Not quite Free and Open Source
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Böck, Hanno
Redis, MongoDB and Confluent have recently announced plans to relicense their software or parts of it under new licenses that restrict their usage by cloud providers. These new licenses violate core ideas of Free and Open Source Software, but these companies go to great lengths to obscure that fact.
 I want to talk about open source and that may confuse you because this is the free software foundation Europe assembly which is about free software but it doesn't matter so much because let's go back to what these terms mean. Free software is usually defined by the four freedoms and this from the free software foundation Europe webpage the freedom to use study, share and improve the software which is what we are used to like for example the digital with a linux color, everyone can download it and use it, we can get the source code and analyze it and we can share it with others and we can change the source code. For open source there is a ten point definition I have not put on all those points because that would be a too long slide but if you actually look at them it says more or less the same and I like to phrase it as free software and open source are basically the same thing they are just different ways of looking at the same thing. The idea here is that the term free software is used by people who want to emphasize use or freedom while open source is more from people who may focus on what kind of businesses you can build around it and kind of the technological aspects but it's really we are talking about the same thing here. And everything that every license that qualifies as a free software license also qualifies as an open source license and vice versa. And sometimes people use the terms for us like for free open source software or free liberal open source software. Now we have a microphone. Yeah so I often like to use those because it's kind of inclusive you're saying like it's this one big thing we're using different terms but it doesn't really matter. There are also like different kinds of free and open source software some licenses have this idea of copy left which says yeah you can change this but if you change it and then give it to someone else they have the same freedoms so you also have to give them the code and there are other licenses that don't require this so you can take this code and then make a proprietary product out of it where you don't have to give away the code. And there are also licenses that don't require you to do anything not even mentioning where you got it from like for example the CC0. And of course they are saying they're not open source or free software for example if you provide code but you're not allowed to change the code that's neither free software nor open source. That's just maybe it's from open code but it's not what we're talking about here. And also software that is not allowed to be used for certain things for example you say you don't like someone and this person is not allowed to use it or you say it's not allowed to use it to certain things. And this is also kind of obvious but these days free and open software is extremely successful and when I make this slide I kind of realize how big of an impact this is and also in how many different areas it is successful like if you look at these logos I mean you probably don't recognize all of them but we have things like operating systems, we have messengers, video players, programming languages, basic libraries, browsers, web servers. All kinds of things where free and open source software is extremely successful. And of course free and open source software has advantages for the user like no one can tell you what you're allowed to do with this software. If you have the technological backgrounds to be able to do it you're allowed to change it and adapt it to your needs and if you're not then you may as well pay someone else to adapt it for you. And it's also, I think that's a very important aspect, it's more resilient to change. So if you have a company developing software and then the company no longer exists or they are no longer interested in the product then it usually just goes away, right? But if it's a free software then other people can pick it up and continue development. And also if, and there I'm getting closer to the issue I mostly want to talk about today, if you use a service that's based on a free software or you buy support from someone then you may have the opportunity to go to someone else who is not restricted to the company who made the software but other people can offer the same service or similar service based on that. Free and open source software can also have advantages for the people who develop it. And one of them, and I think this is extremely important, it has a good reputation for saying something is open source that just sounds good, a lot of people like that. You may have contributions from the community which can be new features but also sometimes just bug reports that help you to make, to find bugs in your software. And also some people will just avoid using your software if it's not free. For example I try to use as much free software as I can and in many cases if I have a choice between free product and non-free product even if it doesn't cost money but if it's, I don't have access to the code I would choose to free. And also if some distribution channels for software don't accept software that is not free, you know, so software for example, Debian they are saying in their distribution all the packages are under the Debian free software guidelines so if you have something that is not under free license then it cannot be called the main Debian distribution. But from a developer perspective there are also things you cannot do. So you cannot control what people do with your software and you cannot control who uses your software and you can sell a software but once you sold it you cannot usually not stop people from getting it for free because the person who sold it can copy it to others and put it on the internet that explicitly allows it to take part of the idea. You can sell support for your software but you cannot stop stopping others from also selling support for your software and they may even sell better support for your software. And you can sell services based on your software but you cannot stop others from doing the same. And sometimes there are people who want to have the good reputation of free software or open source but they don't want to accept these things that they cannot do with it and what shall they do? They can lie, they can say it's open source although it's not or they can cause confusion. And that's where I'm getting to the topic of today. We have to talk about this cloud. So I think that everyone knows that cloud computing is big these days. Companies like AWS or Azure or fully cloud they are very successful, very big, a lot of people use their services. And obviously these cloud providers also provide services based on free open source software. Screenshots and you can see not everything here is open source software but on the left you can see AWS. You can install a WordPress image or PBRN and all these cloud providers provide many services that are based on open source software. And now you can say, yeah, okay, that's kind of normal and kind of expected because, yeah, your software is free. Everyone can use it so AWS of course they can use it and they can offer you to use it on their service. Why not? But some people seem to think otherwise. Here's an article on TechCrunch which has the title Decrucate Against Open Source Aduse. This guy thinks that this is abuse when a cloud provider uses every software. And lately we had some instances where companies were changing their licenses to protect them from this abuse from cloud providers. The first thing that came up was the so-called comments clause which is an extension to other licenses. So you have the license, I don't know, actually two was typically a stumble and then you add this additional clause. And this is relatively short. With alternating other conditions in the license, the grant of rights under the license will not include it. The license does not grant you the right to sell the software. So you're restricted in what you can do with this and they expand a bit on it and basically what they're trying to say is AWS and Google and all this cloud providers, they're not selling services without software. And this kind of became big when Redis announced that they would adopt this comments clause. Their first announcement was a bit unclear so people thought Redis would use that new license condition which was not the case. But I was not so sorry for them because it was kind of their own fault that their communication was very confusing. Redis itself, at least they say, will stay under the US license. But they're using some modules, they re-license under this new license. Then there was this new license called Server-side Public License. The question was, Redis? Redis is a no-SQL database so it's... I'm not sure. I don't use these things. I heard this is like when you want to use a database but you don't want to learn SQL. But a lot of people use it. The next example was MongoDB, they used something called the Server-side Public License. This was a bit more interesting. They came to this open source license and they asked the open source initiative to adopt it. They wrote this open source definition and they have lists of licenses that they say they approve. This is a bit longer. The important thing here is that the idea they have here is that if you offer a service with that software, then everything you use also has to be under this license. Including, they are pretty explicit about this, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software, and hosting software. All such that a user can run an instance of the service using this code you make available. This kind of sounds a bit like a strong version of Copilot because we know this, if you change Linux, then the trainers also have to be under GPL. But it goes much further. Basically, there is no way to fulfill that license and the only idea is to make it completely impactful. They wrote it in a way that it should not apply to normal users, but it should apply to cloud providers for offering services based on the code. It basically has the same intention like this comes to us before. They don't want AWS to sell MongoDB services, at least not without having some kind of extra agreement with them. They introduced this kind of supercopy lab that is completely impractical. For example, this says you cannot run a service on Linux because Linux is released under the GPL, so you cannot re-license Linux under this server-side public license. Essentially, this is an attempt to hack the open-source definition. What they want is inherently not compatible with the idea of open-source, but they are trying to find a way around it. There was a start thing which was the Confluent Community License, which was relatively similar to the first example, so they basically said you cannot sell a service based on this. Ultimately, I think what all these companies want is AWS, Google, Microsoft, Stacia, and not be allowed to complete the task with our services, because they also, for MongoDB, if you look on the other page, you can get a hosted MongoDB from them, and they want you to buy it from them and not from AWS. That's what this is meant to be about. I think this alone wouldn't be something I would be very worried about, because ultimately they could just say, yeah, put that in the license, and then it's no longer open-source, and okay. I mean, I want to have more free-end open-source software, but I can't live with a few projects that are no longer private or community. But what these companies want is they still want the positive image of open-source, and that is fundamentally incompetent. They want the good things, but they don't want to have the things that come with it. And what I think they're doing is that they're trying to cause as much confusion as they can, so it kind of sounds like they're supposed to. They're not always lying, so there's a, for this kind of task, there's a web page and there's an FAQ, and it's pretty explicit. There's a question, is this open-source? It expands a bit on that, but that's clear. This is one of the Redis modules under this comments clause, and it says, Redis Search is an open-source for projects, whatever it is. That's a lie. Why? Why is it a lie? Because it's not open-source that's the license under the shape of it. That's also a lie. No, I mean it's this license where they say in the FAQ, this is open-source, no. Wait, wait, wait. This is the Redis, they don't use the code, they use the SSPL. Redis uses the common-source. Oh yeah, quite true. Yeah. Then this is from the blog post where they introduced this, initiated by a coalition of Trump infrastructure companies to protect their rights. Comments clause is a condition added to existing open-source software to create a new and combined software assets. Now this is what I would call computing, because they say, okay, it's added to an existing open-source license, so it just wants to add open-source and then we add something to it that kind of sounds like it's the open-source. It's not explicitly wrong, but I would say this is confusing. And then they say the combined license maintains all conditions of the underlying open-source license, but limits commercial sale of the software. This doesn't make any sense, it's kind of conflicting in this in itself. There's an organization called FOSSA, which is kind of their work behind all this, so they were collaborating with these companies to include these lists of license trainers. They are more of a modern open-source management, and you probably wouldn't think that modern open-source management is a way of staying in the health of software to be no longer open-source. This is from Confluent, they basically say this is irrelevant for you, because for those who aren't commercial shop providers, 99.99% of the users of these projects it's no meaningful restriction of that, they can move this to software. What they are trying to say is, if you're AWS, then you're affected by this, but you're not. The problem here in the room is probably the CEO of AWS. So it doesn't really affect you. But this is, yeah, they're trying to tell you this is, I mean, maybe it's not technical, it's not really relevant for you. But I think this is bogus, because you may not be AWS, but you may want to use them, right? You may be a customer of them. And I don't know who here in the room is using AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. I mean, it's the wrong audience, but still, like, it doesn't. And even if you run the software yourself right now, you still may want to say, okay, but I want to keep my options open. Like, I don't know, maybe I run it now on my own server, but maybe next year I want to go to some provider that offers this. So I think this is relevant if you use that software, not just the CEO of AWS. So yeah, so this isn't a kind of minor issue. I think this really goes to the core of what we also are supposed to be. But then you have this, I mean, where they're trying to gain some feedback. They're saying, yeah, this is really, really important to find development. And I think that there's definitely a legitimate issue, right? I mean, we have a lot of problems that these products are underfunded that we suddenly find out, oh, there's this super important library, everyone's using it and it's programmed by one guy who never saw a dollar for it. That's not my problem. But I really think this is, I'm not sure if this is what we're talking about here, this is the stock from MongoDB. So they went to the stock market, I found it because I wrote an article about this license change from MongoDB and I wanted to look at what other media was writing about it. So I had Google use and typed in MongoDB and I was surprised that a lot of financial market web pages showed up. I mean, what an interesting stock option MongoDB is. So their stock kind of doubled within a year. Redis Labs, they are not on the stock market, but they got like $44 million from both of them. So I'm wondering, is this about developer funding or is this about investor expectations? So I'm not sure we're having the right feedback. And then I found this, which I found very confusing. MongoDB management said customers were interested in utilizing features across all of the large multiple cloud providers. That was what they were trying to prevent that they messed with them. In addition to preventing customer organization, they explained that many customers wanted to take advantage of the different unique features each large cloud company provides. In retrospect, MongoDB's cloud neutral position continues to be an advantage, even as it competes with the very same cloud companies that have their own database offerings. So I don't know, where they're just saying that the advantage of their databases, what they're just trying to prevent with their license change, I don't know. Is there a threat to open source? This Tecran article at the beginning, we had this subline cloud infrastructure that threatened the viability of open source. I think open source is doing really fine. I don't think there's a threat. Maybe there's a threat to those companies' business models. I think that's the thing with the global cloud. One thing they're also trying to do, they're trying to gain sympathy by saying, this is the big Amazon, Google, the big dev, but I really think this is a thing that doesn't really get to the issue and that shouldn't really matter because whether you like Google or whether you like Amazon, it's completely irrelevant if we're discussing what open source is. So a few conclusions. I think we should demand clarity and reflect confusion about the terms for software in open source. Something either is open source or it's not and there's no in-between. You can be part of that community and you can leave that community, but you cannot have it like this. We should talk about better funding for freeing open source software, but I don't think not publishing freeing open source software is a way of finding open source software. In general, I think freeing open source software is doing fine. Thank you. I think we should talk about the why and how companies are allowed to change their license legally. There are two ways. One is that maybe software is just developed on their own without any external contributions or often they have contributions agreements where you basically say, if you send a patch, then you have to sign something that you allow them to get them all right. That's relatively common, which also sometimes makes sense because sometimes you have a license and then it has some stupid incompatibility that something that you want to change. So there can be good reasons for that. But you can only do that if you have the full rights to the software. It depends. Some licenses allow you to change it with the private area. If you have ESD code, you can make that. If you have a project with many countries, you can change that. What do you think about HAPL? What is the place that you like to start? Probably not, but there is a problem with a GPL license software that both providers modify it and don't have distributed changes. HAPL prevents that. The company said that HAPL is not really well enforceable for them, so we chose the crap. No, I mean, there are... So, okay. The general idea of HAPL is that if you offer a web service or some network service, then the same couple of things apply like if you sell a GPL software because very often the software you're using is not running on the screen, so HAPL tries to tackle that. I think it's largely irrelevant to that debate because I think MongoDB was HAPL before. And, I mean, Amazon is not violating their license. Amazon is just offering MongoDB completely lines with the GPL. Could you go back to the slide before the conclusion? Before we go through... Well, you wrote the conclusion, one slide and then you said before that. Yes, that's good. So, exactly, I absolutely agree with this. But earlier, we talked about the SSPL, you mentioned that the cloud is mentioned there in practical. Isn't it as irrelevant whether it's practical or not for the license to be open source? I mean, I guess this is a tricky issue because we had... I think we haven't had this before that people were kind of trying to hack the definition. But I think open source is not kind of a technicality, but it means something for user freedom. And if you say, you're a user, you are allowed to offer a service with this, but in practice you can't because it's not possible. So I feel this is kind of tricky. I would imagine... Just imagine... It is actually impossible, but that would be really horrible. Imagine, actually, Amazon would now open source all the management software. It would be absolutely amazing if you could use the same API and the same infrastructure, then it could be heavenly, and so for Linux, for example, huge patch set from the Linux zone that you're not releasing, and all the software that you have built around that and they could only... It's not saying that you have to release it, but if they say it, you have to release it under their license. It means, for example, for the Linux kernel, you cannot do that. Okay, yeah, that was actually my question. So that's written license. I haven't read that yet. They say that you have to release it under their license. Okay. Just small questions to clarify on the course. The course of the comments course. So really if you think it's really a cloud business, but it still would, again, would you still allow products to be sold unless they're slowly built to provide......to the Amazon practice, they could just......because they could actually just pay some money... Yeah, they would get an agreement with the actual... But that's kind of not what I'm interested in, because like my perspective is the freedom of the community. If Google and MongoDB get to some agreement, yeah, but my point is I don't want MongoDB to confuse the public in... I'm not sure who was first, but... When the license has changed, do the old revisions keep the old license? Yeah, yeah, sure. If something is released under a license, then this gives you the right to release it. So you can always talk the old versions in continuously. And I guess that will happen for some time. Yeah. The AGPL was released in 2007, I think. Like you said, before the MongoDB used to be licensed, and then suddenly they changed to the SSPL. Do you think one of the problems there......and the GPL through is even earlier than this, I think one of the issues is maybe that......it doesn't look like there's much innovation in terms of the GPL before, or the success of the AGPL fixes and incites these companies to have. I've heard complaints in the OSI that......it's not the concerns you lay them about the SSPL, it wasn't any community drafting. This license, do you think there's any scope for some other......like an AGPL plus or something? I mean, the question would be what that would be, because I think fundamentally, if your license is a free license, then I believe AWS can sell services based on it. So I don't think within the idea of free and open source software, you can have a license that gives these companies what they want. Yeah. Yeah, like you gave your assessment somehow, you think that open source software is going fine, but at the same time, presenting some cases in which we are... Yeah, I hope you can see 105. I mean, they have funding now. Right, but I guess so, what is your proposal for funding now? I guess maybe that would be special. Yeah, okay. I mean, I thought that we would quickly get out of hand and get its own talk. I mean, what... I think the most promising things are... I mean, many of these things just come out of companies that......use some project and then just release it. The other thing is, I think there is a certain willingness in these large companies to fund for the kind of fund. We should try to push that further. I mean, the idea that if you're a large IT company that profits from open-source all the time and in many different places, and it's also often not a lot of money we're talking about, right? I mean, funding on business. It's irrelevant to me. So, my hope there would be that we can get more to the situation where not just software companies, but all companies, we have this idea that, yeah, they pay something back voluntarily and ultimately won't stop the employment. That some won't do it, but there is kind of a... Yeah. Yeah, so we found the sand. The root of the problem was the introduction of common clothes, right? That was the first example. Yeah, that's where I got lost. So, which one of the four freedoms the common clothes breaks? Because it must break one. Yeah, otherwise there's no problem. I guess you cannot use it how you like it. What do you mean, how you like it? Yeah, I mean, it's four points and one must be... I just put the verb, but if you read the text, you can use it for any post that you want. Including commercial. Including commercial and including selling itself. Including selling itself. So that's one use case to offer a hosted money. I wonder, is this a case of the legal force advertising? Because if I say my software is free and open source, but in fact it's not, and I'm a company and I say that, can I advertise it? So, this sounds like force advertising to me. So, I mean, companies may be suitable for saying that software is free and open source, but in fact it's not, it's a lie. So, I'll have to... Yeah, I mean... So, maybe we can get these companies by legal. But if you sue them for this, they'll probably just change it. I'm not sure that gives us that much. So, but this... We're the final... Companies claim the software, but it's not. I fully agree, this is a big problem, so this has to stop. But it's also... I took this as an extreme example, but very often it's that they're using very confusing language. That's my trial to sue, I guess. I mean, maybe you can... I won't do it, but maybe their organization is very interested in that. Yes, our last time, these two new licenses became needed because suddenly the cloud providers made money by providing hosting. My question is, in what way does being a cloud differ from just selling hosting? I guess it is just larger. But you can run in your license, you can sell hosting unless your name runs with Smugel. Because hosting always was fine, and that's a common thing to do with free software, so I don't understand why suddenly it's even just because it's out of the scene. Okay? Yeah. So, open source is a trademark term owned by EOSI, and it's not written like that. Which I still think is a trademark violation, but the open source initiative could change that any day. And with free-still the open source would be, I guess, whereas free software is slightly different in its licenses that they approve of. But it's also a shitty term. For example, it doesn't necessitate popular, which is an interesting addition to that, that it requires free distribution. What I want to ask is, do we need a term or software that you need to go on open source hardware without any known distance? Because that would be a requirement, but I do have to do any other reading, which is like that one, that one's good. Please help me out of term. Yeah. I don't think there's no question to me. There is. Okay, I think that's... I see that you use coproduct software over free software. Where does it... I don't know much about that. I guess we're getting into other discussions. Maybe we can have the data... Yeah. Thanks. EOSI, we need some kind of definition. No, no, we have a definition. We need to be clear about that definition. Yeah, maybe some kind of simple, easy like test for some kind of licenses, so you can just like... No, no, no, we all have... We have kept that all. Like just... Yeah, we have a definition. It's a link. And like... Here's the changes. We have all that. I think you're being confusing when you're talking about free software, and you're saying it has these four reasons, and you're saying that MIT has this free software as a free software license, which is not on the loader's side of the page, you find it? Why is it not? Because it doesn't require you to maintain all these previous agreements. Yeah, but that's not part of the definition. We're getting into the technicalities here, but even the free software foundation has always accepted that these permissible licenses are all part of the free software family. So it's kind of different flavors of free software. OSI and NPSF also have lists of licenses that they accepted. So... And you can be quite sure a license that is approved by OSI and NPSF is definitely a false license. You can look at that online. Can we do it in more... Can we raise it as a company struggle between the company that is open source and the company that has happened to produce open source products? Because it seems to me that it's an industry that is coming off age, and the management is coming off age, and uses all the same tactics that any emerging industry user will try to grow, and then you kick out your professors. So the terms open source are just playgrounds for those management people. And the thing is not to get confused on the internal struggles at this point, but just try to stay in the line and act as a company, and not as a movement. Yeah, I guess there was no question about it. I don't want to have this forever. If someone who hasn't said anything yet, didn't have a lot of advice, I'd close it. Maybe some uncommon opinion, and maybe I'm also playing partly devil's advocate, but in the time of software service, it might be a good idea to have something that is totally not open source software, but a different thing, which is everybody could contribute, and everybody with non-commercial usage could of course run it under their own terms, but as soon as you run into commercial usage, you would have to negotiate a different license with the owner of the software. And I think that might be a good idea for a lot of software people. It has been tried before, it was never very successful. But it's never even been tried. I mean, if most of the benefits of the freedom to software are still there, I actually don't think that you get most of the benefits. I think this is a very crucial difference. If you start going down that road, and I'm pretty convinced that for example, the Linux kernel would have never been relevant if it had a license like that in the beginning. It is the most linear one, more than anything. And that? Never was that. I actually argued that software like Linux kernel and software service, as you see now, is the age of the country, and that's also the reason that software like Linux kernel or the Pools and compiler, and a lot of fundamentals of that that everybody needs to use, there still be free software. I mean, the... What you really like to distribute to software that is sold to other companies, because it's all about community building. I mean, to have reliable open source software, you need reliable communities. And so, you know, we need people who are inspired, who are going to work, and we want us to distribute things. And I would never distribute to the software. And I know this is free for private people, but it is sold from this company. I see that's not the next group coming, so... Yes, here we go.
 I want to talk about open source and that may confuse you because this is the free software  foundation Europe assembly which is about free software but it doesn't matter so much  because let's go back to what these terms mean. Free software is usually defined by the  four freedoms and this from the free software foundation Europe webpage the freedom to use  study, share and improve the software which is what we are used to like for example the  digital with a linux color, everyone can download it and use it, we can get the source code  and analyze it and we can share it with others and we can change the source code.  For open source there is a ten point definition I have not put on all those points because  that would be a too long slide but if you actually look at them it says more or less the same  and I like to phrase it as free software and open source are basically the same thing  they are just different ways of looking at the same thing.  The idea here is that the term free software is used by people who want to emphasize use  or freedom while open source is more from people who may focus on what kind of businesses  you can build around it and kind of the technological aspects but it's really we are talking about  the same thing here.  And everything that every license that qualifies as a free software license also qualifies  as an open source license and vice versa.  And sometimes people use the terms for us like for free open source software or free  liberal open source software.  Now we have a microphone.  Yeah so I often like to use those because it's kind of inclusive you're saying like  it's this one big thing we're using different terms but it doesn't really matter.  There are also like different kinds of free and open source software some licenses have  this idea of copy left which says yeah you can change this but if you change it and then  give it to someone else they have the same freedoms so you also have to give them the code  and there are other licenses that don't require this so you can take this code and then make a proprietary  product out of it where you don't have to give away the code.  And there are also licenses that don't require you to do anything not even mentioning where you got it from  like for example the CC0.  And of course they are saying they're not open source or free software for example if you provide code  but you're not allowed to change the code that's neither free software nor open source.  That's just maybe it's from open code but it's not what we're talking about here.  And also software that is not allowed to be used for certain things for example you say you don't  like someone and this person is not allowed to use it or you say it's not allowed to use it  to certain things.  And this is also kind of obvious but these days free and open software is extremely successful  and when I make this slide I kind of realize how big of an impact this is and also in how many  different areas it is successful like if you look at these logos I mean you probably don't recognize  all of them but we have things like operating systems, we have messengers, video players,  programming languages, basic libraries, browsers, web servers.  All kinds of things where free and open source software is extremely successful.  And of course free and open source software has advantages for the user like no one can tell you  what you're allowed to do with this software.  If you have the technological backgrounds to be able to do it you're allowed to change it  and adapt it to your needs and if you're not then you may as well pay someone else to adapt it for you.  And it's also, I think that's a very important aspect, it's more resilient to change.  So if you have a company developing software and then the company no longer exists or they are no longer  interested in the product then it usually just goes away, right?  But if it's a free software then other people can pick it up and continue development.  And also if, and there I'm getting closer to the issue I mostly want to talk about today,  if you use a service that's based on a free software or you buy support from someone  then you may have the opportunity to go to someone else who is not restricted to the company who made the software  but other people can offer the same service or similar service based on that.  Free and open source software can also have advantages for the people who develop it.  And one of them, and I think this is extremely important, it has a good reputation  for saying something is open source that just sounds good, a lot of people like that.  You may have contributions from the community which can be new features but also sometimes just bug reports  that help you to make, to find bugs in your software.  And also some people will just avoid using your software if it's not free.  For example I try to use as much free software as I can and in many cases if I have a choice between free product  and non-free product even if it doesn't cost money but if it's, I don't have access to the code I would choose to free.  And also if some distribution channels for software don't accept software that is not free,  you know, so software for example, Debian they are saying in their distribution all the packages are  under the Debian free software guidelines so if you have something that is not under free license  then it cannot be called the main Debian distribution.  But from a developer perspective there are also things you cannot do.  So you cannot control what people do with your software and you cannot control who uses your software  and you can sell a software but once you sold it you cannot usually not stop people from getting it for free  because the person who sold it can copy it to others and put it on the internet that explicitly allows it to take part of the idea.  You can sell support for your software but you cannot stop stopping others from also selling support for your software  and they may even sell better support for your software.  And you can sell services based on your software but you cannot stop others from doing the same.  And sometimes there are people who want to have the good reputation of free software or open source  but they don't want to accept these things that they cannot do with it and what shall they do?  They can lie, they can say it's open source although it's not or they can cause confusion.  And that's where I'm getting to the topic of today.  We have to talk about this cloud.  So I think that everyone knows that cloud computing is big these days.  Companies like AWS or Azure or fully cloud they are very successful, very big, a lot of people use their services.  And obviously these cloud providers also provide services based on free open source software.  Screenshots and you can see not everything here is open source software but on the left you can see AWS.  You can install a WordPress image or PBRN and all these cloud providers provide many services that are based on open source software.  And now you can say, yeah, okay, that's kind of normal and kind of expected because, yeah, your software is free.  Everyone can use it so AWS of course they can use it and they can offer you to use it on their service. Why not?  But some people seem to think otherwise.  Here's an article on TechCrunch which has the title Decrucate Against Open Source Aduse.  This guy thinks that this is abuse when a cloud provider uses every software.  And lately we had some instances where companies were changing their licenses to protect them from this abuse from cloud providers.  The first thing that came up was the so-called comments clause which is an extension to other licenses.  So you have the license, I don't know, actually two was typically a stumble and then you add this additional clause.  And this is relatively short.  With alternating other conditions in the license, the grant of rights under the license will not include it.  The license does not grant you the right to sell the software.  So you're restricted in what you can do with this and they expand a bit on it and basically what they're trying to say is AWS and Google and all this cloud providers,  they're not selling services without software.  And this kind of became big when Redis announced that they would adopt this comments clause.  Their first announcement was a bit unclear so people thought Redis would use that new license condition which was not the case.  But I was not so sorry for them because it was kind of their own fault that their communication was very confusing.  Redis itself, at least they say, will stay under the US license.  But they're using some modules, they re-license under this new license.  Then there was this new license called Server-side Public License.  The question was, Redis?  Redis is a no-SQL database so it's...  I'm not sure.  I don't use these things.  I heard this is like when you want to use a database but you don't want to learn SQL.  But a lot of people use it.  The next example was MongoDB, they used something called the Server-side Public License.  This was a bit more interesting.  They came to this open source license and they asked the open source initiative to adopt it.  They wrote this open source definition and they have lists of licenses that they say they approve.  This is a bit longer.  The important thing here is that the idea they have here is that if you offer a service with that software,  then everything you use also has to be under this license.  Including, they are pretty explicit about this, user interfaces, application program interfaces,  automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software, and hosting software.  All such that a user can run an instance of the service using this code you make available.  This kind of sounds a bit like a strong version of Copilot because we know this,  if you change Linux, then the trainers also have to be under GPL.  But it goes much further.  Basically, there is no way to fulfill that license and the only idea is to make it completely impactful.  They wrote it in a way that it should not apply to normal users,  but it should apply to cloud providers for offering services based on the code.  It basically has the same intention like this comes to us before.  They don't want AWS to sell MongoDB services, at least not without having some kind of extra agreement with them.  They introduced this kind of supercopy lab that is completely impractical.  For example, this says you cannot run a service on Linux because Linux is released under the GPL,  so you cannot re-license Linux under this server-side public license.  Essentially, this is an attempt to hack the open-source definition.  What they want is inherently not compatible with the idea of open-source,  but they are trying to find a way around it.  There was a start thing which was the Confluent Community License,  which was relatively similar to the first example, so they basically said you cannot sell a service based on this.  Ultimately, I think what all these companies want is AWS, Google, Microsoft, Stacia,  and not be allowed to complete the task with our services,  because they also, for MongoDB, if you look on the other page,  you can get a hosted MongoDB from them,  and they want you to buy it from them and not from AWS.  That's what this is meant to be about.  I think this alone wouldn't be something I would be very worried about,  because ultimately they could just say, yeah, put that in the license,  and then it's no longer open-source, and okay.  I mean, I want to have more free-end open-source software,  but I can't live with a few projects that are no longer private or community.  But what these companies want is they still want the positive image of open-source,  and that is fundamentally incompetent.  They want the good things, but they don't want to have the things that come with it.  And what I think they're doing is that they're trying to cause as much confusion as they can,  so it kind of sounds like they're supposed to.  They're not always lying, so there's a, for this kind of task,  there's a web page and there's an FAQ, and it's pretty explicit.  There's a question, is this open-source?  It expands a bit on that, but that's clear.  This is one of the Redis modules under this comments clause,  and it says, Redis Search is an open-source for projects, whatever it is.  That's a lie.  Why?  Why is it a lie?  Because it's not open-source that's the license under the shape of it.  That's also a lie.  No, I mean it's this license where they say in the FAQ,  this is open-source, no.  Wait, wait, wait.  This is the Redis, they don't use the code, they use the SSPL.  Redis uses the common-source.  Oh yeah, quite true.  Yeah.  Then this is from the blog post where they introduced this,  initiated by a coalition of Trump infrastructure companies to protect their rights.  Comments clause is a condition added to existing open-source software  to create a new and combined software assets.  Now this is what I would call computing,  because they say, okay, it's added to an existing open-source license,  so it just wants to add open-source and then we add something to it  that kind of sounds like it's the open-source.  It's not explicitly wrong, but I would say this is confusing.  And then they say the combined license maintains all conditions  of the underlying open-source license,  but limits commercial sale of the software.  This doesn't make any sense,  it's kind of conflicting in this in itself.  There's an organization called FOSSA,  which is kind of their work behind all this,  so they were collaborating with these companies  to include these lists of license trainers.  They are more of a modern open-source management,  and you probably wouldn't think that modern open-source management  is a way of staying in the health of software to be no longer open-source.  This is from Confluent,  they basically say this is irrelevant for you,  because for those who aren't commercial shop providers,  99.99% of the users of these projects  it's no meaningful restriction of that,  they can move this to software.  What they are trying to say is,  if you're AWS, then you're affected by this,  but you're not.  The problem here in the room is probably the CEO of AWS.  So it doesn't really affect you.  But this is, yeah, they're trying to tell you this is,  I mean, maybe it's not technical, it's not really relevant for you.  But I think this is bogus,  because you may not be AWS,  but you may want to use them, right?  You may be a customer of them.  And I don't know who here in the room is using AWS or Azure or Google Cloud.  I mean, it's the wrong audience, but still, like, it doesn't.  And even if you run the software yourself right now,  you still may want to say,  okay, but I want to keep my options open.  Like, I don't know, maybe I run it now on my own server,  but maybe next year I want to go to some provider that offers this.  So I think this is relevant if you use that software,  not just the CEO of AWS.  So yeah, so this isn't a kind of minor issue.  I think this really goes to the core of what we also are supposed to be.  But then you have this, I mean,  where they're trying to gain some feedback.  They're saying, yeah, this is really,  really important to find development.  And I think that there's definitely a legitimate issue, right?  I mean, we have a lot of problems that these products are underfunded  that we suddenly find out, oh, there's this super important library,  everyone's using it and it's programmed by one guy who never saw a dollar for it.  That's not my problem.  But I really think this is, I'm not sure if this is what we're talking about here,  this is the stock from MongoDB.  So they went to the stock market,  I found it because I wrote an article about this license change from MongoDB  and I wanted to look at what other media was writing about it.  So I had Google use and typed in MongoDB  and I was surprised that a lot of financial market web pages showed up.  I mean, what an interesting stock option MongoDB is.  So their stock kind of doubled within a year.  Redis Labs, they are not on the stock market,  but they got like $44 million from both of them.  So I'm wondering, is this about developer funding  or is this about investor expectations?  So I'm not sure we're having the right feedback.  And then I found this, which I found very confusing.  MongoDB management said customers were interested in  utilizing features across all of the large multiple cloud providers.  That was what they were trying to prevent that they messed with them.  In addition to preventing customer organization,  they explained that many customers wanted to take advantage of the different unique features  each large cloud company provides.  In retrospect, MongoDB's cloud neutral position continues to be an advantage,  even as it competes with the very same cloud companies  that have their own database offerings.  So I don't know, where they're just saying that  the advantage of their databases,  what they're just trying to prevent with their license change, I don't know.  Is there a threat to open source?  This Tecran article at the beginning,  we had this subline cloud infrastructure  that threatened the viability of open source.  I think open source is doing really fine.  I don't think there's a threat.  Maybe there's a threat to those companies' business models.  I think that's the thing with the global cloud.  One thing they're also trying to do,  they're trying to gain sympathy by saying,  this is the big Amazon, Google, the big dev,  but I really think this is a thing that doesn't really get to the issue  and that shouldn't really matter because  whether you like Google or whether you like Amazon,  it's completely irrelevant if we're discussing what open source is.  So a few conclusions.  I think we should demand clarity and reflect confusion  about the terms for software in open source.  Something either is open source or it's not  and there's no in-between.  You can be part of that community  and you can leave that community,  but you cannot have it like this.  We should talk about better funding for freeing open source software,  but I don't think not publishing freeing open source software  is a way of finding open source software.  In general, I think freeing open source software is doing fine.  Thank you.  I think we should talk about the  why and how companies are allowed to change their license legally.  There are two ways.  One is that maybe software is just developed on their own  without any external contributions  or often they have contributions agreements  where you basically say, if you send a patch,  then you have to sign something  that you allow them to get them all right.  That's relatively common,  which also sometimes makes sense  because sometimes you have a license  and then it has some stupid incompatibility  that something that you want to change.  So there can be good reasons for that.  But you can only do that if you have the full rights to the software.  It depends.  Some licenses allow you to change it with the private area.  If you have ESD code, you can make that.  If you have a project with many countries,  you can change that.  What do you think about HAPL?  What is the place that you like to start?  Probably not, but there is a problem  with a GPL license software  that both providers modify it  and don't have distributed changes.  HAPL prevents that.  The company said that HAPL is not really  well enforceable for them,  so we chose the crap.  No, I mean, there are...  So, okay.  The general idea of HAPL is that  if you offer a web service or some network service,  then the same couple of things apply  like if you sell a GPL software  because very often the software you're using  is not running on the screen,  so HAPL tries to tackle that.  I think it's largely irrelevant to that debate  because I think MongoDB was HAPL before.  And, I mean,  Amazon is not violating their license.  Amazon is just offering MongoDB  completely lines with the GPL.  Could you go back to the slide before the conclusion?  Before we go through...  Well, you wrote the conclusion,  one slide and then you said before that.  Yes, that's good.  So, exactly, I absolutely agree with this.  But earlier, we talked about the SSPL,  you mentioned that the cloud is mentioned there in practical.  Isn't it as irrelevant whether it's practical or not  for the license to be open source?  I mean, I guess this is a tricky issue  because we had...  I think we haven't had this before  that people were kind of trying to hack the definition.  But I think open source is not kind of a technicality,  but it means something for user freedom.  And if you say, you're a user,  you are allowed to offer a service with this,  but in practice you can't because it's not possible.  So I feel this is kind of tricky.  I would imagine...  Just imagine...  It is actually impossible,  but that would be really horrible.  Imagine, actually, Amazon would now open source  all the management software.  It would be absolutely amazing  if you could use the same API and the same infrastructure,  then it could be heavenly, and so for Linux, for example,  huge patch set from the Linux zone that you're not releasing,  and all the software that you have built around that  and they could only...  It's not saying that you have to release it,  but if they say it, you have to release it under their license.  It means, for example, for the Linux kernel, you cannot do that.  Okay, yeah, that was actually my question.  So that's written license.  I haven't read that yet.  They say that you have to release it under their license.  Okay.  Just small questions to clarify on the course.  The course of the comments course.  So really if you think it's really a cloud business,  but it still would, again,  would you still allow products to be sold  unless they're slowly built to provide... ...to the Amazon practice, they could just... ...because they could actually just pay some money...  Yeah, they would get an agreement with the actual...  But that's kind of not what I'm interested in,  because like my perspective is the freedom of the community.  If Google and MongoDB get to some agreement,  yeah, but my point is I don't want MongoDB  to confuse the public in...  I'm not sure who was first, but...  When the license has changed,  do the old revisions keep the old license?  Yeah, yeah, sure.  If something is released under a license,  then this gives you the right to release it.  So you can always talk the old versions in continuously.  And I guess that will happen for some time.  Yeah.  The AGPL was released in 2007, I think.  Like you said, before the MongoDB used to be licensed,  and then suddenly they changed to the SSPL.  Do you think one of the problems there... ...and the GPL through is even earlier than this,  I think one of the issues is maybe that... ...it doesn't look like there's much innovation in terms of the GPL before,  or the success of the AGPL fixes and incites these companies to have.  I've heard complaints in the OSI that... ...it's not the concerns you lay them about the SSPL,  it wasn't any community drafting.  This license, do you think there's any scope for some other... ...like an AGPL plus or something?  I mean, the question would be what that would be,  because I think fundamentally,  if your license is a free license,  then I believe AWS can sell services based on it.  So I don't think within the idea of free and open source software,  you can have a license that gives these companies what they want.  Yeah.  Yeah, like you gave your assessment somehow,  you think that open source software is going fine,  but at the same time,  presenting some cases in which we are...  Yeah, I hope you can see 105.  I mean, they have funding now.  Right, but I guess so,  what is your proposal for funding now?  I guess maybe that would be special.  Yeah, okay.  I mean, I thought that we would quickly get out of hand  and get its own talk.  I mean, what...  I think the most promising things are...  I mean, many of these things just come out of companies that... ...use some project and then just release it.  The other thing is,  I think there is a certain willingness in these large companies  to fund for the kind of fund.  We should try to push that further.  I mean, the idea that if you're a large IT company  that profits from open-source all the time  and in many different places,  and it's also often not a lot of money we're talking about, right?  I mean, funding on business.  It's irrelevant to me.  So, my hope there would be that we can get more to the situation  where not just software companies, but all companies,  we have this idea that, yeah, they pay something back voluntarily  and ultimately won't stop the employment.  That some won't do it, but there is kind of a...  Yeah.  Yeah, so we found the sand.  The root of the problem was the introduction of common clothes, right?  That was the first example.  Yeah, that's where I got lost.  So, which one of the four freedoms the common clothes breaks?  Because it must break one.  Yeah, otherwise there's no problem.  I guess you cannot use it how you like it.  What do you mean, how you like it?  Yeah, I mean, it's four points and one must be...  I just put the verb, but if you read the text,  you can use it for any post that you want.  Including commercial.  Including commercial and including selling itself.  Including selling itself.  So that's one use case to offer a hosted money.  I wonder, is this a case of the legal force advertising?  Because if I say my software is free and open source,  but in fact it's not, and I'm a company and I say that,  can I advertise it?  So, this sounds like force advertising to me.  So, I mean, companies may be suitable for saying that software is free and open source,  but in fact it's not, it's a lie.  So, I'll have to...  Yeah, I mean...  So, maybe we can get these companies by legal.  But if you sue them for this, they'll probably just change it.  I'm not sure that gives us that much.  So, but this...  We're the final...  Companies claim the software, but it's not.  I fully agree, this is a big problem, so this has to stop.  But it's also...  I took this as an extreme example, but very often it's that they're using very confusing language.  That's my trial to sue, I guess.  I mean, maybe you can...  I won't do it, but maybe their organization is very interested in that.  Yes, our last time, these two new licenses became needed  because suddenly the cloud providers made money by providing hosting.  My question is, in what way does being a cloud differ from just selling hosting?  I guess it is just larger.  But you can run in your license, you can sell hosting unless your name runs with Smugel.  Because hosting always was fine, and that's a common thing to do with free software,  so I don't understand why suddenly it's even just because it's out of the scene.  Okay?  Yeah.  So, open source is a trademark term owned by EOSI, and it's not written like that.  Which I still think is a trademark violation, but the open source initiative could change that any day.  And with free-still the open source would be, I guess,  whereas free software is slightly different in its licenses that they approve of.  But it's also a shitty term.  For example, it doesn't necessitate popular, which is an interesting addition to that,  that it requires free distribution.  What I want to ask is, do we need a term or software that you need to go on open source hardware  without any known distance?  Because that would be a requirement, but I do have to do any other reading,  which is like that one, that one's good.  Please help me out of term.  Yeah.  I don't think there's no question to me.  There is.  Okay, I think that's...  I see that you use coproduct software over free software.  Where does it...  I don't know much about that.  I guess we're getting into other discussions.  Maybe we can have the data...  Yeah.  Thanks.  EOSI, we need some kind of definition.  No, no, we have a definition.  We need to be clear about that definition.  Yeah, maybe some kind of simple, easy like test for some kind of licenses,  so you can just like...  No, no, no, we all have...  We have kept that all.  Like just...  Yeah, we have a definition.  It's a link.  And like...  Here's the changes.  We have all that.  I think you're being confusing when you're talking about free software,  and you're saying it has these four reasons,  and you're saying that MIT has this free software as a free software license,  which is not on the loader's side of the page, you find it?  Why is it not?  Because it doesn't require you to maintain all these previous agreements.  Yeah, but that's not part of the definition.  We're getting into the technicalities here,  but even the free software foundation has always accepted  that these permissible licenses are all part of the free software family.  So it's kind of different flavors of free software.  OSI and NPSF also have lists of licenses that they accepted.  So...  And you can be quite sure a license that is approved by OSI and NPSF  is definitely a false license.  You can look at that online.  Can we do it in more...  Can we raise it as a company struggle between the company that is open source  and the company that has happened to produce open source products?  Because it seems to me that it's an industry that is coming off age,  and the management is coming off age,  and uses all the same tactics that any emerging industry user will try to grow,  and then you kick out your professors.  So the terms open source are just playgrounds for those management people.  And the thing is not to get confused on the internal struggles at this point,  but just try to stay in the line and act as a company,  and not as a movement.  Yeah, I guess there was no question about it.  I don't want to have this forever.  If someone who hasn't said anything yet,  didn't have a lot of advice, I'd close it.  Maybe some uncommon opinion,  and maybe I'm also playing partly devil's advocate,  but in the time of software service,  it might be a good idea to have something that is totally not open source software,  but a different thing, which is everybody could contribute,  and everybody with non-commercial usage could of course run it under their own terms,  but as soon as you run into commercial usage,  you would have to negotiate a different license with the owner of the software.  And I think that might be a good idea for a lot of software people.  It has been tried before, it was never very successful.  But it's never even been tried.  I mean, if most of the benefits of the freedom to software are still there,  I actually don't think that you get most of the benefits.  I think this is a very crucial difference.  If you start going down that road,  and I'm pretty convinced that for example, the Linux kernel would have never been relevant  if it had a license like that in the beginning.  It is the most linear one, more than anything.  And that?  Never was that.  I actually argued that software like Linux kernel and software service,  as you see now, is the age of the country,  and that's also the reason that software like Linux kernel or the Pools and compiler,  and a lot of fundamentals of that that everybody needs to use,  there still be free software.  I mean, the...  What you really like to distribute to software that is sold to other companies,  because it's all about community building.  I mean, to have reliable open source software, you need reliable communities.  And so, you know, we need people who are inspired, who are going to work,  and we want us to distribute things.  And I would never distribute to the software.  And I know this is free for private people, but it is sold from this company.  I see that's not the next group coming, so...  Yes, here we go.
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