Making the GPL more scary [LWN.net]

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 19, 2018 2:37 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
Parent article: Making the GPL more scary

I think it is most telling that MongoDB Atlas is proprietary, a competitor to the kinds of companies the SSPL is aimed at and since MongoDB Inc is sole copyright holder of MongoDB, they are not obliged to release MongoDB Atlas code publicly, let alone under the SSPL or one of the licenses compatible with the FSD/OSD/DFSG.

It seems very disingenuous of MongoDB Inc to release MongoDB under the SSPL without also releasing MongoDB Atlas.

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Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 21, 2018 18:32 UTC (Sun) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (1 responses)

Great point, this should be a bigger point in the discussion. Here is the contradiction in their own words:

https://www.mongodb.com/community/licensing:

"Our goal in selecting the Server Side Public License (SSPL) v1.0, an open source license introduced by MongoDB, as our open source license is to require that enhancements to MongoDB be released to the community."

https://www.mongodb.com/cloud-terms-and-conditions:

"You may not: (a) modify, alter, tamper with, repair, or otherwise create derivative works of any software included in the Service; (b) reverse engineer, disassemble, or decompile the Services or apply any other process or procedure to derive the source code of any software included in the Service"

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 21, 2018 19:30 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't see a contradiction. One is the terms of the license. Other is the terms of the hosted service.