[Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences

Mon Jan 18 01:46:48 CET 2021

That's interesting that you know Vicky, Thomas. That was actually the first article I read before posting to this listserv. It was interesting.

Thanks for that excerpt, Jonathan, although I think you have omitted a very important part where they define a service:

"""
Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version.
"""

Personally, I find the definition from 1.3 to be vague as "enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network" or "offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version" could really be interpreted a variety of ways. Not good.

If you read "1.3 Offering the Program as a Service" from the Elastic perspective, that text makes some sense. They're trying to prevent AWS (and other cloud providers) from providing Elasticsearch as a managed service, as they think that the competition directly impacts their own managed service business. MongoDB created the SSPL licence and started using it in October 2018. Of course, it seems that Amazon just forked the last AGPL version of MongoDB to create Amazon DocumentDB in January 2019 (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-documentdb-with-mongodb-compatibility-fast-scalable-and-highly-available/). Redis also changed some of its licensing a while ago: https://redislabs.com/legal/licenses/. 

But, at this point, I don't think there have been any legal cases that actually test the SSPL. But it's still early days. 

I suppose when considering products, we might want to consider the life of the product too. Here is a critical article on MongoDB's finances: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/07/20/dont-chase-growth-with-mongodb/?sh=568631c64ef3. Perhaps the licence change won't be enough and they'll eventually be bought by a larger tech company. 

No idea. 

David Cook
Software Engineer
Prosentient Systems
Suite 7.03
6a Glen St
Milsons Point NSW 2061
Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899
Online: 02 8005 0595

-----Original Message-----
From: Koha-devel <koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org> On Behalf Of Jonathan Druart
Sent: Friday, 15 January 2021 10:22 PM
To: koha-devel <koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences

Thanks Thomas, great article.

It's what I thought this morning when I read their FAQ and the license, they don't mean the same.

The license clearly states:
"""
If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License.
[...]
“Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.
"""

That's crazy!

Le ven. 15 janv. 2021 à 11:47, Thomas Klausner <domm at plix.at> a écrit :
>
> Hi!
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 10:11:20AM +0000, Hugo Agud Andreu wrote:
>
> > as far as I have understood we still could use as ES license is 
> > still open, tha changes only affects to those that change the code 
> > of ES that they will be forced to publish their own developments, as 
> > Koha only uses API and none code modification is done, then no 
> > problem with ussing ES
>
> I haven't looked into the detail myself, but I know Vicky, and assume 
> that she spend a fair shair of thinking before publishing this:
> https://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2021/01/14/elasticsearch-and-kiba
> na-are-now-business-risks
>
> I'm using ES in a few projects, so I will have to consider if I just 
> freeze ES at the current version, and/or look for some alternatives in 
> the future. Or maybe they won't go through with the new license? Or 
> maybe it will be clarified how the license actually affects projects 
> just using ES.
>
> Greetings,
> domm
>
> --
> #!/usr/bin/perl                              http://domm.plix.at
> for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}
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