Do they pretend and mention it’s open source? If not, I don’t see a problem.

Yes.

> ... An open source cloud that can run anywhere.

> ... Open-source or managed for you. Available on GitHub under the Elastic v2 license.

Taken from here: https://ubicloud.com/

I work on Ubicloud.

Truly sorry that we missed these instances of "open-source" references. We scrubbed the use of open-source in most places, but forgot about our home page, which might sound weird as the home page is... well... home page. The truth is that our web site is not our primary focus at the moment. Rather we are putting almost all our effort for building the product (You can watch all of it in GitHub).

We don't claim to be "open source" rather we are open and free as in you can see the code and host it yourself if you want. The restriction is that license does not allow building a managed service out of it.

> Taken from here: https://ubicloud.com/

Am I the only one getting a certificate error browsing there?

For once, someone got it right and didn't claim with bold, uppercase letters that it's an Open Source project, like it usually happens with a lot of HN entries of that topic. Lately, the relicense of some Sentry product to a non-OSS license that was wrongly called "Open Source" just because the source was shared. As deserved, these kinds of usages tend to receive a good amount of backlash due to wrongly using the term.

But here, all is right, I don't see where anyone could base any complaint. Except for being entitled to instruct others about the license they should use for their own work, that is. I'd say they are walking the line with insisting on how "open" this solution is, but it doesn't really cross any line.

They are missing a very strong 4th line in "How is this different than OpenStack?" [1], though: OpenStack is Apache 2.0, aka. proper OSS, thus you can use or host it in whatever way you want, even use it to create an IaaS if you wanted. With UbiCloud, I didn't read the license, but probably not.

[1]: https://github.com/ubicloud/ubicloud#how-is-this-different-t...

They have an "open source" image right there on their front page

Oh. Just saw it. I had only opened the Github project page linked in this entry. I've added a mention in my comment.

Indeed, just back to being another case of falsely claiming to provide the freedoms of usage that Open Source would actually grant but they don't.

Should be a very quick fix, though. It isn't called open source all across, but only mistakenly in a couple of places.

Thanks for pointing this out. We updated our website.

For clarification, we weren't planning to launch until we had a proper looking website. Yesterday, I shared our GitHub repo on LinkedIn to get feedback from friends. Then, we saw this on HN - and realized that we haven't looked at our website in quite a while.

We're also trying to formulate a better point of view on the license and its implications. We Ask HN'ed several days ago, but there wasn't much input: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998888

In the end, we picked a more restrictive license. An important reason for that is, we feel that we can move from a restrictive to a more liberal license easily. Doing the inverse would feel like not doing the right thing by our users.

For the record, I believe you did the right thing. It's your work so you should use whichever license you like, and have users use your product on your own terms. It's just that passing non-OSI approved licenses as "Open Source" does tend to trigger strong responses.

OSS flies faster because people love the ability to use and reuse source code. But not everything must be OSS especially if the source code itself must be the source of income (thinking here of a mantra that's been repeated in HN several times, and which is very correct IMO: "Open Source is not a business model")

And yes you're right that it's better to go from restricted to open. The opposite direction has always been received with harsh criticism. Also you open yourself to the risk of a community forming around forking the project from the last commit that was OSS, and departing with their own thing form there. Unlikely, but technically possible.

It says OPEN SOURCE in bold uppercase letters on their web page...

Yeah, these are terminological bugs. I have reported them. I work there.

I hate the trend of these freemium faux FOSS poser projects that keep popping up.

Looks like another fauxpen source, yes.

normally I give "open source" comments like this the label they deserve, which is "troll". however in this case it seems justified:

> You may not move, change, disable, or circumvent the license key functionality in the software, and you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software that is protected by the license key.

https://elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license

I work on Ubicloud.

It is fair criticism. We don't claim to be "open source" rather we are open and free as in you can see the code and host it yourself if you want. The restriction is that license does not allow building a managed service out of it.

BTW, we don't have any license key, so that part of the Elastic License wouldn't apply. It is there, because we wanted to use a known license that fits the bill instead of creating our own obscure license.

using "free and open" is going to evoke the idea of FOSS. so you either:

1. did that intentionally, intending to trick people into thinking UbiCloud is FOSS

2. did it unintentionally, somehow missing the obvious connection that people are going to make

either way, its a bad look. this is a solved problem, you can use the correct term for the situation:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

Agree. Using "free and open" is still rather deceptive.

It doesn't even need to evoke the idea of FOSS. Software that includes licence management with keys and such should not be called "free and open"

elastic, who is the creator of the licence in the first place, refers to it as Free and Open. https://www.elastic.co/pricing/faq/licensing#

Pretty terrible look, given you're lying already with this "We don't claim to be "open source" rather we are open and free as in you can see the code and host it yourself if you want. "

From https://ubicloud.com/

At top: "An open source cloud that can run anywhere."

Near bottom: "Open-source or managed for you"

Image at bottom: https://unicorn-cdn.b-cdn.net/0c2bf736-3f08-4b11-a500-57e4e7...

At least Openstack doesn't lie about its complexity.

I replied this in another thread and didn't want to repeat myself here but that was probably oversight on my part.

> Truly sorry that we missed these instances of "open-source" references. We scrubbed the use of open-source in most places, but forgot about our home page, which might sound weird as the home page is... well... home page. The truth is that our web site is not our primary focus at the moment. Rather we are putting almost all our effort for building the product (You can watch all of it in GitHub)

Also

> You may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service

What exactly is a third party?

Does this prohibit one department/team from managing it and offering it as a service to other departments/teams in the same company? Does it prohibit using it in a homelab I share with my friends and family?

> Any use of the licensor’s trademarks is subject to applicable law.

IANAL, but if any of the protected parts of the code use trademarks, which seems pretty likely, wouldn't any forks risk trademark infringement?

I also commented this on their previous thread looking for input on licenses. I have no problem with monetising a managed service and preventing others from doing that on software you build, but disallowing ‘third parties’ is too broad. I wouldn’t be comfortable using this under that language.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36998888 It seems they are still in the process of determining the most suitable license to truly make them an open-source project.