MongoDB Major Change to Licensing
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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.
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@stacksofplates said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
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.
Just FYI, this is what he's talking about, a very similar license scheme they walked back on after realising it was a stupid idea, but MongoDB thinks it's great
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Hahaha
This storm will pass, though my former MongoDB colleague Jared Rosoff is probably correct in suggesting on Twitter that: "Even if the result of the change isn't controversial, it's hard to trust a platform that can change on a whim."
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@tonyshowoff said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@stacksofplates said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
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.
Just FYI, this is what he's talking about, a very similar license scheme they walked back on after realising it was a stupid idea, but MongoDB thinks it's great
Ha you beat me to it.
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Good thing Wiki.js is phasing out MongoDB for there 2.0 release.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
if you are a SaaS vendor looking at building software that uses MongoDB somewhere, you'd better get a lawyer looking over this license and how it applies to you.
This is becoming a bigger issue as the biggest SaaS vendors hide behind this clause more and more with incredibly proprietary forks. They offer very little to no actual core development or contribution and it goes against the previous method of GPL code getting funding.
It annoys me, as the legal headaches of contributing internal only use code back will block some companies from using OSS, but I see it both ways.
The startups who are doing a lot of the core housekeeping of NOSQL platforms are learning they can't find a business model. This is getting messier and messier.
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@black3dynamite said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Good thing Wiki.js is phasing out MongoDB for there 2.0 release.
No kidding.
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@stacksofplates said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
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.
Exactly. I'm shocked that it hasn't forked already, in fact!
