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Red Hat Rejects MongoDB's 'Discriminatory' Server Side Public License (zdnet.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the discriminating-databases? dept.

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: MongoDB is an open-source document NoSQL database with a problem. While very popular, cloud companies, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Scalegrid, and ObjectRocket has profited from it by offering it as a service while MongoDB Inc. hasn't been able to monetize it to the same degree. MongoDB's answer? Relicense the program under its new Server Side Public License (SSPL).

Open-source powerhouse Red Hat's reaction? Drop MongoDB from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. Red Hat's Technical and Community Outreach Program Manager Tom Callaway explained, in a note stating MongoDB is being removed from Fedora Linux, that "It is the belief of Fedora that the SSPL is intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory towards a specific class of users." Debian Linux had already dropped MongoDB from its distribution....

The business point behind MongoDB's license change is to force cloud companies to use one of MongoDB's commercial cloud offerings. This hasn't worked either. AWS just launched DocumentDB, a database, which "is designed to be compatible with your existing MongoDB applications and tools," wrote AWS evangelist Jeff Barr.

6 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Open source monetization by stikves · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There has been more discussions about monetization of open source projects. While coding as a hobby and helping projects as a philanthropy work is very good, long term stable projects need continuous funding.

    This has worked for RedHat and other enterprise oriented companies with their support contract offerings. It also worked nice for existing companies -- including even Microsoft -- which uses open source partially. However if you only have a single offering, like MongoDB the situation was not as clear.

    And it is not AWS's fault that they don't want to pay per-seat licensing fees: https://www.techrepublic.com/a...

    1. Re:Open source monetization by lsllll · · Score: 4, Funny

      When I read the start of your comment, "Emacs", I thought you were offering an obvious alternative to MongoDB!

      --
      Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
  2. This is why we need diversity in open source. by xack · · Score: 4, Funny

    So one vendor can't make an "evil" license with vendor lock-in. I expect systemD and chromium will be the next projects to do something like this. And before you say fork, i say spoon.

  3. Both parties made a good point. All fine now. by ffkom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So MongoDB Inc. says they want to have money from companies that host sell the service of of hosting their database for others, and those companies say "thanks, but no thanks, we'll rather use a different database, then".

    That's a very simple decision both parties have the right to take, and it's all good now.

    I remember when the company I work for had to decide whether to use RHEL or another Linux distribution, and since we deemed RHEL way too expensive for the little added value they offer, we went on to use CentOS (on thousands of machines). That was a similar situation where seller and potential buyer concluded their respective valuations were just too different for a deal.

  4. Re:ScyllaDB's CEO has the best take on it by Desler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AWS is not breaking any rules here, but folks need to seriously look at it from a long term sustainability model and not necessarily go with AWS.

    So they are not violating the license at all, but AWS is bad because reasons? It's not the fault of AWS that the Mongo people have no way to make money off their product. If Mongo needed money they shouldn't have released it under the very free software terms that allowed AWS to use so freely.

    Seems they should have released the product product under a proprietary license if they wanted to exert all this control. But by doing that Mongo would have lost all the phoney marketing about how they are this great open source company.

  5. Re:Red Hat was bought by IBM by Desler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Then MongoDB should have been charging from the beginning if they wanted to be paid. Also, you can get RHEL essentially free with CentOS just without any support.

    So again, MongoDB should have used a proprietary license from the get go instead of using a GPL license where one of the terms of that "free software" license is:

    Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.

    MongoDB doesn't just get to ride the coattails of free software when they like but when people use the software in full compliance to both the spirit and letter of the license then start complaining.