MongoDB Major Change to Licensing
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God damn I want to be at the first litigation of this license.
FFS.
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Legal definition...
third party
n. a person who is not a party to a contract or a transaction, but has an involvement (such as a buyer from one of the parties, was present when the agreement was signed, or made an offer that was rejected). The third party normally has no legal rights in the matter, unless the contract was made for the third party's benefit.
In a contract, the term third party does not even imply, let alone mean, an outside company.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
A business creates something.
That business in legal terms is it's own entity (living breathing creature with rights).
That business can sign contracts, get loans, be held legally responsible etc.
Where the fuck are you getting that an individual employee who uses a service that a Business Entity signs a contract for is somehow 3rd party to the contract between MongoDB and the Business, when that employee works for the Business?
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It's reasonable to assume that MongoDB didn't intend to screw up their license and thought that third party might only mean people from another company, but that would imply that their lawyer was pretty clueless and no one reviewed this. It's pretty clear that they have done nothing to provide any clarity that would be required to believe that they truly intended to limit this in that way.
The license is written with what appears pretty clear intent to be overly broad and basically allow for litigation against everyone that doesn't buy the commercial license. The degree to which this license covers any possible use case is unprecedented.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
A business creates something.
That business in legal terms is it's own entity (living breathing creature with rights).
That business can sign contracts, get loans, be held legally responsible etc.
Where the fuck are you getting that an individual employee who uses a service that a Business Entity signs a contract for is somehow 3rd party to the contract between MongoDB and the Business?
A person inside a business is another party. For example, your employment agreements are between one party and a company. That all staff are the "party" and not third parties doesn't really make sense. Because you can't make a contract with yourself.
And while you can argue that W2 employees aren't third party (but I doubt anyone would agree), you can't argue that 1099 staff are not a third party, as they are a separate company.
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I think this describes my position best...
I think that the true intent of the license was to trick people into thinking that the intent was to cover only limited scenarios. But no law firm would have been so clumsy if that was the goal for real. In reality, I think the intent was to actually cover anything and everything while providing plausible deniability as to how evil the license is in reality.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
I think this describes my position best...
I think that the true intent of the license was to trick people into thinking that the intent was to cover only limited scenarios. But no law firm would have been so clumsy if that was the goal for real. In reality, I think the intent was to actually cover anything and everything while providing plausible deniability as to how evil the license is in reality.
I agree, that was my impression simply on first reading it.
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Bottom line, intent doesn't matter, what it says, does. And what is says is clear: MongoDB needs to be forked, the original company left behind to whither and fade, and no project or deployment should consider using MongoDB in the future.
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Someone should fork it and use an SSLS-like license that says that if MongoDB uses anything from the new fork that they are forced to open source all that closed source special sauce they are trying to misdirect everyone from looking at.
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This change literally impacts one of my customers who is deploying NodeBB modules being done in house.
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I would very easily challenge this, that 3rd party is anyone outside of the company employees that is accessing any service that uses a MongoDB.
And while it's very likely the intent of the license may have been to act as you describe I read it differently.
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Let's give a crazy example here...
Let's say Dustin decides to make a document that he gives away. Like he stands on the corner handing out pamphlets. And those pamphlets contain information from MangoLassi. And then someone reads that pamphlet and writes software to scan it.
Does that scanning software have to be open sources? Because it's ultimately pulling data from MongoDB?
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
I would very easily challenge this, that 3rd party is anyone outside of the company employees that is accessing any service that uses a MongoDB.
And while it's very likely the intent of the license may have been to act as you describe I read it differently.
Right, but "how it reads" doesn't matter. "What it says" is what matters, and it says something pretty clear in legal terms. How it sounds or how it appears that they were trying to make it are not factors that the courts consider and aren't part of contract law.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
I would very easily challenge this, that 3rd party is anyone outside of the company employees that is accessing any service that uses a MongoDB.
And while it's very likely the intent of the license may have been to act as you describe I read it differently.
Right, but "how it reads" doesn't matter. "What it says" is what matters, and it says something pretty clear in legal terms. How it sounds or how it appears that they were trying to make it are not factors that the courts consider and aren't part of contract law.
How it sounds very much matters. Look at all the laws that have massive loopholes for tax evasion because the lawyers didn't spell out each and every item.
To me the loophole here is, MongoDB, you done fucked up. I can use MongoDB internally and you can pound sand since my employees aren't signing into a contract or accepting terms directly with you.
The business as a whole has accepted the terms, thus kiss off.
Unless, I'm selling (or offering) a service to people that are not employees of the business, and then I've agreed to purchase a license or open everything up.
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Let me tell you, we had been loving MongoDB, but this makes me feel SO much better deciding to move to ScyllaDB recently.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
How it sounds very much matters. Look at all the laws that have massive loopholes for tax evasion because the lawyers didn't spell out each and every item.
A loophole is the opposite of what you are picturing. Loopholes are when the words say something unintended. If the intent or "sound" mattered, then you couldn't have loopholes.
But the "sound" of this document is to screw everyone.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
To me the loophole here is, MongoDB, you done fucked up. I can use MongoDB internally and you can pound sand since my employees aren't signing into a contract or accepting terms directly with you.
Right, that's where there isn't a loophole. The wording, supposedly, wasn't supposed to cover those people, but it appears that it could.
The employees not accepting terms has nothing to do with the scenario. You have to accept the license in the deploying of MongoDB. So the you are obligated. The employee status is irrelevant.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Unless, I'm selling (or offering) a service to people that are not employees of the business, and then I've agreed to purchase a license or open everything up.
The only clear exception is if you offer the service only to yourself. Once you offer it to anyone else, there is no grounds for thinking that you have an exception to the rule.
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Didn't read the whole thread but they apparently didn't learn from Redis. They will have to move back or fail. There's nothing stopping anyone from forking under the previous license and essentially copying fixes.
This helps no one at all.
