7 ms·

ScyllaDB – Why We're Moving to a Source Available License

82 points by campers 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hamandcheese 2y ago
By now, this kind of open source rug pull is becoming routine. I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I'm thankful for all the free stuff, and I can't fault anyone for trying to make a buck or two. I'm a huge advocate of free software, but mostly for personal use and individual freedom. So I don't feel like the loss of Scylla is a great loss in that respect. I can't imagine a lot of individuals are harmed by this move. But still, it makes me distrust corporate "open source" more and more.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  I believe it's the rights assignment that should raise the "a rug pull is inevitable" alarm, not the corporate part There are plenty of corporate projects that don't require rights assignment to submit changes, just a DCO or even just $(git commit -s)
- jsiepkes 2y ago
  Definitely also understand everyone needs to make a living. Buuuttt... projects like these would probably never haven gotten the traction they have now if they wouldn't have started out as opensource but being closed source. For example Hashicorp and Redis definitely wouldn't be where they are today if they had start out as opensource. So in that sense these license changes are a bait and switch.
  - mdaniel 2y ago
    > For example Hashicorp and Redis definitely wouldn't be where they are today if they had start out as opensource What makes you think there are genuine open source projects that don't get traction? Ansible is still GPLv3 even while owned by RedHat^W IBM and works fine. Any one of the bazillions of front-end toolkits, build tools, bundlers, whatever, many initiated by some company and practically all under open source licenses. My experience has been that if something is useful, and its open source license means one can fix bugs they encounter or at least have a small chance it'll remain around indefinitely (not go out of business) in order to bake it into your workflow, then it'll be adopted and blogged about and show up in HN and Reddit
    - thayne 2y ago
      I think GP agrees with you. They were saying that Scylladb (or redis, or hashicorp, etc.) never would have gotten as much traction if it had been proprietary from the begining. Being open source helped them get where they are, but now they are abandoning open source. In fact I strongly suspect that this license change will do more than upset existing users of their open source version, it will scare off potential new users and customers. Not only are they no longer open source, but they gave people a reason not to trust them.
      - jsiepkes 2y ago
        > I think GP agrees with you. They were saying that Scylladb [...] Thanks, that was what I was trying to convey. I noticed I made a rather "impactful" mistake in this sentence: > [...]today if they had start out as opensource[...] That should read "hadn't"... Sorry about that.
- tommiegannert 2y ago
  I think it's great that we're cleaning up the nomenclature. In the 90s, we had shareware/freeware/beerware. No one expected source availability. At universities, the Unix world had open source, in the real sense. Then something happened that caused these two tracks to merge. Maybe the university students grew up and carried on their belief in open source, but also had to create the business. After 20 years, they realized (1) it doesn't have to be open source to _feel right_ and (2) maintaining in the open is more expensive. They're now in management positions, not coding. Selling B2B doesn't require code to be open to the public, since you can have source available licenses. And as you said, perhaps ScyllaDB isn't really targeting the hobbyist. We'll continue this trend. Or perhaps open source has stopped being a buzzword. We're now much more of a SaaS world, where being open source isn't as important as costing $10 per month or having 200 "data partners" that need to track you. That said, I think there's a really good reason for core libraries and security-sensitive libraries to be open. I want to be able to inspect them, before using them. And I'm in the HN crowd of actually using open source code because I can fix bugs as I encounter them, but I realize this is a small crowd. I'd love for open source to be a useful word again, and not something that goes on the Silicon Valley PR budget.
musicale 2y ago
"Because we like money."
- eklavya 2y ago
  The audacity, right?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    Not the word I'd have used. Weird take. I doubt anyone criticizing is doing so because of "How dare they want money?" Which just begs the question, why did you think that? That take just exposes a complete missing of the point of open source software and why (honest) people invest their time in it. There are others who just want the caché and benefits that come with producing open source, but without the annoying actually being open source parts. If you want to get paid for renting out copies of software, just do that honestly. If you want to make the world a better place and pay it forward for all the free stuff you were given, then do that honestly. But wanting the benefits of sainthood without having to volunteer at the soup kitchen, no, audacity is not the word for that. And merely wanting a comfortable living is not audacious, and no one who's not an idiot thinks it is, and is actuall othogonal to whether you have any integrity wrt open source licenses. You can want, and have, that comfortable living either way.
    - HumanOstrich 2y ago
      > and no one who's not an idiot thinks it is Can you refrain from personal attacks here please?
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        Identify the person who was attacked.
nahnahno 2y ago
In reality open source is very difficult to build a business around, which means that software can’t exist long term. It’s not about not wanting to be open source, it’s about realising that you and your employees livelihoods are being abused by people who see open source and take it to mean they shouldn’t pay. Especially egregious when your competitors take your work and build a closed sourced business around it.
- musicale 2y ago
  > people who see open source and take it to mean they shouldn’t pay This is the primary appeal of open source software to most businesses - free software and free labor.
  - nahnahno 2y ago
    Correct. An open source project that doesn’t receive in kind development cost reduction benefit from free contributors should not stay open source.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Abused doesn't make sense, open source means I made this thing and I'm giving it away because I think other people might find it useful. Take this and build something proprietary around is one of the stated goals of OSS, no one is upset AWS is offering hosted Linux. Nobody will touch your product if it's not OSS doesn't mean you should call it OSS and then rug pull. Build it proprietary from the beginning you cowards. The people who do this are the same as the corporate shills who infiltrate subcultures to monetize them and ultimately destroy the community in the process. If you don't actually share the values of the community you're trying to join, then don't join it. This little SV "growth hack" where the success of your OSS project is the proving ground to get funding has to die. It's turning a high-trust community into a low-trust one.
  - nahnahno 2y ago
    It makes sense to anyone who has tried to build open source software as a sustainable business. It doesn’t make sense to people who contribute small hobby projects or work as researchers / are government funded, which means ultimately paid for by businesses and consumers thereof.
linotype 2y ago
Ridiculous as ScyllaDB is just a C++ implementation of a real open source project, Cassandra.
- wmf 2y ago
  Not really. The internals are completely different.
  - linotype 2y ago
    Like I said, a C++ implementation. It’s marketed as a Cassandra compatible alternative. You can even use cqlsh with it.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
[flagged]
fithisux 2y ago
Open Source means knowledge dissemination. If they did not get back from community it may mean that their code was bad for contributions. Sorry! They can keep the unmaintainable mess to themselves because then, the code is available but not really open. License is one thing for openness, code quality is the other.
yoshicoder 2y ago
See this is tricky in my mind, because it doesn't seem like this was just a move to stop AWS/GCP cloud hosting Scylla. That was already solved with the AGPL license. This seems like they are just trying to stop any usage of ScyllaDB that isn't paid (outside of a relatively small free tier). I suppose its not a big deal, since you can always migrate to cassandra for open source forever, but definitely unfortunate for any individuals/organizations that can't afford this upgrade.
zvr 2y ago
All these mentions of the "ScyllaDB Source Available License" but not even a link towards the actual text. I understand it will have limitations on the data that you can use (up to a certain size) and the CPU power (up to these many cores). Will it also limit the activity type (commercial, SaaS offering, ...)?
- andection 2y ago
  They limit only cluster size with 50 cores and 20T disk size. Link to details https://www.scylladb.com/source-available-faq/ https://www.scylladb.com/source-available-faq/
  - zvr 2y ago
    Thanks! Although a FAQ is not a real substitute for the actual legal text of the license.
kvemkon 2y ago
Posted few hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453102
PeterZaitsev 2y ago
Yep. This becomes expected path - Corporate Open Source, eventually changes license to improve monetization. The way to avoid this is pick foundation based Open Source software which is not controlled by single Corporation like PostgreSQL, Linux or Kubernetes. The other interesting example is Copyleft software, where "Corporation" does not have complete copyright holder. For example Percona or MariaDB can't "close source" their MySQL forks of the core software, though it does not prevent them from doing it with other parts of the complete platform, think MariaDB MaxScale.
_gtly 2y ago
Seems that ScyllaDB takes advantage of https://seastar.io https://seastar.io that shards across cores. It seems to still be open source (for the moment, at least). Wonder if other projects could benefit from its ideas.

82 points by campers 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hamandcheese 2y ago

By now, this kind of open source rug pull is becoming routine. I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I'm thankful for all the free stuff, and I can't fault anyone for trying to make a buck or two. I'm a huge advocate of free software, but mostly for personal use and individual freedom. So I don't feel like the loss of Scylla is a great loss in that respect. I can't imagine a lot of individuals are harmed by this move. But still, it makes me distrust corporate "open source" more and more.

mdaniel 2y ago
I believe it's the rights assignment that should raise the "a rug pull is inevitable" alarm, not the corporate part There are plenty of corporate projects that don't require rights assignment to submit changes, just a DCO or even just $(git commit -s)
jsiepkes 2y ago
Definitely also understand everyone needs to make a living. Buuuttt... projects like these would probably never haven gotten the traction they have now if they wouldn't have started out as opensource but being closed source. For example Hashicorp and Redis definitely wouldn't be where they are today if they had start out as opensource. So in that sense these license changes are a bait and switch.
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > For example Hashicorp and Redis definitely wouldn't be where they are today if they had start out as opensource What makes you think there are genuine open source projects that don't get traction? Ansible is still GPLv3 even while owned by RedHat^W IBM and works fine. Any one of the bazillions of front-end toolkits, build tools, bundlers, whatever, many initiated by some company and practically all under open source licenses. My experience has been that if something is useful, and its open source license means one can fix bugs they encounter or at least have a small chance it'll remain around indefinitely (not go out of business) in order to bake it into your workflow, then it'll be adopted and blogged about and show up in HN and Reddit
  - thayne 2y ago
    I think GP agrees with you. They were saying that Scylladb (or redis, or hashicorp, etc.) never would have gotten as much traction if it had been proprietary from the begining. Being open source helped them get where they are, but now they are abandoning open source. In fact I strongly suspect that this license change will do more than upset existing users of their open source version, it will scare off potential new users and customers. Not only are they no longer open source, but they gave people a reason not to trust them.
    - jsiepkes 2y ago
      > I think GP agrees with you. They were saying that Scylladb [...] Thanks, that was what I was trying to convey. I noticed I made a rather "impactful" mistake in this sentence: > [...]today if they had start out as opensource[...] That should read "hadn't"... Sorry about that.
tommiegannert 2y ago
I think it's great that we're cleaning up the nomenclature. In the 90s, we had shareware/freeware/beerware. No one expected source availability. At universities, the Unix world had open source, in the real sense. Then something happened that caused these two tracks to merge. Maybe the university students grew up and carried on their belief in open source, but also had to create the business. After 20 years, they realized (1) it doesn't have to be open source to _feel right_ and (2) maintaining in the open is more expensive. They're now in management positions, not coding. Selling B2B doesn't require code to be open to the public, since you can have source available licenses. And as you said, perhaps ScyllaDB isn't really targeting the hobbyist. We'll continue this trend. Or perhaps open source has stopped being a buzzword. We're now much more of a SaaS world, where being open source isn't as important as costing $10 per month or having 200 "data partners" that need to track you. That said, I think there's a really good reason for core libraries and security-sensitive libraries to be open. I want to be able to inspect them, before using them. And I'm in the HN crowd of actually using open source code because I can fix bugs as I encounter them, but I realize this is a small crowd. I'd love for open source to be a useful word again, and not something that goes on the Silicon Valley PR budget.

musicale 2y ago

"Because we like money."

eklavya 2y ago
The audacity, right?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Not the word I'd have used. Weird take. I doubt anyone criticizing is doing so because of "How dare they want money?" Which just begs the question, why did you think that? That take just exposes a complete missing of the point of open source software and why (honest) people invest their time in it. There are others who just want the caché and benefits that come with producing open source, but without the annoying actually being open source parts. If you want to get paid for renting out copies of software, just do that honestly. If you want to make the world a better place and pay it forward for all the free stuff you were given, then do that honestly. But wanting the benefits of sainthood without having to volunteer at the soup kitchen, no, audacity is not the word for that. And merely wanting a comfortable living is not audacious, and no one who's not an idiot thinks it is, and is actuall othogonal to whether you have any integrity wrt open source licenses. You can want, and have, that comfortable living either way.
  - HumanOstrich 2y ago
    > and no one who's not an idiot thinks it is Can you refrain from personal attacks here please?
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      Identify the person who was attacked.

nahnahno 2y ago

In reality open source is very difficult to build a business around, which means that software can’t exist long term. It’s not about not wanting to be open source, it’s about realising that you and your employees livelihoods are being abused by people who see open source and take it to mean they shouldn’t pay. Especially egregious when your competitors take your work and build a closed sourced business around it.

musicale 2y ago
> people who see open source and take it to mean they shouldn’t pay This is the primary appeal of open source software to most businesses - free software and free labor.
- nahnahno 2y ago
  Correct. An open source project that doesn’t receive in kind development cost reduction benefit from free contributors should not stay open source.
Spivak 2y ago
Abused doesn't make sense, open source means I made this thing and I'm giving it away because I think other people might find it useful. Take this and build something proprietary around is one of the stated goals of OSS, no one is upset AWS is offering hosted Linux. Nobody will touch your product if it's not OSS doesn't mean you should call it OSS and then rug pull. Build it proprietary from the beginning you cowards. The people who do this are the same as the corporate shills who infiltrate subcultures to monetize them and ultimately destroy the community in the process. If you don't actually share the values of the community you're trying to join, then don't join it. This little SV "growth hack" where the success of your OSS project is the proving ground to get funding has to die. It's turning a high-trust community into a low-trust one.
- nahnahno 2y ago
  It makes sense to anyone who has tried to build open source software as a sustainable business. It doesn’t make sense to people who contribute small hobby projects or work as researchers / are government funded, which means ultimately paid for by businesses and consumers thereof.

linotype 2y ago

Ridiculous as ScyllaDB is just a C++ implementation of a real open source project, Cassandra.

wmf 2y ago
Not really. The internals are completely different.
- linotype 2y ago
  Like I said, a C++ implementation. It’s marketed as a Cassandra compatible alternative. You can even use cqlsh with it.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

[flagged]

fithisux 2y ago

Open Source means knowledge dissemination. If they did not get back from community it may mean that their code was bad for contributions. Sorry! They can keep the unmaintainable mess to themselves because then, the code is available but not really open. License is one thing for openness, code quality is the other.

yoshicoder 2y ago

See this is tricky in my mind, because it doesn't seem like this was just a move to stop AWS/GCP cloud hosting Scylla. That was already solved with the AGPL license. This seems like they are just trying to stop any usage of ScyllaDB that isn't paid (outside of a relatively small free tier). I suppose its not a big deal, since you can always migrate to cassandra for open source forever, but definitely unfortunate for any individuals/organizations that can't afford this upgrade.

zvr 2y ago

All these mentions of the "ScyllaDB Source Available License" but not even a link towards the actual text. I understand it will have limitations on the data that you can use (up to a certain size) and the CPU power (up to these many cores). Will it also limit the activity type (commercial, SaaS offering, ...)?

andection 2y ago
They limit only cluster size with 50 cores and 20T disk size. Link to details https://www.scylladb.com/source-available-faq/ https://www.scylladb.com/source-available-faq/
- zvr 2y ago
  Thanks! Although a FAQ is not a real substitute for the actual legal text of the license.

kvemkon 2y ago

Posted few hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453102 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42453102

PeterZaitsev 2y ago

Yep. This becomes expected path - Corporate Open Source, eventually changes license to improve monetization. The way to avoid this is pick foundation based Open Source software which is not controlled by single Corporation like PostgreSQL, Linux or Kubernetes. The other interesting example is Copyleft software, where "Corporation" does not have complete copyright holder. For example Percona or MariaDB can't "close source" their MySQL forks of the core software, though it does not prevent them from doing it with other parts of the complete platform, think MariaDB MaxScale.

_gtly 2y ago

Seems that ScyllaDB takes advantage of https://seastar.io https://seastar.io that shards across cores. It seems to still be open source (for the moment, at least). Wonder if other projects could benefit from its ideas.