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by notacoward 2800 days ago
The "all programs you use" clause seems to make it extremely viral, perhaps unprecedentedly so. It seems to me that anyone not willing to comply with AGPL would be even less likely to comply with this. Not sure how that's supposed to be a good outcome, even for Mongo.
2 comments

This sounds like a violation of provision 9 of the Open Source Definition and the DFSG.

It's going to backfire hard when distros start removing Mongo from their main repos.

Why would they? They don't make a Mongo service available. Neither do most users who install Mongo from a Linux distribution repository.

(Thanks for the explanation, "DFSG" passed over me the first time I read this. "Debian Free Software Guidelines".)

Distributions like Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. require that all software in their core repos be FOSS. It's not about their legal obligations but about their own policies forbidding proprietary software in their core repos.

Since the new Mongo license violates rule 9 of the DFSG, it is considered proprietary software by Debian's definition, and that means Debian's FOSS policy will require Mongo to be moved out of the core repos and into the non-free repo. Fedora and Ubuntu have their own policies which will have the same effect.

Mongo already provides their own repos, and recommends using that for install and updates. I don't think they care or anyone seriously wanting to develop something on/around Mongo does either.
The same can be said for docker?
Yes, though I think their enterprise efforts are truly different offerings, and Kubernetes probably surprised them a bit there.
Why is it viral? It doesn't require those other stuff to also be available under this license, just as source-available. Which means this is basically AGPL++.