Comment by robertlagrant

4 years ago

> DigitalOcean, for example, proudly advertises managed MongoDB as a service: https://www.digitalocean.com/products/managed-databases-mong...

> And yet, to the best of my understanding, the entirety of the DigitalOcean platform isn't open source (even though many projects are): https://github.com/orgs/digitalocean/repositories

I don't think it's required to open source everything, only the bits that provide the MongoDB service. I don't know if they've done that.

Also, the SSPL seems to be a little controversial [1] as it appears to want to relicence all software it's running near under itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License

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robertlagrant

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KronisLV  4 years ago

> I don't think it's required to open source everything, only the bits that provide the MongoDB service. I don't know if they've done that.

Yes, that's my exact point - these things are sometimes full of finer points. I don't doubt that DigitalOcean have talked with MongoDB and have probably figured out some sort of a deal, or another way to offer it as a service (someone mentioned them using the enterprise version, where the terms are probably different).

Though offering MongoDB as a service for a small no-name company all of the sudden seems impossible, unless they actually want to open soruce lots of their own code.

> Also, the SSPL seems to be a little controversial [1] as it appears to want to relicence all software it's running near under itself.

Of course, there was backlash to it even existing, much like larger companies didn't really like AGPL being a thing either.

Then again, I guess one could argue that MongoDB definitely can create such a license, as a reaction against cloud platforms utilizing their solution: https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/mongodb-now-released-under...

  This should be a time of incredible opportunity for open source. The revenue generated by a service can be a great source of funding for open source projects, far greater than what has historically been available. The reality, however, is that once an open source project becomes interesting, it is too easy for large cloud vendors to capture most of the value while contributing little or nothing back to the community. As a result, smaller companies are understandably unwilling to wager their existence against the strategic interests of the large cloud vendors, and most new software is being written as closed source.

I don't really have a horse in that race, though in theory such a license would be good for the open source community, whilst its effects on larger cloud vendors are also pretty much clear. Of course, there is a lot of controversy around it and it's not considered "open source" at all by many.

  • robertlagrant  4 years ago

    It's a tricky problem one can only have when one chooses to give one's work away with zero strings attached :)

    • KronisLV  4 years ago

      That is probably true, when you live in a society where you probably still want some money for your work.

      The greater implications of that might have something to do with how we get articles like "Software below the poverty line": https://staltz.com/software-below-the-poverty-line.html

      Or maybe the revelations about how "well" supported the people who maintained Log4j were from the open source community: https://words.filippo.io/professional-maintainers/

        Earlier this week, a severe RCE in a logging library called Log4j2 got everyone, from Apple to Minecraft. As of yesterday, the maintainer who patched the vulnerability had three sponsors on GitHub: Michael, Glenn, and Matt.

      That's why it's hard to be angry with companies and people trying to get paid for their work, supported by various software licenses in one way or another. I do still mostly support open source in spirit, though doing that with my wallet on OpenCollective (or GitHub Sponsors or whatever) is also a good thing to do.

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