RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation [LWN.net]

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 15:50 UTC (Mon) by lmb (subscriber, #39048)
Parent article: RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

It's a sign of the times that a project drops a strong copyleft license and then joins the Linux Foundation, instead of adopting one.

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RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 16:19 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (2 responses)

Or maybe they relicensed to the Apache licence and then threw the code over the wrong wall. But I suspect that it is indeed a sign of the times: everybody avoids dealing with those awkward licence violation suspicions, at least until one of the members manages to fail to clear the much lower (but still not ground-level) bar stipulated by the terms of some proprietary licence or other.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 16:20 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Of course: s/proprietary/permissive :-/

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 7, 2017 23:37 UTC (Tue) by andrewsomething (guest, #53527) [Link]

There's more details in this post by Bryan Cantrill who is on the Technical Oversight Committee at the Cloud Native Foundation. Looks like it was the Linux Foundation itself (via the CNCF) that re-licensed it.

https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-liberation-of-rethinkdb

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 16:24 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (6 responses)

The Affero GPL is a bit more than strong copyleft; it's extra-strength, with its hoops you must jump through to deploy the software on a public-facing website. This may be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but clearly it's a step beyond the GNU GPL and other traditional copyleft free licences.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 18:26 UTC (Mon) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

It's also very vaguely worded for anything that's not directly powering a website.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 23:28 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (4 responses)

Those hoops only kick in if you actually modify the software, which normal deployments rarely need to.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 7, 2017 10:13 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

The big problem is that it's quite easy to argue that, if you use AGPL software, you need to make the *entire* *stack* available under the (A)GPL. Bit tricky if you're using MS SQL-Server as your db back end ...

Cheers,
Wol

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 7, 2017 12:13 UTC (Tue) by aggelos (subscriber, #41752) [Link] (1 responses)

If it's quite easy to argue, would you kindly do so?

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 8, 2017 23:44 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Section 13 of v3.

Actually I might be thinking of v2, but v3 doesn't seem much clearer. It clearly permits using the covered work in conjunction with GPLv3.

But if I combine an Affero program with a proprietary back end to create a web-facing application, is this now a "modified version"? Does Affero apply to the back end as well as the front end? I don't know, and with v2 there were plenty of reports that people were scared that it might. That "exception for GPL" could easily be taken to imply that it does.

Cheers,
Wol

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 8, 2017 11:49 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

I wouldn't like to be in a position where the software is running in production, but if I make any change to it I will be in breach of the licence unless I set up a way to download the modified code at the same time. If you plan to keep within the licence, and you accept that random fixes and changes to deployed software are sometimes necessary at short notice, you have to plan to maintain a download link for the particular code you're running.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 17:37 UTC (Mon) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Not really. It's a sign that the "application provider" part of Affero GPL was a key part of the strategy in monetizing their software. It increased the sharing obligations for any potential competitors. If you're in the web services business, it helps to impose upon other web service businesses. Once you're out of the web services business, all you're doing is excluding Google and other anti-Affero types from using your software.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 17:44 UTC (Mon) by mdolan (subscriber, #104340) [Link] (1 responses)

The LF supports projects of all OSI-approve open source licenses, including many using copyleft GPL/LGPL/EPL/MPLv2 licenses. The communities and copyright owners pick the project licenses, not the Foundation. Bryan Cantrill posted a blog on why this community decided on a license change to ASLv2. https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-liberation-of-rethinkdb.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 19:13 UTC (Mon) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link]

Indeed, although CNCF which apparently was the go-between in this case, is recommending the ASL2: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/01/cncf-recommends-aslv2

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 6, 2017 19:50 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (12 responses)

It's a sign that AGPL is recognized as a toxic waste that nobody wants to touch. It's fine as a front for dually licensed "corporate shareware" products but nothing else.

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 7, 2017 8:42 UTC (Tue) by lmb (subscriber, #39048) [Link]

For me, the AGPLv2 is an imperfect way of addressing the problem that "making software available" is no longer (semi-)identical to "distribution", and that in a cloud world, the GPL family of products no longer guarantees the user any freedom (with regard to the code).

RethinkDB source relicensed, donated to the Linux Foundation

Posted Feb 7, 2017 10:47 UTC (Tue) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]

> toxic waste

Wow. As always even-headed and insightful comments when it comes to free software licensing. Just wow.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 8, 2017 5:55 UTC (Wed) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (9 responses)

MongoDB is licenced under Affero, and seems to be used a fair bit. At least, its monthly download rate is in the mid 10^5s, and it just got reliably linearizable durable distributed writes, which depends on quite a lot of sustained developer attention. It seems like some other reason is needed to explain why RethinkDB didn't end up driving a growing business.

It might be a better question why a project takes off than why it falters, because faltering is the usual outcome. But not studying why projects falter might ensure that yours will. Licenses don't seem to be among the main reasons either way.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 8, 2017 21:40 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (8 responses)

MongoDB _is_ corporate shareware. Pretty much all large companies that actually use it have a commercial license for it.

Besides, Mongo quite explicitly restricts the AGPL range: "To say this another way: if you modify the core database source code, the goal is that you have to contribute those modifications back to the community". I was assured by our lawyer that this interpretation is not necessarily the intent of the AGPL license and can't be applied to other projects.

I actually don't mind a good LGPL-like cloud license (A-LGPL?) that has a strictly limited scope of what's considered a derived work. And better legal implementation.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 8, 2017 23:47 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Maybe like the MPL?

"If you modify MPL code you must release your changes. If you keep your code as separate modules then they are not covered by the MPL." Okay, that's my paraphrase but that's pretty much how the MPL works.

Cheers,
Wol

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 9, 2017 1:01 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (6 responses)

Cy, when did you start peddling falsehoods on LWN?

Large companies who buy support get management tools and help. The database itself really is free, and Free, in every sense, but it's the nature of databases used for Important Things to need competent management, which never comes cheap.

Everything the management tools do could be done by hand, or with custom scripts, but it doesn't take long for a large company to discover that that is the more expensive course.

Resolutely getting back on topic, the Affero license and a really-truly free database substrate has demonstratedly done MongoDB no harm. Look elsewhere for explanations.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 9, 2017 5:50 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (5 responses)

Ok, let me quickly recap what several lawyers told me.

First, enterprise MongoDB has a special commercial license for the DATABASE itself. Not just for additional tools. Consequently, contributing to MongoDB requires copyright assignment to Mongo ( https://www.mongodb.com/legal/contributor-agreement ).

Next, let's talk about AGPL. It poorly defines what "derived works" actually are, just as regular GPL licenses. However, there are some guidelines (including from the FSF itself). In particular, if a program uses internal structures of another system, is tightly bound to it and works in the same address space then it's pretty certain that it's a derived work and GPL applies.

In case of MongoDB most real databases will have views, map/reduce queries and other code that fit these conditions perfectly. So their code can be considered a derived work of Mongo and will have to be disclosed as per AGPL if its output is used (for example) to render HTML pages.

This is clearly insane. So MongoDB has a public interpretation of the license that excludes normal database users from AGPL's reach. But they are free to rescind this interpretation at any moment - it won't be retroactive but any code running within future MongoDB versions won't be protected from AGPL.

And before people start telling that "but Mongo queries are just like C code being processed by GCC" - they are not. They are more comparable with GCC plugins and FSF's opinion is that they must be GPL.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 10, 2017 15:40 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> This is clearly insane. So MongoDB has a public interpretation of the license that excludes normal database users from AGPL's reach. But they are free to rescind this interpretation at any moment - it won't be retroactive but any code running within future MongoDB versions won't be protected from AGPL.

Are they free? (I don't have a clue.) Or does the copyright assignment have clauses (like the FSF do) preventing the closure of the code?

The FSF can't close any code they've been given the copyright to, because part of the copyright transfer forbids it.

Cheers,
Wol

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 10, 2017 18:15 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> Are they free? (I don't have a clue.) Or does the copyright assignment have clauses (like the FSF do) preventing the closure of the code?
MongoDB's CLA gives Mongo unconditional rights to do anything they want with contributions.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 13, 2017 7:56 UTC (Mon) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (2 responses)

Getting code into Mongo's github would take a copyright assignment, as with FSF. (And you would need to persuade them to pull it, likely not an easy task.) But, just as with FSF, you are free to fork the source and distribute it with your own code. People do, e.g. RockDB. So, Free. If they change the license, you still have your code and your fork.

Enterprise customers do get a different license that gives them access to extra stuff they want. But none of that is necessary to use or to change and redistribute the code. As you note, Mongo specifically disclaim ownership of your "views" etc. So, what is not Free? That you can't take it proprietary, as you can with PosgreSQL? How are they different, in that way, from Red Hat?

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 13, 2017 8:28 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

No, it's not. Any code that is dual-licensed under a proprietary license is not free. It's merely shareware.

And I can't even find what RockDB is...

Fun fact, Mongo's license disclaimer actually can NOT be legally applied by their downstream forks.

Affero not harmful

Posted Feb 14, 2017 10:57 UTC (Tue) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]

If it's RocksDB, then I think it's a fork of LevelDB.
(I just recently had a dive into these kind of databases)
Those are key-values DB AFAIK (while mongodb is a document database).