[vrtx0]

MongoDB’s source code is still freely available. It’s still actively developed in the open on GitHub. Unless you’re offering MongoDB as a service, it’s just as “open source” as ever.

If you want to offer MongoDB as a service, you can still do so free of charge, as long as the service infrastructure is also made openly available, right? And if you don’t want to make the source available, you can purchase a license and do so, right?

Furthermore, if you’re using MongoDB, be it self-hosted, with a vendor, or even some proprietary database that implements the wire protocol for compatibility, you’re likely using MongoDB-developed clients/drivers, which are Apache 2.0 (“OSI-approved open source”).

So it seems like the only way to be locked into a vendor is if you’re using MongoDB drivers to connect with a 3rd party database that doesn’t fully implement all functionality of MongoDB in a compatible way… Right?

I could be wrong, but as someone who contributed to MongoDB as an open source project, and was later hired by MongoDB based on said contributions, it kinda hurts to see the OSI’s “MongoDB isn’t open source anymore” campaign work so well.

That said, I sincerely wish the team behind this project all the best!

My complaints aren’t against anyone in the open source communities I’ve known and loved. Just this self-important legal organization that acts like it controls (and even gets to define) open source software.

P.S. I left MongoDB in 2015 due to a neurological disability, but it was one of the highlights of my career, with so many kind and brilliant people. But it’s also been a while, and my brain doesn’t work so well these days, so please correct me if I got anything wrong!

[zokier]

> If you want to offer MongoDB as a service, you can still do so free of charge, as long as the service infrastructure is also made openly available, right?

The license text is worded as such that it is basically impossible to comply with.

> OSI’s “MongoDB isn’t open source anymore” campaign work so well.

It is hardly OSIs campaign. Pretty much all major organizations involved in FOSS licensing have rejected sspl. For example this is Fedoras stance:

> Fedora considers the Server Side Public License (v1) to be a Non-Free license. It is the belief of Fedora that the SSPL is intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory towards a specific class of users. Additionally, it seems clear that the intent of the license author is to cause Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt towards commercial users of software under that license. To consider the SSPL to be "Free" or "Open Source" causes that shadow to be cast across all other licenses in the FOSS ecosystem, even though none of them carry that risk.

[ahachete]

> "Unless you’re offering MongoDB as a service, it’s just as “open source” as ever."

It's not. It's source available, and that's still proprietary.

The reason why the SSPL is not Open Source is pretty simple: it doesn't convey the four essential freedoms of free software [1]. That's it, there is essentially no more to it: it imposes usage restrictions, and that's orthogonality against the spirit.

Whether it is "except this or that" or "AGPLv3 but with this additional clause" is irrelevant: even the tiniest change can cause significant differences, and this is the case: it removes the freedom to run the program as you want, as it imposes restrictions to some use cases. And these restrictions go beyond the realm of the software itself.

In contrast, Open Source copyleft software, like AGPLv3, never go beyond the software itself. It provides guarantees that modified versions of it also remain available for users of modified software (forward carrying guarantees) but do not add a requirement to also provide under the same license other unrelated software (which is essentially a nice way of saying "simply don't do this", turning de facto into a usage restriction).

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

[PeterZaitsev]

"You can do so as soon as you open source infrastructure" is impractical and misleading. It is very likely part of infrastructure will be commercially licensed so even if one would want to open source it, it would not be possible.

MongoDB Specifically switches from Open Source License to SSPL to create monopoly in DBaaS Space. IT is business decision so lets not pretend here.

If you look at Real Open Source software it is created for cooperation and innovation together, not monopoly.

[vrtx0]

Er, if you develop the infrastructure to host MongoDB, you should absolutely be able to open-source that infrastructure. I mean, before MongoDB, I wrote a cluster management system for virtualized software security and hypervisor research, and all of it was either open source or something I wrote…

Also, if you bought something closed-source to sell MongoDB as a service, why isn’t it realistic to buy a license?

Your suggestion of a monopoly in the DBaaS space seems to preclude the existence of other databases… Or am I misunderstanding?

I’m not sure what you mean by “IT is a business decision” — could you elaborate?

-edit- P.S. I’m trying to be supportive here; not trying to take anything away from what you’ve built with FerretDB! Honestly, there’s room for so room for innovation in this domain, and it’s nice to see new projects…

[zokier]

> Also, if you bought something closed-source to sell MongoDB as a service, why isn’t it realistic to buy a license?

Lets say you are running your infra on any cloud provider. Do you think its realistic to get them to hand out their source code?

[vrtx0]

The cloud provider wouldn’t have to, if you are the one running your infra. The SSPL restrictions only apply to businesses that offer MongoDB as a service.

In fact, you can build a similar service and offer it within your organization (and subsidiaries), and you still don’t have to release anything. The license only applies to companies like Amazon if they offer MongoDB as their own service (DocumentDB).

I know that’s a bit tangential, but hope that helps a bit?