I personally feel like the spirit of OSD9 is primarily about not affecting unrelated programs. I think it'd be reasonable to affect related programs. I think the current version of SSPL oversteps wildly in that regard, but I feel like it could be pared back to something that would be consistent with what I'd consider to be the spirit of OSD9 (and the rest of the OSD), while still doing what it seems like the SSPL is trying to do.
In doing so, I'd focus on "such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available", and drop all the specific service examples in favor of something like "any software you have made the Program depend on, such that the Program lacks some functionality compared to your service if that software is not present (even if you have made the Program support running without that functionality)". That would be broader than the comparable boundary of the AGPL, but much narrower than the current SSPL, insofar as it would only cover things the Program has been modified to depend on, rather than surrounding hosting infrastructure.
In any case, I don't think it very likely that MongoDB would be willing to make such changes, but if they did, I think it'd be possible to arrive at a license that would pass the OSD.
Sure, but if the problem is "leeching off their software without paying for it", then being obligated to share their changes should fix the "leeching" bit. I mean, is Amazon leeching off Linux by shipping it on all their devices?
If much of the future is cloud, then getting the hyper-scalars to contribute occasional patches doesn't solve the problem of competition.
That's reflected in our post:
Some may ask, “Why create a new license - why not just compete
with public clouds by just providing the best product experience
on a level playing field?”
The problem is that the playing field is far from level.
Today, the public cloud vendors (Amazon, Microsoft, Google)
are trillion dollar corporations – the largest companies in
the world – and have a myriad of advantages that arise from
that size, including market position, pricing power, deep
balance sheets, and (what many have even called) unfair
business practices. They lock large customers into prepaid,
discounted, multi-year enterprise-wide agreements, and give
startups $100,000s of free credits.
But I think that the tech and innovation ecosystem would be much for the worst if everybody else is hamstrung when competing in the cloud, or else just have to go fully closed source and proprietary.
This is my main problem with this type of licenses, none of them really seem to have any interest in actually getting the public cloud vendors to compete or buy services or contribute (financially or otherwise) to the upstream project. It just perpetuates the problem because now your company is the one doing it by telling customers they have to sign your agreement and can never buy from any other vendor. I'm sorry if this is an overly negative assessment but I just can't see it as much more than passing the buck when there is no attempt at reciprocity, through copyleft or through some other means. (As much as I had criticism of the SSPL, at least it tried to have this)
If you're going to tell me your company is actually worth a trillion quid and can really compete with AWS then I would see your point, but otherwise I can't see a way that this is going to make the market better for anyone besides the other small fraction of companies that have come up with similar ideas of banning Amazon. (Full disclosure: I'm in the same boat and I personally refuse to purchase any products or services from Amazon, but I acknowledge I'm in the severe minority)
where the authors are hiding the implementation
from public scrutiny
Linux has an entirely different scenario for the economics around it, so from the "does this work financially" perspective the comparison isn't all that helpful.
But the cloud vendor's efforts aren't typically with the software itself -- they often run the open-source version unmodified -- but rather with the operations and systems around the software.
Mongo's SSPL was trying to block this case by forcing folks to open-source all their surrounding infra (which likely AWS would never do), but at least for now, the SSPL was not accepted as an Open-Source License by the OSI.
Also, I'd argue that efforts like the SSPL are actually trying to "backdoor" the goal of "cloud protection licenses" in the first place. They are trying to bake-in a poison pill that the cloud vendors won't want to do, as opposed to having a clause that just directly speaks to the stated goal.