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Are Large Cloud Providers a Threat To Open Source Vendors? (redmonk.com)
Stephen O'Grady, co-founder of the industry analyst firm RedMonk, asks whether open source vendors are marching towards an inevitable and damaging war with big cloud providers:
In the last twelve to eighteen months...a switch has been flipped. Companies have gone from regarding cloud providers like Amazon, Google or Microsoft as not even worth mentioning as competition to dreadful, existential threat. The fear of these cloud providers has become so overpowering, in fact, that commercial open source vendors have chosen -- against counsel, in many cases -- to walk down strategic paths that violate open source cultural norms, trigger massive and sustained negative PR and jeopardize relationships with developers, partners and customers. Specifically, commercial open source providers have increasingly turned to models that blur the lines between open source and proprietary software in an attempt to access the strengths of both, with the higher probability outcome of ending up with their weaknesses instead.
That commercial open source providers took these actions having been advised of these and other risks in advance says everything about how these businesses view their prospects in a world increasingly dominated by massive providers of cloud infrastructure and an expanding array of services that sit on top of that. The strategic decisions inarguably have major, unavoidable negative consequences, but commercial open source providers -- or their investors, at least -- believe that a lack of action would be even more damaging.
That commercial open source providers took these actions having been advised of these and other risks in advance says everything about how these businesses view their prospects in a world increasingly dominated by massive providers of cloud infrastructure and an expanding array of services that sit on top of that. The strategic decisions inarguably have major, unavoidable negative consequences, but commercial open source providers -- or their investors, at least -- believe that a lack of action would be even more damaging.
Unlike GPLv2, GPLv3 is explicitly compatible with AGPLv3. This means that a program is allowed to include both GPLv3 and AGPLv3 components, and if so, it must offer complete corresponding source code to users who interact with the program over a computer network even if the program itself is not distributed to the public. Oracle has changed the license of new versions of Oracle Berkeley DB to AGPLv3 in order to forbid its use in any program with a proprietary component. This allows Oracle to charge for exceptions.