<story><title>CockroachDB license change</title><url>https://www.cockroachlabs.com/enterprise-license-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewmutz</author><text>It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this.  Increasingly it seems that &amp;quot;open source&amp;quot; is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled.&lt;p&gt;IMO, it&amp;#x27;s not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.</text></item><item><author>AYBABTME</author><text>I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it&amp;#x27;s quite expensive, &amp;quot;contact us&amp;quot; salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle&amp;#x2F;landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor.&lt;p&gt;The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if the relationship with Cockroach Labs degraded, which made it possible to entertain the Enterprise license since there&amp;#x27;s was a way to walk back from it. But now there&amp;#x27;s no such mitigation available. By using non-PG native features, users of the Enterprise edition are accepting to get in bed with Cockroach Labs for effectively forever (databases), a single provider that has no competition.&lt;p&gt;I think this may backfire, as it now seems imprudent to go all in on Cockroach Labs. They may be nice folks today, but who knows who will run the place in 5y when the next round of squeeze comes?&lt;p&gt;I wish them the best, they&amp;#x27;re a great team and I always liked the project and toyed with it for years, and currently am involved with a paid Enterprise license. But this change in the dynamics is really giving me pause.&lt;p&gt;Getting in bed with a single vendor for an incredibly sticky tool comes with a _lot_ of risk. It took at least 17y for Amazon to get rid of its last Oracle database: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;aws&amp;#x2F;migration-complete-amazons-consumer-business-just-turned-off-its-final-oracle-database&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;aws&amp;#x2F;migration-complete-amazons-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jaaron</author><text>&amp;gt; IMO, it&amp;#x27;s not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.&lt;p&gt;I know it&amp;#x27;s not as popular or sexy as it used to be, but the whole point of a foundation like Apache was to avoid these situations, even more than the way the Linux Foundation is setup. Apache _explicitly_ manages projects to avoid these downsides.&lt;p&gt;- Single corporation ownership. Projects cannot get out of the Incubator unless they demonstrate a diverse and healthy community. That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean popular, it doesn&amp;#x27;t necessarily mean best-in-class, but it means that there shouldn&amp;#x27;t be just one entity backing a project.&lt;p&gt;- Membership in Apache is _personal_ not a seat for a given company. If you&amp;#x27;re a committer on an Apache project and you move jobs, you&amp;#x27;re _still_ a committer on that project&lt;p&gt;- The Foundation owns the trademarks. There have been fights about this in the past, but the whole idea is that the _community_ owns the name, so some corporation can&amp;#x27;t claim to be the sole or official owner by naming their company or product after the open source product.&lt;p&gt;The core premise of the Apache Software Foundation is community over code, that healthy, diverse communities have a better chance of standing the test of time than open source projects backed by a single individual or company. That&amp;#x27;s the thesis at least.&lt;p&gt;The is starkly different from several other foundations, notably the Linux Foundation or Eclipse Foundation which are modeled more around industry consortiums.&lt;p&gt;Both models have their place, but I believe Apache better models the core values many of us feel strongly about when it comes to free and open source software.</text></comment>
<story><title>CockroachDB license change</title><url>https://www.cockroachlabs.com/enterprise-license-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewmutz</author><text>It seems that whenever an open source project is run by a VC-backed company, it sooner or later ends up like this.  Increasingly it seems that &amp;quot;open source&amp;quot; is just the teaser to get people interested and then when investors want revenue growth, the rug gets pulled.&lt;p&gt;IMO, it&amp;#x27;s not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.</text></item><item><author>AYBABTME</author><text>I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it&amp;#x27;s quite expensive, &amp;quot;contact us&amp;quot; salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle&amp;#x2F;landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor.&lt;p&gt;The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if the relationship with Cockroach Labs degraded, which made it possible to entertain the Enterprise license since there&amp;#x27;s was a way to walk back from it. But now there&amp;#x27;s no such mitigation available. By using non-PG native features, users of the Enterprise edition are accepting to get in bed with Cockroach Labs for effectively forever (databases), a single provider that has no competition.&lt;p&gt;I think this may backfire, as it now seems imprudent to go all in on Cockroach Labs. They may be nice folks today, but who knows who will run the place in 5y when the next round of squeeze comes?&lt;p&gt;I wish them the best, they&amp;#x27;re a great team and I always liked the project and toyed with it for years, and currently am involved with a paid Enterprise license. But this change in the dynamics is really giving me pause.&lt;p&gt;Getting in bed with a single vendor for an incredibly sticky tool comes with a _lot_ of risk. It took at least 17y for Amazon to get rid of its last Oracle database: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;aws&amp;#x2F;migration-complete-amazons-consumer-business-just-turned-off-its-final-oracle-database&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;aws.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;aws&amp;#x2F;migration-complete-amazons-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haolez</author><text>Old(?) school open source with GPL licenses doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to suffer from this, on a first glance. Maybe Stallman was right. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this. I&amp;#x27;m not trying to troll.</text></comment>