[License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 2 (SSPL v2)

[Nigel T]

Wow, did MongoDB become the new Microsoft without me noticing?

It’s just a license that the community will adopt or not even if approved by the OSI.  And if their licensing actions are judged harshly by the developer community then someone will fork the prior version.

/shrug

Given that they have sunk millions into R&D the probability that a forked variant can overtake theirs strikes me as remote if their level of investment continues.

And “for-profit” is not the pejorative you think it is for many devs even in FOSS...much less most MongoDB users.  Especially in 2018 when RedHat will be acquired by IBM for $34 billion...and had $2.9B in revenue in 2017.

MongoDB is still showing a loss despite the increase in revenue in FY19 so my assumption is that Atlas needs to be a home run and they can’t afford other for-profit companies to be direct competitors using their own product.  The need is existential so my assumption is they felt they had to push ahead and not wait for “years of trust building”.  Not when they projected a net operating loss of $84M for FY19.

Whether the new license is open source is not is debatable but I certainly understand why they didn’t wait “years”.

Sorry to pollute this thread with talk of lucre but just because a license steward is for-profit isn’t any reason to believe they always have super nefarious intentions. 

> On Nov 21, 2018, at 7:50 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn at ebb.org> wrote:
> 
> Eliot Horowitz of MongoDB wrote:
>>   Below is an updated version of the Server Side Public License, which we
>>   are submitting for review in lieu of version 1.0.
> 
> My confidence in MongoDB (the for-profit license steward of the SS Public
> License) is now completely gone.  Given this most recent political stunt, we
> should all demand years of trust-building before we take MongoDB seriously as
> a FLOSS license steward (a role they've pursued for only a month anyway).
> 
> Let's recap: The SS Public License version 1.0 was put into production
> without any public discussion (nor even private discussion with any license
> evaluation authority), only to be shown to have serious drafting and policy
> flaws.  Now, after just 35 days of its existence, and having been put into
> immediate active use for a key project for those same 35 days, the SS Public
> License v1 has already been declared deprecated by its license steward.  Yet,
> after all that, MongoDB has *still* not engaged in a public collaborative
> process of licensing drafting [0], but instead simply threw a substantially
> modified version of the SS Public License over the wall again to "see if this
> one sticks" instead.
> 
> Such a situation, of course, would have been an irrecoverable disaster for
> any normal inbound=outbound FLOSS project.  The only reason the situation
> *might* be salvageable here is that MongoDB is completely opposed to putting
> themselves on equal footing with their users; they refuse to even be bound by
> the terms of the SS Public License themselves.  But that itself points at
> another vector of deep flaws that should lead us to conclude the situation
> with MongoDB and their unilateral licensing changes is likely hopeless.
> 
> I renew my call for an outright rejection of the SS Public License by OSI on
> procedural grounds.  OSI should ask for MongoDB to allow for time -- which
> should be counted in years, not days -- for license vetting by the broader
> FLOSS community, of which license-review is just a tiny subset.
> 
>  * * *
> 
> As an undergraduate in the early 1990s, one evening I was complaining to my
> roommate, Michael Tietjen, about the inefficiency of legislative bodies like
> the US Congress -- arguing that so much time was wasted while nothing was
> accomplished.  Tietjen countered with an excellent argument which immediately
> convinced me to change my position: no one should live in a society where
> the laws can change overnight; laws should be reasonably predictable by the
> populace to plan their lives.  Changes in laws need time to propagate before
> promulgation, so they're well understood before they are enacted.
> 
> FLOSS licenses often serve as the de-facto laws of our community.  Licensing
> changes to projects should be planned, discussed by all stakeholders as
> equals, and have ample time to gestate.  MongoDB has done the opposite here:
> whipsawing changes to actual legal terms of an actual project faster than the
> community can effectively digest them and plan.  After doing so twice, MongoDB
> twice came asking OSI for a fast, post-hoc rubber stamp.  We've already
> collectively given MongoDB too much of our valuable time on their preferred
> schedule.  We shouldn't adhere to their unreasonable schedule anymore.
> 
> MongoDB, if you want to regain at least some of the credibility you've lost,
> please do the right thing and withdraw your submission to license-review, and
> come back in one year with a license draft that's had the bare minimum of time
> to develop, grow, and receive adequate feedback from the broader FOSS community.
> 
> 
> [1] It's been made clear by OSI officers that license-review is *not* a place
>    designed for license drafting work, but rather is for evaluation of
>    licenses that have already been through a thorough drafting process.
> 
> --
> Bradley M. Kuhn
> 
> Pls. support the charity where I work, Software Freedom Conservancy:
> https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
> 
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