2 years ago

Almost four years ago https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/mongodb-switches-up-its-open-source-license/ (SSPL) and started releasing https://www.mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/?utm_content=inline-mention server software under this non-OSI approved proprietary (Source Available) license instead of the AGPL v3 it used previously. As a founder of Percona, which provides enterprise support for open source software, I’m not a big fan of SSPL (check out “https://www.percona.com/blog/2020/06/16/why-is-mongodbs-sspl-bad-for-you/” for more on this topic). In this article, I wanted to see what changes this step leads to in an open source database ecosystem.

https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroachdb/, https://www.timescale.com/blog/building-open-source-business-in-cloud-era-v2/, https://redis.com/legal/licenses/, and https://www.confluent.io/blog/license-changes-confluent-platform/ all changed their license for all or some parts of their platform from open source to source-available.

Let’s be clear: This new kind of proprietary software with a license you can see does provide more freedoms than conventional proprietary software of decades past.