open source
The idea behind open source is you throw your project out into the open, source code (how it is made) and all. If someone wants to change your code…great, make additions, make it better, but you have to a) give the open source project credit” and if you are going to distribute it then you have to distribute it under the same license which then means you need to make your code changes public. In essence contribute back to the project and make it better.
Open source has been trying to deal with the cloud providers use of their software.Typically if a company was going to use your source code and sell it, they had to contribute to the project and help it get better. This ran into a snag because the Cloud providers were just seling the service, not the program so in essence they had a run around the standard GPL license. They weren’t contributing back to the original project. There have been a few different attempts to change some of the common open source licenses such as AGPL, the SSPL (what mongodb did), and BSD (what redis did). All are a response in one way or another the cloud loophole in old open source licenses. Some for code, some for money.
To my knowledge none of these have been tested in court and ultimately you have some HUGE pockets on the cloud side, and a bunch of smaller pockets on the open source side. There are many in the open source community who view these new licenses as overly restrictive and against the spirit of “open source”.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-redis-labs-made-a-h…
A few points about amazon’s announcement.
Emulating the mdb protocol at version 3.7’s, not the database itself. They are probably running postgres behind the scenes.
99% compatibility
6 months free to transfer your data over
My Take
I see amazon’s move into mongo’s territory as a, “oh hell” moment that could be a major issue for MDB’s future growth. Amazon has shown their willingness to burn money to bury competition in the past. There is no reason to think they won’t do the same thing here.
My worries
1)All the young programmers that are familiar with mongodb can now “easily” use amazon to take care of most of their needs.
2) amazon will get better with time.
3) 6 months free is a pretty good incentive to try it out
4) This isn’t going to be settled quickly
5) Mongo is already burning money, this could make them burn more to try and maintain growth rates.
Anyways, take my opinion with a grain of salt. I’m not an industry expert merely an interested casual observer for the last 20 years. I’d love to hear alternate views, I’ve reduced my MDB position by ? even though I don’t think this will affect MDB for at least another quarter.
Best,
Ethan