Making the GPL more scary [LWN.net]

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 18, 2018 17:09 UTC (Thu) by xorbe (guest, #3165)
Parent article: Making the GPL more scary

Since the goal is that service providers won't offer their "derivative" works for download, basically this is now proprietary software with the source code upfront for evaluation. The point is that you can't use it without paying money, in any sort of fashion that might involve making money. It's only free to read the source code. I can't see distros including this without cash back-scratching. So when I see a distro pick this up, I'll have an assumption of what's going on behind the scenes.

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Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 19, 2018 6:36 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

I thought the intent was to get rid of people offering mongo as a service, instead of building services using mongo.

Most mongo users probably want to build something else, and presumably wouldn't mind this intent for practical reasons. However, the specific wording of the license and its impliciations are quite a bit messier than this intent.

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 19, 2018 13:41 UTC (Fri) by WolfWings (subscriber, #56790) [Link]

Regardless of their intent this license change makes it impossible to use Mongo in any way in any environment which is for-pay without releasing the ENTIRE service up-and-downstream that so much as touches Mongo, without paying MongoDB for a commercial license at whatever terms they decide to dictate, which from what documentation I've been able to find starts at $12k per server per year. And this license could even apply to an ad-revenue-funded site or a webcomic site that happens to use MongoDB as a caching or back-end layer at some point if access is gated on, say, being a patron in their Patreon. Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla all support MongoDB in various ways, and various Magento plugins also interface with MongoDB, all of the above often for search functionality.