MongoDB is a
bit miffed that some cloud providers — especially in Asia — are taking its
open-source code and offering a hosted commercial version of its database to
their users without playing by the open-source rules.
To combat this, MongoDB
today announced it has issued a new software license, the Server Side Public
License (SSPL), that will apply to all new releases of its MongoDB Community Server,
as well as all patch fixes for prior versions.
Previously,
MongoDB used the GNU AGPLv3 license, but it has now submitted the SSPL for
approval from the Open Source Initiative.
For
virtually all regular users who are currently using the community server,
nothing changes because the changes to the license don’t apply to them.
Instead, this is about what MongoDB sees as the misuse of the AGPLv3 license.
“MongoDB was previously licensed under the GNU AGPLv3, which meant companies
who wanted to run MongoDB as a publicly available service had to open source
their software or obtain a commercial license from MongoDB,” the company
explains. “However, MongoDB’s popularity has led some organizations to test the
boundaries of the GNU AGPLv3.”
So while the
SSPL isn’t all that different from the GNU GPLv3, with all the usual freedoms
to use, modify and redistribute the code (and virtually the same language), the
SSPL explicitly states that anybody who wants to offer MongoDB as a service —
or really any other software that uses this license — needs to either get a
commercial license or open source the service to give back the community.
“The market
is increasingly consuming software as a service, creating an incredible
opportunity to foster a new wave of great open source server-side software.
Unfortunately, once an open source project becomes interesting, it is too easy
for cloud vendors who have not developed the software to capture all of the
value but contribute nothing back to the community,” said Eliot Horowitz, the
CTO and co-founder of MongoDB, in a statement. “We have greatly contributed to
— and benefited from — open source and we are in a unique position to lead on
an issue impacting many organizations. We hope this will help inspire more
projects and protect open source innovation.”
I’m sure
this move will ruffle some feathers. It’s hard to discuss open-source licenses
without getting religious about what this movement is all about. And because
MongoDB is the commercial entity behind the software and manages outside
contributions to the code, it does have a stronger grip on the actual code than
other projects that are managed by a large open-source foundation, for example.
For some, that alone is anathema to everything they think open source should stand
for. For others, it’s simply a pragmatic way to develop software. Either way,
though, this will kick off a discussion about how companies like MongoDB manage
their open-source projects and how much control they can exert over how their
code is used. I, for one, can’t wait to read the discussions on Hacker News
today.
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