MongoDB switches up its open source license
(Context: I worked on Compose&#x2F;MongoHQ for a very long time. We were the first to monetize MongoDB)<p>I&#x27;m sure people will get riled up about this, but it makes sense. Building a business on an OSS database in a world of behemoth cloud providers is really hard. It&#x27;s clear Google and Amazon (and maybe even Azure) are comfy taking OSS work, doing a ton of proprietary development on it, and leaving the companies who did all the groundwork flailing in the wind.<p>These things are going to keep happening as long as mega tech companies (a) use OSS to commoditize other companies&#x27; products and (b) exploit permissive licenses to the max.<p>I don&#x27;t want to live in a world where the only infrastructure software we have access to is what the big companies deign to open source. Life is better when small groups of devs can build and sustain critical infrastructure software. We need more haproxies and redises and binds and (fill in blank).<p>That said, MongoDB has never figured out how to work with their ecosystem in a way that&#x27;s good for everyone. They&#x27;ve gone from trying to extort money from smaller companies to undercutting them to this. And it&#x27;s likely not gonna change much this time, the world of &quot;run a database as a service&quot; is changing I think, and being replaced with more generic tools that just so happen to manage complex persistence well.<p>_Also_ I bet some random licensing folks are crapping their pants at IBM right now. I&#x27;m ashamed at how funny that is.