This keeps popping up from database maintainers and unless addressed we're just going to keep talking past each other.
I'd like to challenge the notion that cloud providers are somehow competing with the likes of MongoDB, et al. We're at the point where anyone can stand up a database in a VM with minimal effort. Cloud providers are spending billions on infrastructure to make sure the bits in that database are highly available with low latency. This is scarcely distinguishable from what a traditional colocation service does.
The whole idea of "open source abuse" amounts to special pleading. No one is forced to use an open source license. MongoDB and its peers have access to lawyers who can explain the consequences of this or that licensing decision. Cloud providers offer database deployments under license terms that were offered to them.
If Redis Labs or MongoDB decided tomorrow to take their database proprietary there wouldn't be much gnashing of teeth. The projects would fork. The proprietary forks would see more feature development and we'd all go on with our lives. You're seeing pushback for a few reasons:
1. The name "Commons Clause" appears to intentionally invite confusion with "Creative Commons." Plus the idea that you can jam a rider onto an arbitrary Open Source license and end up with something coherent is woefully misguided. The GPL explicitly blows up language like this.
2. On the heels of the Commons Clause, the SSPL was put up to the OSI as an open source license even though it obviously violates OSD 5,6 and 9. Along with Salil's rants on TechCrunch, this makes it look like a transparent attempt at undermining open source and the OSI.
> In the case of Redis this is a bit a natural process because I'm very unwelcoming to a lot of things that users want because I feel they are not a fit.
As an aside, I don't send you patches for this reason.
Seriously. Trust takes ages to build and seconds to destroy. That and good will. I think Redis Lab's wouldn't have gotten quite the push back it did if it wasn't for the perceived shadyness.
There is this freedom for end users to modify and run software, sort of anti lock in freedom. And there is this corporate freedom allowing corporations to restrict freedoms of end users and lock them in. The second one is what MIT-alike enables. It doesn't make sure end users keep any freedom at all. So the choice is to either restrict corporations or let corporations restrict users. Letting corporations restrict users also lets them capture all profits and make sure original creators won't be able to compete with them.
No matter how you look at it, the idea of unrestricted use for corporations will die. Startups, small companies, independent creators are either going to switch to restrictive licenses or won't be able to sustain development and abandon it. Things could have been different if tech companies weren't allowed to get so big.
If you are doing it for a legal entity of any description, you need to start paying license fees.
It would be another BSD with not many commercial players contributing to. BSD-ish licenses mean free labor for companies, but are problematic for cooperation. The easiest way is always to "defect": Take the sources and never contribute back - it might help a competitor.
The Copyleft licenses work around that and make cooperation between of adversaries possible.
It depends what you think a user is. Is a user an end-user who has no intention of creating a proprietary fork? Or is it a developer who intends to create a proprietary fork?
"If we just stick to the facts", copyleft provides equal freedom to both classes. Neither can create proprietary forks. For permissive licenses, the latter class is given an additional freedom (creation of proprietary forks), but the former class gains no practical freedom. However, what if the latter class gives the former class their proprietary fork? Then the former class has less freedom (and there is a history of this happening with Windows, OS X, and Android using BSD code without providing it to the end-user).
This has always been the argument made by the GPL. Yes, proprietary software developers lose the freedom to reduce the freedom of other users. Instead it guarantees equal freedoms to all classes of users.
I get it, you don't agree with the GPL. That's fine. But clearly the "user" being protected the GPL is the end-user. That was always the point (and that protection comes in a form that allows developers to have the same freedom and nothing extra).
A BSD might have caught on in the same way eventually but it would have taken longer.
They provide more freedom for the next user but because they allow freedom to be taken away at any point in the chain bsd/mit licenses provide absolutely no guarantees of freedom for the final user.
That's not "fact", that's semantics. You're playing games with the definition of the word "freedom". The FSF has been outrageously clear about exactly what it means by that term, and what freedoms specifically it's trying to protect.
Argue with those points. Don't fling around "facts" like this, it's just bad form.
https://lobste.rs/s/0h98nl/it_s_not_okay_pretend_your_softwa...
Follow up:
https://lobste.rs/s/kbcjnx/open_source_confronts_its_midlife...
Whats your thoughts on using more paid, shared-source stuff to generate money to protect software freedom and fund development of FOSS infrastructure?
DISCLAIMER: This comment was written incrementally and modified several times adding things that came to mind while writing.
About BSD,MIT,... vs CopyLeft. We can say what we want, but if we just stick to facts, MIT-alike licenses provide more freedom for the final user. If one would like to dig more I think that the canonical example would be the Linux kernel and asking questions about, what if it would be BSD licensed.