[mdasen]

https://www.crunchydata.com/developers/terms-of-use

Before using Crunchy Data, I'd read their terms of use.

"without an active Crunchy Data Support Subscription or other signed written agreement with Crunchy Data are not intended for... using the services provided under the Program (or any part of the services) for a production environment, production applications or with production data"

https://hub.docker.com/r/crunchydata/crunchy-postgres

If you look at their Docker Hub images, you'll see that they're provided under the terms of use of the Crunchy Data developer program which means you can't use them in production without an active subscription.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but if that's the case Crunchy Data should definitely change their terms of service.

https://www.percona.com/blog/2021/05/26/percona-distribution...

Percona certainly seems to think you can't use the Crunchy Data images in production saying, "CrunchyData container images are provided under Crunchy Data Developer Program, which means that without an active contract they could not be used for production."

[PeterZaitsev]

CEO Percona Here.

It is more than "Percona Thinks" We have number of customers who started using Crunchy Kubernetes Operator based solution thinking it is Open Source and were contacted by Crunchy Sales team to indicate they need subscription to use it.

This was one of the reasons for them to move to Percona Operator for PostgreSQL which does not require any commercial relationship with Percona to use in practice and completely Open Source

https://www.percona.com/doc/kubernetes-operator-for-postgres...

[gbartolini]

CloudNativePG Maintainer and VP of CloudNative at EDB here.

We decided to go even further with the CloudNativePG operator.

EDB as original creator has decided to donate the intellectual property of the source code to the community, open sourced the existing operator under Apache License 2.0 to apply for the CNCF Sandbox. The project not only includes the operator, but also the PostgreSQL operand images - which can be customized (we provide details on how images should be).

We genuinely welcome other vendors to participate in the community and contribute to the project, including by offering professional services around it. Our multi-year commitment is to become a graduated CNCF project.

For more information: https://cloudnative-pg.io/

[snuxoll]

I just noticed you guys are finally working on an operator for MySQL (not just XtraDB), I’ve been waiting for something like this forever after numerous false starts from Oracle, MariaDB, and some well intentioned community led projects that never really got off the ground. Kudos to your team!

[PeterZaitsev]

Thank you!

Yes. We have development version available already, check it out and give us some feedback - what else need to be done so it is Production Ready

[nwmcsween]

The percona pgo fork is quite a few versions behind the crunchydata pgo which has more declarative configuration, this is what ultimately made me reconsider persona pgo.

[988747]

I think this is more of the disclaimer that they are not responsible to any damage to your production systems if you do not use their support. That's why the wording is "are not intended for..." and not "you are prohibited from..."

[mdasen]

I'd also note that the agreement doesn't provide a license for non-development purposes. "Crunchy Data provides access to Crunchy Developer Software free of charge for development purposes", but there's nothing that says that they provide access for other purposes.

Basically, the license seems to be (and IANAL): we provide the software for development purposes...without a subscription, it's only intended for development purposes

They didn't say "we provide this software for your use...without a subscription, it's only intended for development purposes". They basically said: we provide this software for development purposes, it's only intended for development purposes.

If it's only a disclaimer, where's the grant of rights to use the software beyond development purposes?

Yes, if I were a lawyer defending a user, I'd definitely be arguing your point. However, I think Crunchy Data's lawyer would simply point out that there's literally no grant in the license for non-development purposes. Maybe a judge would take pity on you given that it seems hidden, has some ambiguity (though maybe it's not ambiguous to a lawyer), and because they allow you to spin up the operator basically without ever knowing these terms exist.

Given that there are many other PostgreSQL operators from companies like Percona (which I think has a great and long track record of supporting open source databases), EnterpriseDB, and Zalando, I don't see why I'd want to choose Crunchy Data.

You might be right and I think you would be right if only looking at the piece I quoted, but given that there's no general grant in the license that the "intended for" is merely a disclaimer for, it seems like the license grant is that they provide access for development purposes. IANAL and I'd rather work with software and companies where I don't have to be a lawyer. Crunchy Data could have said "We provide access to this software free of charge for any purpose. Without a subscription, it is unsupported and not intended for production use. We are not responsible for anything that happens if you use it in production." That's not what they said. They said that they provide it "free of charge for development purposes" with no grant for non-development purposes.

[sbuttgereit]

I agree that the developer program ToS is written in a confusing manner and suggests that you can't use it all for production without a license. I expect that to be intentional: if the impression you get is that you can't even use their software in production, it's much less likely that you will do so with the impression that there is any support, warranty, or endorsement of such use.

[EDIT: I made an error, I originally said that it was explicit about no license being granted for the software, but that was about things like no license for service marks and trade names.]

On the other hand, there is a license for postgres-operator and it looks like Apache 2.0:

https://github.com/CrunchyData/postgres-operator/blob/master...

For what's being distributed in their Docker container image, I imagine it depends on what they're actually distributing for that to matter. I expect that it's mostly other people's software (like PostgreSQL) and that the Docker page listing the container just too much of a summary to say anything about licensing. I'd investigate that further to clarify license status prior to use, but expect it to not be legally constrained to non-production use only.