MongoDB relicensing

[manuzhang]

MongoDB has relicensed to Server Side Public License from AGPLv3, to combat cloud providers who simply take the open-source code and offer a commercial version. AGPLv3 seems to allow cloud providers not to open source their services if they haven't modified the open-source MongoDB while SSPL explicit states that they must get a commercial license or open source. From CTO and co-founder of MongoDB

The market is increasingly consuming software as a service, creating an incredible opportunity to foster a new wave of great open source server-side software. Unfortunately, once an open source project becomes interesting, it is too easy for cloud vendors who have not developed the software to capture all of the value but contribute nothing back to the community

[manuzhang]

How has the license change affected open source and cloud service providers ?

• MongoDB is not included in RHEL 8.0 due to SSPL
• AWS gives open source the middle finger by announcing Amazon DocumentDB with MongoDB compatibility.

  A company spokesperson for MongoDB also highlighted that the 3.6 API that DocumentDB is compatible with is now two years old and misses most of the newest features, including ACID transactions, global clusters and mobile sync.

• AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source by Ben Thompson walking you through the conundrum of open source companies

  • MongoDB leveraged open source to gain mindshare.
  • MongoDB Inc. built a successful company selling additional tools for enterprises to run MongoDB.
  • More and more enterprises don’t want to run their own software: they want to hire AWS (or Microsoft or Google) to run it for them, because they value performance, scalability, and availability.

[manuzhang]

Not sure ApasaraDB for Mongodb and TencentDB for MongoDB offered by Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud respectively have violated SSPL.

[manuzhang]

AWS has partnered with Expedia Group and Netflix to create a new open source distribution of Elasticsearch named "Open Distro for Elasticsearch".

Our aim for Open Distro for Elasticsearch is to provide developers with the freedom to contribute to open source value-added features on top of the Apache 2.0-licensed Elasticsearch upstream project

[manuzhang]

One hundred years ago, leadership of dozens of countries decided to march into a conflict that it knew would be costly, horrifically damaging and from which there was unlikely to be a real winner. They did so because they didn’t see any other choice.

The technology industry doesn’t seem to either.

The RedMonk blog drew an analogy between the situation above to the first World War.

The only real question, in fact, is whether this experience will have a deterrent effect, whether other commercial open source vendors will look at Elastic’s situation – which finds the company now competing with Amazon not just in product but in open source – and determine that the returns for more some of the more controversial licensing approaches simply don’t justify the costs.