Practically speaking, there are already 1000s+ SaaS apps built on TimescaleDB (and using the Timescale License features)
But I appreciate the feedback on how we could make our language clearer. Will share with the team!
The issue is likely something like this:
a) Oracle buys TimescaleDB
b) Oracle sues any of 1000+ SaaS apps that have decent revenue and they can identify
c) The other 900 suddenly have massive due diligence issues even if not sued
I mean, that’s cool, but maybe a bit problematic if the language of the license means they’re all in violation of it.
I understand from your perspective this whole discussion probably looks silly, because you know what’s in your mind.
There are just too many stories of this blowing up in someone’s face (mostly due to legal, not due to actual enforcement) :/
The issue is the 'such as', which reads to me as indicating that providing an API endpoint that can add fields would also be a way of letting the customer modify the database schema and therefore covered.
Which means that building a SaaS app backed by timescale that has any level of customisation exposed to the user appears to be prohibited.
This seems a rather stronger level of prohibition than stopping people directly competing with you, and would suggest that if it's intended it would help to make it more explicit, and if it isn't then an explicit statement of that would be worth adding.