Performance is better, security is better, administration is easier, and price is very c
This is why we need diversity in open source. (Score:5, Funny)
No lock-in with Open Source (Score:2, Troll)
So one vendor can't make an "evil" license with vendor lock-in.
If it truly is open source then there is no vendor lock-in. Anyone can fork the code and then develop it and distribute it themselves which I suspect is exactly what Amazon is doing. If you can't do that it is closed source. Open source [opensource.com] means more than just being able to see the source code.
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Open source means more than just being able to see the source code.
It doesn't, either. The first commercial use of the term was under a license that basically didn't let you do anything but file better bug reports (you certainly couldn't build your own OpenDOS and use it) and the original meaning of the term among nerds was "you can get the sources". A lot of the original OSS didn't even have a license attached, we just traded it. Licensing came later. All that is why we needed (and have) the GPL.
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And before you say fork, i say spoon.
To quote Neo, there is no fork.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ScyllaDB's CEO has the best take on it (Score:5, Insightful)
AWS is not breaking any rules here, but folks need to seriously look at it from a long term sustainability model and not necessarily go with AWS.
So they are not violating the license at all, but AWS is bad because reasons? It's not the fault of AWS that the Mongo people have no way to make money off their product. If Mongo needed money they shouldn't have released it under the very free software terms that allowed AWS to use so freely.
Seems they should have released the product product under a proprietary license if they wanted to exert all this control. But by doing that Mongo would have lost all the phoney marketing about how they are this great open source company.
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it's totally fine to just take and take and take
Well yes, when other people are happy to just give and give and give it is most certainly fine. This isn't a tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons implies that the common resource gets destroyed or ruined through use. MongoDB is no worse now that AWS is offering it as a service as they were before.
People who try to maintain the commons, or contribute to the common good, are simply suckers who should have kept what they had private in order to maximize their profits.
No not suckers. What was the goal of MongoDB? Was it to make a big arse profit? Well they went about it in the worst possible way and one that opened themselves up to the risk of someone else profiting fr
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" but AWS is bad because..."
Bad for the MongoDB project because they are stripping it of revenue. Bad for everyone who uses it because they've found a loophole to avoid contributing their enhancements back. Running SaaS has the same result as distribution but technically is not distribution and avoids the license requirements.
Re: ScyllaDB's CEO has the best take on it (Score:1)
Oops. I guess they forgot to put that in the EULA
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Good for them, but they deserve the middle finger they are getting from people.
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AWS is not breaking any rules here
Actually they are. Under the current state of Oracle v. Google it is a copyright violation to reimplement an API. AWS might be granted a fair use exemption by a court, but they might not (as Google currently has not for the Java APIs), and until they are, they should be assumed to be copyright pirates.
I'm glad MongoDB has done this though... Their business is going to be dead in months, if not weeks, and it means others will not try this type of nonsense. While I prefer BSD type licenses, I understand
Both parties made a good point. All fine now. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a very simple decision both parties have the right to take, and it's all good now.
I remember when the company I work for had to decide whether to use RHEL or another Linux distribution, and since we deemed RHEL way too expensive for the little added value they offer, we went on to use CentOS (on thousands of machines). That was a similar situation where seller and potential buyer concluded their respective valuations were just too different for a deal.
I don't know where my sympathy could lie... (Score:3)
AWS has been historically ripping off open source projects, forking them, and building new products without any attribution or support. The premise that they are the best cloud provider is kind of tainted to me, since they aren't building anything from scratch but rather, taking the work of thousands of volunteers and incorporating it into a paid for service. Examples would be in addition to DocumentDB (an ironic name since Azure called their NoSQL offering that first), Redshift, Maria, and even their hypervisor.
Then you have Mongo who builds a product and markets it like it's the cure to cancer, and early on had a lot of success in convincing people they needed it (they mostly don't -- read up about Diaspora when you find time). Now that they are in the position of being outed for their proprietary connection interface (which is what makes AWS offerings compatible) they are changing the licensing. I don't think Red Hat's move hurts them as much as people don't want to maintain a fucking Mongo cluster any more.
So who do I feel sorry for? Fuck both of them. Azure and GCP are better cloud providers anyway -- Azure for the enterprise, GCP for 'startups' that don't need the enterprise tooling. If you start your business on AWS it's because you ride the bandwagon either have enough money to burn, or are stupid.
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It's hard to say fuck AWS for screwing volunteers when it was volunteers (it probably wasn't. It's amazing the amount of actual paid resources that go into open source projects) who decided to openly gift their work to others.
If I produce something for free and give it to someone to profit I sure as hell don't expect sympathy from others and nor should they be vilified for it. We can't start every endevour by first re-creating the universe.
Too many engines? (Score:2)
Seems their sales and marketing... (Score:3)
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Red Hat and Amazon are sharding all over their plans.
New conflict for open source for profit companies (Score:3)
Then came AWS. The software users are willing to pay for something they feel is tangible, computing time, storage and support. AWS is amazing for all three but then AWS became the support for the open source projects. The end customer started paying AWS for support and not the companies developing the open source project. Also AWS support is far better than what any single open source company can offer. The open source financing model for things like MongoDB went from workable to impossible in just a few years.
Pawn (Score:3)
Mongo just pawn in game of life.
Go PostgreSQL! (Score:2)
Why not?