MongoDB switches up its open source license

Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license by manigandham on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @06:39PM (#18233916)

There's no issue here. The whole point of OSS is that anyone can use it. Cloud vendors are providing managed services because that's what their customers demand, and the value isn't in the software itself but the managed part of it all.

Any other company (like Compose) can do the same thing and there are several hundred vendors offering various options. MongoDB Atlas is entirely this, and seems to be doing well by leveraging their own expertise and moving faster than the others.

If MongoDB now wants to change the license then they're free to do so, but they'll face the consequences of becoming more proprietary with their offering. It may help or it may hurt, but there's not some big universal argument to be made. If you don't want to make and give away free stuff, then don't. The rest of the world will still manage just fine.

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Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license by tannhaeuser on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @03:02AM (#18236780)

You've got it backwards. The fact that we now have cloud providers is a direct consequence of F/OSS and the software commoditization it brings. Cloud (running other people's software) and support are the only ways to make money in this market, so I'm expecting lots of fighting, cloud-specific forking, and license changes going forward. Cloud providers don't manage shit; they're just employing bottom-of-the-barrel staff to kindof keep things running, and put just enough development effort into their cloud offering to lock you in to their walled garden.

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Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license by manigandham on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @11:20AM (#18239929)

What's backwards? Who cares how we got cloud providers? They are responding to customer demand and we've had colos and datacenter players for decades doing similar things, just at a smaller scale.

Obviously the service is managed and that has value, regardless of the backend and your opinions on how they run it. Perhaps your issue is with all the customers who want and pay for this rather than providers meeting a need.

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Re:MongoDB switches up its open source license by tannhaeuser on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @04:16PM (#18243335)

Yeah sorry reading my post just now I should've edited it, or not submitted in the first place. What I meant is that F/OSS has kindof created a situation where no commercial software development by ISVs is sustainable, and now F/OSS itself looses one of the last remaing avenues for monetarization eg. feedback into development and innovation.

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