MongoDB's Server Side Public License Is Likely Unenforceable
Disclosure: I work for MongoDB. If you look at these two threads you&#x27;ll find my comments in them, addressing similar concerns to those raised in this one.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18229452" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18229452</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18229013" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18229013</a><p>To reiterate those comments, the SSPL only affects people who are offering the licensed software to the public as a service. This does not include any software that uses MongoDB as a component, even if it&#x27;s a commercial SaaS offering itself. The FAQ we put out here makes that clear: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mongodb.com&#x2F;licensing&#x2F;server-side-public-license&#x2F;faq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mongodb.com&#x2F;licensing&#x2F;server-side-public-license...</a>. 99.999% of MongoDB users are not affected by this license change.<p>People have expressed concerns that the 1) the FAQ is not the license, and 2) the language of the license does not make the intended responsibility clear enough. But it <i>was</i> drafted with that intention (and reviewed by outside counsel, with an eye towards being explicit without giving bad actors loopholes to exploit). Nonetheless, addressing those concerns is extremely important to us. This exact issue is being discussed on the OSI license approval mailing list, and we are considering very seriously all of the feedback.<p>The article anchoring this thread contains a lengthy discussion of copyright misuse and of impracticability. Those are also the subjects of discussion on the OSI mailing list, where Heather Meeker, writing on MongoDB&#x27;s behalf, refutes claims that are similar to those made in the article. In particular, the SSPL is not trying to make people release substrate infrastructure, or adjacent tooling, under the SSPL. Consider the last line of section 13: &quot;...all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available.&quot; This means that as long as the Service Source Code you release is enough for anyone to run the service, you&#x27;ve fulfilled your obligation. As an example, you would not have to somehow be able to offer CircleCI under the SSPL (an impossibility), as long as your tooling that orchestrates its use is public, because anyone can use CircleCI.<p>It&#x27;s our hope that these discussions will lead to an accepted understanding of the actual obligations of the SSPL. The only people we want to be in any way affected by it are those who are literally offering the licensed software as a service, and we want those people to release their management stack under the SSPL. Thanks for helping us with that.