So losing open source could…
The definition of Open Source is not like a law of physics. For some people SSPL is Open Source enough. The market reaction to RedHat has been very muted. Either Mr. Market doesn’t get it or it’s just FUD. I added to my position because I think it’s FUD.
Denny Schlesinger
I see SSPL to be in the spirit of Open Source only (after all it just makes AGPL more explicit) and it makes sense for Mongo to do SSPL. But it is the OSI that determines if SSPL Ver 2 is open source (they rejected Ver 1). If they determine No then it is bad PR for Mongo. This may crimp future growth but not so much short term rev (Doc db may impact that more). It is funny that no one (incl. me) even cared when about their loss of open source status until now.
Anyway, I am holding MDB. I thought the Needham call was great and actually added at 78 - a touch too early I see. Before adding more though I am going to wait and see what mgmt says about the impact of a possible “No” determination from OSI. Mr. Horowitz is clearly trying hard to avoid that.
https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license…
I think you are right BenDubya … for the casual developer there are two key elements … is it interesting and is it free. Some might care about being able to contribute back, but far from all. Most just want to explore. That sort of developer is unlikely to be thinking about commercial deployment unless that is why they are fiddling and if so, they should be thinking about licensing in any case.
This is a very bad sign, IMO. There is TONS of embedded Mongo out there. Splunk, Alteryx and many others all have Mongo embedded in their products. If they now all follow suit and move away from Mongo because of this new license, that’s bad for Mongo’s reputation and market/mindshare (even if they don’t make any money off of these products today). Worse, these kinds of moves are going to really fire up a search for a Mongo replacement that is still truly open source (GPL). Someone will most definitely step into that void, which means Mongo’s competition is effectively being strengthened and given a lifeline as we speak because of this new license.
So, I read the license FAQ. My interpretation of it in layman’s terms is that they want to get paid for its use in these formerly embedded distributions, just like the vendors are. Red Hat, Debian, Alteryx, Splunk et al were getting paid for their products which include Mongo’s commercially available product, but Mongo got nothing. The SSPL insists that those vendors make every part of their software open source because it includes open source components like Mongo. No surprise they’d decline that opportunity to open their kimonos OR pay a % to Mongo.
Doesn’t seem to be different than classic database-dependent platform licensing (you use an Oracle or SQLServer database, you pay Oracle or MS directly & separately). Could be a threat to Mongo because companies are cheap, but depends on use cases.
FC admitting this is firm grasp of the obvious, potentially
with a 2 days hindsight, this news did not appear to affect MDB much as it is bouncing back. It may drop back down tomorrow I just don’t know.
I may be wiser if I were to reply to this comment 1 year or 2 or more later. Then I could say that was indeed insignificant in the broader view of it, or it was not… but without that much time I think we cannot really say anything about the impact of this one event and/or how it fits in the broader evolution of this business.
tj