I'm not sure I really understand their reasons to not adopt GPL, but I do understand, why they relicense it at all. Bad behaviour from tech giants hurts everyone.
I'm not sure I really understand their reasons to not adopt GPL, but I do understand, why they relicense it at all. Bad behaviour from tech giants hurts everyone.
GPL (and even AGPL) doesn't address this, it's only concerned with making sure that companies keep the source code open and doesn't prevent companies from selling the software or anything like...
GPL (and even AGPL) doesn't address this, it's only concerned with making sure that companies keep the source code open and doesn't prevent companies from selling the software or anything like that. I can take any GPL-licensed software and sell it if I want, I just have to provide the source code as well. It's unlikely that anyone would buy it, but I'm allowed to sell it.
The concern is that companies like Amazon are offering hosted versions of their software as part of their business, but none of the revenue from those services makes it back down to Cockroach Labs or the various other companies even though they're doing all the work of developing and maintaining the software that makes people want to pay Amazon for it in the first place. One of the ways that open-source software companies used to make money was offering hosting/maintenance services, but now they can't compete with Amazon's offerings, so that whole method of revenue-generation is basically dead.
Is it bad behaviour though? Clearly it feels unfair that SAAS providers should be the only ones to profit from an open source project, but they are adding value and bringing the project to a wider...
Is it bad behaviour though? Clearly it feels unfair that SAAS providers should be the only ones to profit from an open source project, but they are adding value and bringing the project to a wider user base.
I think the problem with the GPL is that it doesn't really solve this problem - even if a SAAS provider contributes back all their improvements, they are still in an inherently more powerful position than the project. I suppose you can think of this licensing as a kind of revenue sharing agreement, but only with the top 1% of their customers. Basically an open source tax.
I'm not sure I really understand their reasons to not adopt GPL, but I do understand, why they relicense it at all. Bad behaviour from tech giants hurts everyone.
GPL (and even AGPL) doesn't address this, it's only concerned with making sure that companies keep the source code open and doesn't prevent companies from selling the software or anything like that. I can take any GPL-licensed software and sell it if I want, I just have to provide the source code as well. It's unlikely that anyone would buy it, but I'm allowed to sell it.
The concern is that companies like Amazon are offering hosted versions of their software as part of their business, but none of the revenue from those services makes it back down to Cockroach Labs or the various other companies even though they're doing all the work of developing and maintaining the software that makes people want to pay Amazon for it in the first place. One of the ways that open-source software companies used to make money was offering hosting/maintenance services, but now they can't compete with Amazon's offerings, so that whole method of revenue-generation is basically dead.
Is it bad behaviour though? Clearly it feels unfair that SAAS providers should be the only ones to profit from an open source project, but they are adding value and bringing the project to a wider user base.
I think the problem with the GPL is that it doesn't really solve this problem - even if a SAAS provider contributes back all their improvements, they are still in an inherently more powerful position than the project. I suppose you can think of this licensing as a kind of revenue sharing agreement, but only with the top 1% of their customers. Basically an open source tax.