Re:An update to the Timescale license
by yjftsjthsd-h on Thursday September 24, 2020 @03:50PM
(#24582786)
The original problem was Amazon "leeching off their software without paying for it". If Amazon shares their changes (as the AGPL requires), then they're contributing, not leeching. If the problem is just that Amazon happens to use a product, or horror of horrors, offer a hosted version... I dunno, I just can't see what the issue is. Is every developer upset about people profiting off their work sending a monthly check to Linus Torvalds for using Linux, Apple for clang and/or GNU for gcc, and the maintainers of their distro of choice? Or is only their software that nobody else is allowed to make money off of?
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Timescaledb the company wants to make money from their managed service, thus they are protecting it from competition. That’s fine. They are not true open source but that’s fine too.
Re:An update to the Timescale license
by yjftsjthsd-h on Thursday September 24, 2020 @04:37PM
(#24583313)
Agreed. I don't mind companies selling proprietary software. I do mind companies trying to claim that they're offering open source software when they're actually offering source-available software. With the Apache2 version, Timescale actually appears to be doing both, but I can't find a description of the differences so I can't comment very well; I assume they're doing open core. Which, again, is fine as long as you don't try and pretend that you're doing something else.
Yes, our offering is of the "open core" nature, although our non-open-source code is covered under the Timescale License (source available, free). For most "open core" companies, this latter part is instead closed-source and paid, hence this terminology also leads to confusion :)
Anyway, here's the link to license pointers in github, and you can find all code there:
https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb/blob/master/LICENSE
Source code in this repository is variously licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0, an Apache compatible license, or the Timescale License.
All source code should have information at the beginning of its respective file which specifies its licensing information.
* Outside of the "tsl" directory, source code in a given file is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0, unless otherwise noted (e.g., an Apache-compatible license).
* Within the "tsl" folder, source code in a given file is licensed under the Timescale License, unless otherwise noted.
When built, separate shared object files are generated for the Apache-licensed source code and the Timescale-licensed source code. The shared object binaries that contain `-tsl` in their name are licensed under the Timescale License.
Re:An update to the Timescale license
by majormajor on Thursday September 24, 2020 @05:00PM
(#24583596)
If Linus had wanted users to pay him I certainly wouldn't pay a different company for it, if they just copied his code and didn't forward of the money on...
I do wonder, in a non-free world like that, if we'd have a higher proportion of "tech giants" still in the "making software" space instead of being so advertising-centric with Google, Facebook, etc's, main revenue streams.