Examples?

Grafana https://grafana.com/blog/2021/04/20/qa-with-our-ceo-on-relic... RethinkDB http://web.archive.org/web/20161003231505/https://rethinkdb.... BerkeleyDB http://web.archive.org/web/20170211004058/http://www.infowor... MongoDB tried the shakedown but I guess it didn't work http://web.archive.org/web/20240202161503/https://www.mongod...

None of these are examples of shakedowns - they are just posts about adopting a license. Do you have any examples of shakedowns? 'Cos that's quite a claim you made there, and surely there are some examples.

Those links are all generic pages related to their licenses. I'm not seeing how they support the idea of a "shakedown", which is criminal extortion.

They all say if you sell the database as a service you can't use AGPL; you have to pay for a commercial license.

no they don't unless, you are using the features like SSO that are behind the license or you are refusing to publish any patches you apply

The point of DBaaS is that you wrap an open source database with a proprietary control plane that you won't release. Cloud vendors say this is compliant with AGPL but database startups say it isn't and thus the cloud vendors need to buy a license.

None of those pages you linked say anything like that, you're just making stuff up.

One of them is not the company talking about their license choice but a FUD article crying about AGPL which we've seen a million tired versions of.

The Rethink one says

> * Require users who choose to modify RethinkDB to fit their needs to release the patches to the software development community.

> * Require users who are unwilling to release the patches to the software development community to purchase a commercial license.

note:

> * who choose to modify RethinkDB

and

> * release the patches

none of these say anything about problems with putting control planes in front of it.

I have worked with cloud hosting a database where the only feature behind the enterprise license is a load balancer with some dead simple authz plugins.

You can write put any LB in front of it and host and sell it with the same capabilities without violating the OSS license. Adding a "control plane" that sits in front of the hosted database does not require you to publish any modifications unless you actually are running a modified version of the open source software. You would never have to publish your own LB.

lowagie/itextpdf being an obvious/prominent one.

it happens - why would you think commercial operators who’ve chosen a dual-license model wouldn’t protect their IP? That’s literally their breadwinner.

"shakedown" is a rather stronger claim than "adopted a licence".

I fairly well knew that your question wasn't good-faith, that's why I hesitated to respond rather than just flagging it.

what element was "bad faith", that the query was nonsense? Point me at anything that would legally or even ethically constitute a "shakedown" as alleged by OP, who it appears in the subthread to have misread the license?

like, answer the question instead of evading, surely it cannot be that hard.