Investigate licensing issues highlighted for many of the 3rd party services Mojaloop uses

[NicoDuvenage]

Request:

MongoDB "open-source" Server Side Public License rejected | ZDNet Red Hat won't use MongoDB in Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora thanks to MongoDB's new Server Side Public License.

Artifacts:

• [ ] Artifact to consider [@Contributor]

Decision(s):

• [ ] Actual decision made as a result of discussion

Follow-up:

• [ ] Alternative actions

Dependencies:

• [ ] If Applicable

Accountability:

• Owner:

Notes:

[lewisdaly]

I've done a little digging around ahead of our next opportunity to discuss this:

Links:

• MongoDB FAQ
• ZDNet Article

General Summary:

• The license is based on GPLv3, with a chance to the
• The change is targeted at cloud vendors who resell MongoDB as a service, but don't offer anything back to the community (e.g. AWS)
• The main crux of the point in the license:

  If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License.

• Businesses using MongoDB as part their SaaS application are unaffected

Thoughts:

• It doesn't look like this license change will affect us directly.
• This will have an effect on cloud service providers: Mojaloop deployments that rely on off-the-shelf MongoDB instances and support contracts with cloud service providers may be adversely affected
• One potential issue would be for vendors offering to host Mojaloop as a Service and exposing a direct interface to MongoDB in a way that could be construed as "offering MongoDB as a service" - which I don't think is a real use case

[lewisdaly]

We have handed this off to Paula to discuss with the Foundation for now.

[lewisdaly]

I think this is worth closing for now, since I don't think directly affects us at the moment. Feel free to re-open if this changes in the future.