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But I think some of the criticism that I see online about MongoDB's SSPL and other companies is that these open source companies are motivated by business, and therefore they are somehow being morally challenged... But I feel like those same people then turn around and say "Amazon is completely okay with doing these ki... |
Sometimes I just wonder how many open source infrastructure software has Amazon created and launched in open source. When do we expect to see DynamoDB coming out in open source, so someone else can build a business, like Amazon has done with DynamoDB? That'll be a great day for open source, if Amazon does that. But I d... |
So in fact I would say it's recommended for open source companies to make sure that they are able to build a successful business, just like Amazon is building, just like everybody else is building... And so the motivation to make money out of inventions is completely justified, on (I would say) moral grounds. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, there's a concern too, at least based upon Shay's blog post on Elastic saying that Amazon and AWS wasn't putting back into the open source bucket, so to speak... So from two avenues - one, the perspective you've just shared, which is DynamoDB for example isn't open source, and that's not part ... |
But then you can sort of draw some sentiment from just simply the titles of their blog post on the AWS open source blog, back in 2019, from Adrian Cockcroft, "Keeping open source open - Open distro for Elasticsearch", which is something you mentioned. And then the second one is the more recent around Elasticsearch, whi... |
**Manish R Jain:** It is questionable, isn't it? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It is kind of questionable. |
**Manish R Jain:** And you know, if you look at SSPL, the server-side public license from MongoDB, I'm actually still a bit baffled that it's not approved by OSI... Because it to me is a fork of \[unintelligible 00:48:23.03\] GPL, just like AGPL is, which also makes GPL a bit more permissive; if you look at AGPL, it al... |
So it's more permissive than a GPL. I think it has all that matters, I feel, in my opinion, to be open source-approved. And in a world where SSPL gets open source approval, I don't think we have any problem here. Then everybody has already sort of like gathered around SSPL, which we could not do around the Commons Clau... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. There's some details around that. We had a conversation with Heather Meeker on this exact subject, and something she had said - which will be in the same podcast - is if you redlined SSPL versus AGPL, the primary differences that come out is essentially Section 13, which describes if you make ... |
So some of the intention of this show is to demystify some of that stuff and maybe give you a tldr, or tldl (too long, didn't listen). But that essentially is this criteria for getting it passed. You say that the SSPL should be, or could be open source. You're baffled, as you said, that it's not... |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...that it hasn't been approved by them. |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah. And to be honest, I haven't looked at the counter-argument to that. I'm sure there are smart people there on the other side and they have some counter-arguments. But from a slightly distant perspective, without having to go into the intricate details, it seems very similar, and maybe if it was ... |
But I think one thing that we should probably take away from Elastic's stuff is that the holy grail of license here is to -- so if you look at Elastic's license as well, it's divided into two portions. One is the open source part, and the other one is the completely proprietary part. So the proprietary part they're not... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, it restricts cloud service providers from offering -- this is quotes; it's what it says. "It restricts cloud service providers from offering our service as a service." That's in violation of OSD 6. |
**Manish R Jain:** Right. And they are very clear about it's only to third parties. Not for internal usage. So if I am a big company and I need to build a product, I can provide it as a service to my other teams in the company, just not to your users directly. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's a commercial restriction. "Don't compete with me", essentially. |
**Manish R Jain:** Exactly, yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Right. Because you can compete internally, inside your own company, and not make any money from it, but get great usage of the software. But you can't create a competing company against the inventor. |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** This goes back to what you were saying before, the inventor, or the user of the invention. |
**Manish R Jain:** Exactly, yeah. And they can still build a commercial product on it, just not a competing service. But the holy grail would be to offer a single license. That takes away "Hey, this is the proprietary part of the code, and this is the "open source", or similar to open source part of the code." Ideally,... |
And I don't know if you wanted to talk also about BSL, which is MongoDB's license, where they say that the initial code is gonna be proprietary, but after a certain amount of time (3-5 years) it will become open source and it will become Apache 2 (or something liberal), which is what CockroachDB is doing; their open so... |
So all \[unintelligible 00:54:35.27\] we have spent a lot of time and effort into building, and this is our main source of living, right? |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. |
**Manish R Jain:** Just play nicely. Otherwise we have to invent new licenses. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. David Cramer has shared some of his sentiment on that subject, because Sentry was licensed BSD 3, and transitioned to the BSL. And I'm paraphrasing, but what I can recall from that conversation (episode 371, Re-licensing Sentry), was essentially David was saying "I wanna do whatever it takes t... |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah. And actually, if you think about what is happening -- I mean, again, I argue that SSPL is very close to the AGPL or GPL; but SSPL is not open source. So what is actually happening right now is a bunch of open source companies, which truly believe in open source, are having to switch to "non-ope... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah. |
**Manish R Jain:** And the funny thing is they are all talking about the same one player in the market. They're not talking about a Google, or about Microsoft, or anybody else. In fact, in the Elastic blog post I mentioned that they have played very nicely with all the other players in the ecosystem \[unintelligible 00... |
**Jerod Santo:** Much to do about AWS... |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah, exactly. I have no personal thing against it. \[unintelligible 00:56:21.04\]completely fine. And from what I understand, they're not trying to build a Dgraph alternative... But there is something there where if a bunch of companies are talking about the same "curious actor"... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Actor... Yeah, I was gonna say, just call him an actor. |
**Manish R Jain:** Yeah. I don't wanna say a bad actor... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Exactly. |
**Manish R Jain:** ...because we just don't know... But a curious actor... I think there must be something there, right? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do you think then, given what you had just said, that the OSI -- that it's in their best interest for open source to help these businesses that have this concern, have this trouble, to create an open source license that gives them the needs they have, to sort of solve the needs they have, these prob... |
**Jerod Santo:** That's right. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...then you're not open source. |
**Jerod Santo:** You're faux. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** But there's a marketability to saying you're open source. |
**Jerod Santo:** For sure. |
**Manish R Jain:** Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we do open source because it allows -- it's not just a way to have more eyes and make sure that the code is of high quality, and so on and so forth, but there's also... It's a distribution model. It's the way by which you think your software could be consumed by anybody,... |
Also, going back to the initiation of a bunch of these open source companies - it started with one or multiple people who just believed in open source. They just wanted to make things in open source, because they have consumed open source software in their life. When I was in college, I was all into Linux and I was pla... |
So I've created multiple projects, some of which actually are popular, including Dgraph. And then we have Badger, and then we have Ristretto, and they are all open source, because we just believe in it. It's a bit of a pain to have to move away from that, even in theory, just because of this one problem. |
**Jerod Santo:** So Manish - clean slate, start Dgraph over today; same exact software, same business. Pick a license. \[laughter\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I love it. |
**Jerod Santo:** What are you gonna go with? |
**Manish R Jain:** I think SSPL is looking pretty attractive. SSPL is looking pretty attractive right now. And also, just notice one more thing - from 2010 or 2015 the world has changed to be more cloud-first, and on-prem later, than on-prem first and cloud later approach... So if I or somebody else were to build a ser... |
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