Re:Free Wolfram Engine for Developers
by GordonS on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @01:34PM
(#19972460)
There are ways around this. I quite like what TimescaleDB have done, with most features OSS, and the more advanced features are under an open source license that permits use for those building a product around it, but preventing TimescaleDB as a service.
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A license like that discriminates against fields of endeavour (cloud companies), so it doesn't comply with the open source definition (item 6):
Agreed, which is why I specifically didn't refer to the TimescaleDB TSL license as "OSS".
Then maybe open source definition should update as new ways to exploit it have been found?
Agreed, but I think there would be big pushback from OSS proponents - in theory changes like this are diametrically opposed to the "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" tenent.
The problem of big cloud providers ripping off OSS works is a new one, but it is explicitly allowed by OSS licenses - really not sure what a "good" solution is here, but personally I like the route TimescaleDB has gone down.
I don't think it is a new problem, there have been people offering Apache servers as a service for a long time. Same for PHP, Wordpress and myriad other open source projects.
Re:Free Wolfram Engine for Developers
by babyloneleven on Tuesday May 21, 2019 @02:06PM
(#19972913)
There is no open source license like that.
TimescaleDB's TSL license is not "OSS", but it is open source.
TimescaleDB has a good blog post about why they went this route[0]
I do think that perhaps we need to stop being so snooty about OSS vs open source, and recognise that companies with open source products are allowed to make a profit while preventing the big cloud providers from scalping them.
[0] https://blog.timescale.com/how-we-are-building-an-open-sourc...