It looks like public cloud providers (really mostly AWS) will never ever contribute enough to upstream to support full-time upstream development teams and no one has enough leverage to change that situation. Given that reality, the only solution is what Timescale has come up with.
Re:An update to the Timescale license
by cycloptic on Thursday September 24, 2020 @06:28PM
(#24584412)
I know, I get that, but long-term this seems like non-solution that won't actually do anything. It just ties it to their service offering instead of Amazon's. If they decide to sell out to Amazon eventually they'll probably be able to bid the price higher. That's good for them, and if their customers are fine with it, then that's good for them too, but let's not pretend it's something more. I know in current times I certainly wouldn't trust a database with performance/uptime guarantees, where the authors are hiding the implementation from public scrutiny.
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
Re:An update to the Timescale license
by cycloptic on Thursday September 24, 2020 @07:32PM
(#24584907)
Sorry I should have been more clear. It appears you still do that because it's the bare minimum you need to do to keep customers from leaving for Amazon. But if that's where you stop then I can't see how it's solving the problem.
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)