License change in Tech; The good, the bad, and the ugly
I planted a vine in the garden in front of my house a while back and have been enjoying its fruits for the past couple of years. I enjoyed the fruit so much, I had to share this blessing with my neighbors, and without any hesitation, invited them to come eat from my vine to their hearts desire. And so they did.
One time I noticed a lot of fruit was taken overnight. This was unusual, as the neighbours always came by to say hello when they wanted some fruit. Without much thought, I left for work, but on the way out, I noticed a stand selling grapes. Low and behold, I noticed those grapes were mine, and the person selling it was one of my neighbours’ kid.
This in essence is the cause of license change in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
Why you should care?
I think it is important to understand why this is happening, for several reasons. This is a profound change in the Open source community which is not trivial. A change like this needs to be understood more deeply so we may learn from this event.
Furthermore, we need to understand what the implications and ramifications are for us, developers and architects, and many more in the tech industry. Which product can we now use in which way? Will we now have to pay a price for using FOSS, or did the open source community just make sure we will never have to pay a dime?
Can we even say FOSS anymore?
The good, the bad, and the ugly
This change has many elements to it. Some good, some bad, and others even ugly. Let me try and explain what, in my opinion, makes this a change which will have a lasting impact on the way we view use FOSS.
The Good: Stop the Exploitation
Yes, this is right. This is how it has to be. Imagine how I felt when I saw this neighbours’ kid selling my grapes. I am 100% certain this kid did not mean any harm or had any malicious intent intentionally, yet it was wrong on multiple levels.
For starters, it is sheer taking advantage of other people’s work without compensation. And yes, this community built this software so that many may use and enjoy it, but selling it as a service is the definition of exploitation. It’s even worse when you are competing with said community for paying customers.
Definition of exploit: To make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage. — Miriam Webster
Changing the license on grounds like this is a necessary move to protect the community and encompassing company to ensure the software’s continued growth, and in essence, the communities influence over the software.
This change applies to ElasticSearch, Redis, MongoDB and others that have moved to adopt the Server Side Public License (SSPL).
It might be best described in their own words e.g. as Redis has stated: “This licensing change does not impact developers who continue to build on our source-available Community Edition… Organizations, including MSP’s, providing competitive offerings to Redis will no longer be permitted to use new versions and associated updates …” (What Redis’ License Change Means for Our Managed Service Providers)
The Bad: You might have to pay for it
It starts turning bad when the license change is opting for more than just a basic non-compete agreement of the software itself. An example of this would be the use case of HashiCorp’s TerraForm.
HashiCorp changed the License of TerraForm from the Mozilla Public License v2.0 (MPL 2.0) to the Business Source License BSLv1.1. It is not a new license, although it is not what we would consider an “open source license”, but that is not a problem.
The problem is that this license by default prohibits production use of the software to build a product that is competitive to the company creating this software. While there are some companies using this product and allowing for their product to be used commercially, HashiCorp in regards to TerraForm hasn’t.
The motivation for the change from an open source license to the BUSL in the case of HashiCorp is explained thus: Organizations providing competitive offerings to HashiCorp will no longer be permitted to use the community edition products free of charge under our BUSL license. Commercial licensing terms are available and can enable use cases beyond the BUSL limitations.
You could argue that this is just a bit more aggressive than the SSPL license to prevent exploitation, which it is, and I could even relate to that. The problem with this is that where and how do you define “competitive offerings”? What if you have a certain offering and want to expand, but now you are in the “twilight zone”? The main issue with this license is that there is too much of a gray area and too much legal considerations making it problematic to use.
In the long run, companies will try and avoid using TerraForm in its stack, to avoid cost and legal repercussions they might face. This will lead the software to become a paid service, which is what they are opting for in my opinion anyhow within a couple of years. This reminds me of Oracle’s Java and their license change back in 2019.
Interestingly enough, this might opt for a resurgence of open-source competition for TerraForm, just like in the case of Java. We already have OpenTofu which is spearheading this effort, and I am sure more will come
The Ugly: Start paying, it’s mine
It gets ugly when you are forced to pay or kicked out if not. Examples of this change are Benthos, and, as mentioned before, Java. Pay, or Leave!
In the case of Java, Oracle changed the license, which had some limitations already before, to a license which prohibited the use of Oracle Java in Production if not paying for a license. This was a huge change since this was allowed under certain restrictions before. To be fair, Oracle is the main contributor to OpenJDK, the truly open-source version of Java, so you had an option. But moving to OpenJDK was not trivial in many cases, so it was a hassle nonetheless.
In the case of Benthos, Redpanda acquired Benthos and immediately made sweeping changes to the project: commercially licensing some of the most important integrations, redirecting all Benthos sites to Redpanda sites, and rebranding the Discord community to Redpanda. Benthos is now a commercial product, pay, or leave.
Here too, we might see a resurgence of open-source competition for products that undergo this change. Java has many competitors and open-source alternatives. Benthos’ change is still new, but the git has been forked, and Bento has been born, the open-source alternative to the now-commercial Benthos.
Conclusion
It all comes down to a few exploiters causing havoc for the rest of us. I’d like to think that if big corporations such as AWS, Google, and Azure to name but a few, would not have exploited the open-source community, this might not have happened. Or maybe I am just dreaming of a socialist Utopia where we all get along (yikes!!)
I believe the move to the SSPL license is for the good of everybody, while the change to BUSL or commercial is bad. One will protect open-source software and companies, while the other will take open-source software away from us.
My main hope is that huge corporations will not be able to offer any/all open-source software on their platform, and thus breaking that polarisation, if not monopoly. It might open up possibilities for other companies to offer their services, which will make way for a more competitive capitalist marketplace in which prices are lowered and we, the end users, will benefit the most.
