[mindcrime]

Yeah, I'm not necessarily opposed to the general spirit of what they're trying to do here, but this license just doesn't make sense in practice. Now that I've had more time to look at it, I'd really recommend that everybody stay the f%!# away from MongoDB.

This bit in particular really hits the nail on the head:

Let's assume that it is ok somehow to pass forward other open source software, solving that problem. What about my continuous integration software (e.g. CircleCI), or my business backup software (e.g. Jungle Disk) or my code hosting service (e.g. Github)? There is no logical bound to this license. Taken on its face, I would theoretically be bound to release the internal source code of services from third parties that I included in or relied upon to deliver my service.

Copyleft is one thing, but this is so invasive and byzantine that it beggars belief that anybody actually thought this license made sense.

[bayareasguy]

There are many arguments provided as justification for this new license - they seem specious in my opinion

1. Big cloud vendors are making money off MongoDB's investment Completely untrue. The big three - AWS, Azure and GCP dont have a MongoDB as a service solution. The only commercial entity making any real money off MongoDB is MongoDB, Inc. AGPL has achieved its purpose here. The only big cloud vendor with a solution is Rackspace and they release their modified MongoDB code.

2. Big cloud Vendors in China are breaking the law and they need this new license to control them If they are technically modifying the source code and not providing it back to the community then they are already breaking the law. You don't need a new license to control this problem

So what is this about? In my opinion it is an exercise in naked extortion and control

1. Clear out any ISV Vendors/As-a-service Competitors - Any commerical entity who does anything remotely interesting with MongoDB is in big trouble. I'm talking about Monitoring, backup, performance profiling, analytics, reporting etc..anything really. MongoDB could easily bring a reasonable claim against them that the value of their service is "primarily or mostly derived from MongoDB". Also its very unclear on what needs to be open sourced to be compatible. The license seems deliberately vaguely worded so that it is as broad as possible.

2. End users using MongoDB - While MongoDB claims this does not affect end users in any way I would be very wary of this claim. The license in authored in such a generic way that there are many possible interpretations. If MongoDB, Inc for some reason does a claim against you then your only defence is to buy a license or go into litigation. "Trust us, we will never do that" is not a good enough argument.

To summarize, be very wary of this. If you are a developer and dont think this affects you run this by your legal deparment or VC and see the alarm on their faces :)

[kstrauser]

Also, print out and have notarized a copy of their current FAQ. It's probably legally binding for promissory estoppel. If their interpretation of the license suddenly becomes much stricter, it may be handy to prove that they promised you explicitly in writing that they intended the looser meaning.

[fwiw1]

Isn't Rackspace the owner of ObjectRocket?

[acct1771]

What law?

[appbuilder101]

After spending some time reviewing this licencse the only conclusion I come to is that this license is malicious...let me explain

Let say you are a young startup building a cool SaaS solution. E.g. A data analytics solution. If you make heavy use of MongoDB it is very possible that down the line the good folks at MongoDB come calling since "the value of your SaaS derives primarily from MongoDB..." So at that point you have two options - buy a license from MongoDB or open source your work (which they can conveniently leverage at no cost).

Either way if you are SaaS solution doing anything data related I would not use MongoDB having read this license.

[metheus]

I think we're all on the same page about the shoddiness of being in the open source insurance business, but that is not what the SSPL is for, nor could it be used for that. We simply can't make the claim that any SaaS other than specifically MongoDB as a service derives primarily from MongoDB -- or rather, it it's possible to make the claim, but it's easier to defeat it.

[appbuilder101]

The whole point of this discussion is that MongoDB, Inc could make that claim (as you agree)...and we as users of MongoDB will have to spend money fighting off that claim. You'd have to pretty naive to use software that has these terms.

[metheus]

Sorry, let me clarify. It's always possible to claim anything. I meant that the claim is too weak for the SSPL to create that threat.

It's obvious that several people disagree, but within this thread, conversing about this article, we should expect a bias to see things that way. I hope you'll stay open to being convinced otherwise. The SSPL has been submitted for review to the OSI, and this issue is one of the points of discussion that we're listening very closely to.

[Aeolun]

It’s great that you’re listening closely, but it seems to me that regardless of what OSI says, the consensus is that nobody in this thread will continue to use MongoDB under this new license.

[gaius]

the value of your SaaS derives primarily from MongoDB

If that were true they could switch to Postgres and become 200x as valuable overnight.

[sesutton]

>Copyleft is one thing, but this is so invasive and byzantine that it beggars belief that anybody actually thought this license made sense.

It makes complete sense if its purpose is to be so onerous that no one can actually use it without a commercial license.

[bhickey]

Yep. I don't understand why Mongo doesn't just come clean and say "We're discontinuing support for the free version." Maybe they're afraid it'll get forked?

[ComputerGuru]

> I’ve had more time to look at it, I'd really recommend that everybody stay the f%!# away from MongoDB.

That’s virtually the word-for-word conclusion that anyone who’s “has some time to look at mongoDB” has come to. It’s a steaming pile of feces, and this is no surprise. From day one, the mongo team has made it clear that they are a startup first (in the sense of “focus on wooing investors with buzzwords and making money”) and a software engineering firm last.

[mcherm]

There is no need to stay away from MongoDB (well, not for licensing reasons anyhow). There is only a need to stay away from MongoDB(TM).

Because of its previous license, the code base can be forked as of immediately before the license change, and it can continue to be offered under the previous license.

I would recommend that anyone using MongoDB do that.

[lamby]

> I'm not necessarily opposed to the general spirit of what they're trying to do here

Can you elaborate on this?

[djsumdog]

Hmm ... Would this technically be the ultimate Stallman dream?

[SEJeff]

No. RMS has stated more than once that he is entirely ok with the "service provider loophole" in the GPL. They made the AGPL for those not ok with the loophole, but he never had any issue with it in the original GPL at all.

[mritun]

No, technically, Stallman is firmly rooted in copyright law. GPL says you take this software and make derived works, as copyright law says what they are, as long as you make derivative works available under the same terms as you received the original software.

GPL steers clear of non-derived work. If you use VMWare on Linux, VMWare is not a derived work as far as copyright law is concerned and there is no relation between them as far as GPL is concerned.

This SSPL, is another story.