[HN Gopher] How this database legal war could be decided by the ...
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How this database legal war could be decided by the name given to
this license
Author : rntn
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-02-12 16:15 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| sacrosancty wrote:
| It's not clear what the actual license says so people are
| speculating a bit. Something I found on the Wayback Machine is
|
| "Neo4j Enterprise Edition is dual licensed under Neo4j commercial
| license as well as under the free Affero General Public License
| (AGPL) v3."
| [https://web.archive.org/web/20160327040441/http://neo4j.com/...]
|
| That has a link to AGPL's Wikipedia page. So maybe that statement
| alone is enough to make it AGPL v3 even if they have a modified
| version of it elsewhere?
| chipsa wrote:
| > If the Program as you received it, or any part of it,
| contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License
| along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove
| that term. If a license document contains a further restriction
| but permits relicensing or conveying under this License, you
| may add to a covered work material governed by the terms of
| that license document, provided that the further restriction
| does not survive such relicensing or conveying.
|
| From the applicable version of their license[0]. Which appears
| to be the standard AGPL text, excepting the top and bottom. If
| it's dual licensed, then AGPL terms apply, which allow removing
| restrictions that get added.
|
| 0:
| https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/blob/3.4/enterprise/neo4j-ent...
| hirako2000 wrote:
| If someone took the name Mikey Mouse. Stamped it on a dvd along
| with some +18 content, and then had the guts to sue Walt's
| brother and friends for taking that film, editing it to make it
| suitable for kids, i bet we would call that totally absurd. We
| aren't far off with this court case, unless i don't understand
| the issue.
|
| And for those who undoubtly miss to understand the issue, they at
| neo4j mistakenly or knowingly put glucose in their sugar free
| advertised product, and pretend nobody should be allowed to
| remove the junk because they made the rest of the recipe and made
| sure to include glucose in the ingredients lists since the
| beginning.
|
| Sadly they may win in the court since even hackernews readers
| don't immediately see the mascarade.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > mascarade
|
| That word is redolent of Pride parades. It brings to mind a
| person in costume, with eye make-up.
| pritambaral wrote:
| Apples to oranges. The Mouse is protected by copyright; GPL-ed
| software is protected by copyleft. When you distribute copyleft
| software, you're explicitly granting rights to your downstream
| users. You can't just decide one day to retroactively change
| the terms.
|
| > And for those who undoubtly miss to understand the issue ...
|
| Clearly, you misunderstand the issue. Neo4j specifically told
| people to modify their recipe however they please as long as
| the license is respected. Yes, this is the very license that
| allows this. It's a completely different (and undefendable)
| issue that they did so by committing the legal equivalent of
| copying code from Stack overflow and not even reading it. The
| law doesn't work like code does and you can't just claim,
| "Sorry, there was a bug. You will be forced to download a
| software update." when it comes to copyrights and contracts.
| binarymax wrote:
| I'm torn on issues like this. I respect and support companies
| that intend to make their software free and open for personal and
| academic use, but charge for commercial use. But the licensing
| challenges surrounding support of this intent is tricky, and is
| often attacked by FOSS purists. I don't think a good license
| exists for companies like Neo4j, MongoDB, Elastic, etc...and we
| need one.
| maxloh wrote:
| Maybe with Business Source License?
|
| That is essentially a proprietary license that will turn the
| licensed work to FOSS software after a given period of time. So
| that everyone can use and fork the software, but the original
| author can also make money out of it sustainably.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Thank you for bringing that license to my attention. I've
| been figuring out licensing for a project and out of all the
| ways I've looked into, this one fits my thinking the most.
| eternalban wrote:
| Let's discuss intent.
|
| (I have contributed OSS in a minor way via a few original
| projects. I don't run a business. I don't have a dog in this
| fight. But imo ..)
|
| If you start an OSS project, get contributions, then the thing
| becomes a hit, and then when money comes knocking on the door
| -- investors want returns as it happens -- and you then
| suddenly realize that you wanted a business after all. Then you
| will run into then "no good license" issue if you still want
| the help of free OSS patches, workers, and OSS monicker but
| need to protect business interests.
|
| One the other hand, you can start with intent of making a
| business from your OSS project, and give non-transferable non-
| commercial license grants (of a foundational subset e.g. a
| single node graph db) to whoever wants to see or help you with
| the code. This scenario is (ianal) supported by existing
| commercial licenses. However this -may- limit the free flow of
| code and love and care by non-stakeholders of your commercial
| endeavor. I am not sure if anyone has ever tried this.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I don't think it's about it being a hit so much as the
| business dynamics have changed incredibly the last 13 years,
| when many of these projects took off. Open source as a
| business is incompatible with the Cloud.
| eternalban wrote:
| This is an excellent point. _Something changed_. I 'd argue
| that _that_ however yet again brings us back to question of
| intent. There were pathways, RH for ex., that had worked as
| viable business models. But then cloud messed up with the
| well laid 'plans'.
| flandish wrote:
| IMHO it's because we have no real way to pivot with this
| stuff, and you said it well enough, I just want to add:
|
| In my mind, you're either an OSS person who "goes viral" and
| maybe gets picked up or a large "thank you" contrib to your
| "buy me a coffee" bucket.. or you're actually trying to make
| a product but need to "market test" on the old (but hardly
| ever used anymore) "shareware" concept. Free market testing
| and occasional PRs is not a proper path to IPO or venture
| capital. It's just that you didn't realize it when you set
| out, or you did and you're "meta gaming" the lifecycle.
|
| With a (to be invented?) license that allows pivoting, I
| reckon it can be the kind of thing that happens, and is a
| potential known to any product with that license.
|
| I just don't see it being popular.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Not that it works especially well for patents, but I could
| imagine a RAND licensing scheme for open source
| contributors that triggers when a license transitions from
| open to closed.
| ericb wrote:
| I imagine readers who've never babysat open source projects
| think that you "get contributions" and "free OSS patches,
| workers" but those things, for 99.9% of projects are
| 1-illusory, 2-when and if they materialize, usually more cost
| than benefit.
| cowl wrote:
| Patches are not the only contribution, although I am sure
| that while not every OSS projects get many, the most
| visible ones do get also Patches. Anyway whatabout the
| early testing, bugfiling, documentation and helping others
| to understand how to use these projects. A lot of people
| get involved with these activites because they want to
| support an OSS Project and often these, (especially testing
| early releases and Developer advocacy) are more important
| than a patch contribution for the success of the project
| and the chance for it to become profitable.
| ericb wrote:
| I've never seen those provide value anywhere that's
| anywhere close to matching the costs incurred. They get
| diluted by:
|
| - bugs that are actually free support
|
| - feature requests for things that some company needs,
| but won't pay them to create
|
| - pull requests you can't accept, need to review, etc.
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is so true. I don't really want people to contribute
| because it takes more time to assess what they did vs just
| mindlessly doing it yourself. If I had the time to review I
| would rather implement the feature or fix.
| db48x wrote:
| The real problem is that they picked the AGPL, which has the
| Further Restrictions clause. If they didn't want that, then
| they should have picked something else. They could have created
| a custom license, but instead they proudly announced that they
| were choosing the AGPL, and they gained significant goodwill
| from that. This lawsuit demonstrates that they are either
| incompetent, or that they were attempting to use the AGPL in a
| fraudulent way.
| toyg wrote:
| Neo4J have a genuinely interesting product but they managed,
| throughout the decades, to hamper its adoption at every turn.
| db48x wrote:
| I know virtually nothing about the software, but I keep
| hearing over and over about the licensing problems. I doubt
| it's the reason they want people to remember their name.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, if money and time is no object graph databases are
| a joy to use but being a commercial database is pretty
| much the death knell for support in different languages
| and frameworks.
| wombatpm wrote:
| It will be attacked by the FOSS purists and the corporatists
| who will scream "see the GPL is a cancer to commercial code"
| jacooper wrote:
| *OSS purists
| colinsane wrote:
| what's the label for open source idealists who view
| IP/copyright as fundamentally incompatible with the
| mission?
|
| i'm not talking about the MIT or "permissive license"
| crowd, but the smaller group which explicitly avoids
| providing a license because doing so would grant legitimacy
| to the idea that intellectual property is a thing which
| _should_ be licensed /controlled.
|
| tends to have an overlap in piracy circles and anarchists,
| probably because copyright is tied to the state/legal code.
| anyway i see enough of them now where the acronyms like
| FOSS, FLOSS, etc definitely don't apply, but i'm not sure
| what label to use instead.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Maybe as a compromise between copyright and copyleft you
| could call then copycentre?
| cowl wrote:
| It's a good model but only when it starts like that from the
| beginnig. How many developers have contributed to that open
| source because of the liberal orginal license? Now they take
| all that work and make it commercial? Ok but in that case the
| rights should revert to the orginal contributors and the
| company should make licensing terms with them for the
| Commercial part.
|
| Most of the controversies have been about this bait&switch
| Aproach.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Unless all your contributors signed copyright assignment to
| you (or you have no external contributors), you cannot just
| restrict license this way for copyleft licenses.
| cowl wrote:
| Ofcourse the contributors have signed copyright assignment
| to you (that's mostly standard practice) but they have done
| so for a project that at the time was with the liberal
| license. It may not be illegal but it's certainly abusive
| to then switch licenses because chances are those would not
| have signed the copyright away for free for a commercial
| product in the first place.
| antiterra wrote:
| I don't understand how this argument helps PureThink at all. Even
| if Neo4j is not allowed to refer to their license as "AGPLv3 with
| the commons clause as follows" then isn't that between them and
| FSF?
|
| PureThink isn't a party to that dispute, and the inclusion of the
| clause was apparently stated at the beginning of the license that
| they are, presumably, subject to.
|
| That said, what _does_ look interesting to me is the whole
| 'Additional Conditions' section of AGPL which one could argue is
| still effective over what is written in the "Commons clause."
| From that clause:
|
| > Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of
| rights under the License will not include, and the License does
| not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
|
| Since it does not limit the Additional Conditions section or say
| 'notwithstanding' that verbiage, then it seems it would still be
| subject to subsequent removal of the commons clause condition.
| cowl wrote:
| As I understood it, AGPLv3's contains a clause that allows the
| users (Purethink in this case) to remove additional conditions
| added to the license. In this case to remove the Commons clause
| because it was added to the AGPLv3. So they can use the
| Software under pure AGPLv3.
|
| | But if the license is referred to as the AGPLv3, then its
| Further Restrictions |Clause - which allows users of APGLv3
| licensed software to remove added |licensing terms -
|
| If they had called anything else than AGPLv3 (something that i
| understand is permissable) than they can not remove the extra
| restrictions because only the users of AGPLv3 can remove those.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| PureThink sued, it surely has some to say in the dispute.
| toyg wrote:
| "defendants PureThink and founder John Mark Suhy, who were
| sued by database biz Neo4j in November 2018, for alleged
| trademark and competition law violations."
| hirako2000 wrote:
| That is what i meant. PureThink (got) sued. Ironically, i
| would guess they'd like to have nothing to do with the
| matter and get back to whatever it is they do. neo4j have
| lawers in the drawers, they can battle for years over this.
| cvccvroomvroom wrote:
| AGPL3 is radioactive to users and businesses. Google absolutely
| refuses to use anything with it because there's no way to prove
| it can't become part of some service. If some FOSS is so
| wonderful, users will buy support contracts with something
| actually free like MIT, BSD-2, or Apache 2. Forcing people to do
| things another way and telling them what they can or can't do
| with "open" source isn't free or open. Call it what it is:
| idealistic purity tests of extremists.
|
| I see AGPL and I see something to skip.
| jchmrt wrote:
| The (A)GPL licenses were designed for user freedom, not
| developer freedom. That indeed means that some companies might
| not want to use it, because they dont want to give their users
| access to the code. But for the people who prefer this license,
| that's not an unintended consequence, but the whole point.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I am unconvinced that either one is sufficiently free for
| end-users. It's been a bit since I've done a close reading,
| but doesn't GPL consider any linkage to create a derivative
| work? Dynamic linkage is something the end-user does.
|
| If I'm an end-user and want to replace a GPL .so with a GPL-
| incompatible .so (maybe it has better performance or fewer
| bugs or whatever), and an installed GPL program uses that
| library, isn't it the case that the GPL forbids me from doing
| so unless I also have the right to re-license the .so as GPL?
| [deleted]
| db48x wrote:
| The GPL doesn't restrict the end user in that way. The GPL
| specifically allows the end user to use the software
| however they like. This includes combining it with software
| that uses an incompatible license.
|
| The one restriction that the GPL does make only applies if
| you _redistribute_ your modifications. If you make
| modifications to the software or combine it with something
| else, then you are required by the terms of the GPL to
| license the result of those modifications under the GPL.
| But if you've modified the program by combining it with
| something that has license terms incompatible with the GPL
| then you won't be able to do that. Since you cannot license
| the modified software under the GPL, you do not have
| permission to redistribute it.
| [deleted]
| torstenvl wrote:
| See that's the problem. There _are_ no modifications. I
| 'm simply removing one piece of GPL software and
| replacing it with non-GPL software.
|
| In any case, I have serious doubts about the legality of
| the GPL (as opposed to the LGPL) after Google v. Oracle.
| pritambaral wrote:
| > Dynamic linkage is something the end-user does.
|
| Is it the end-user telling the dynamic linker loader to
| load the .so, or is it the program you distributed to them?
|
| > If I'm an end-user and ... isn't it the case that the GPL
| forbids me from doing so unless I also ...
|
| No, it doesn't. You can do anything you want if you're the
| end-user. It's only when you distribute to others (outside
| your organisation) that the GPL kicks in.
| db48x wrote:
| Agreed. Google's allergy to the AGPL should make people sit
| up and take notice. This is a license with teeth, so well
| written that even Google can't find a way to subvert it. If
| you want to write software and give it away without any risk
| that Google will make a billion dollars off of your hard work
| without contributing anything back, the AGPL is the way to
| go.
| jacooper wrote:
| > But if the license is referred to as the AGPLv3, then its
| Further Restrictions Clause - which allows users of APGLv3
| licensed software to remove added licensing terms - should apply.
| If the court accepts that argument, it would be a significant
| reversal: PureThink would be allowed to fork Neo4J EE under the
| AGPLv3.
|
| Huh, what if they removed that but still called it an AGPLv3
| license?
|
| Also does that apply to other GPL licenses like the normal GPL or
| LGPL?
| db48x wrote:
| If they had removed the Further Restrictions clause and still
| called it the AGPLv3, then they would have infringed on the
| FSF's trademarks. The FSF grants anyone a license to use the
| language of the GPL, LGPL and AGPL licenses however they want,
| provided they either use the whole thing under the proper name,
| or they use only the parts they want under a name of their own.
| Beldin wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| That is an aspect the fine article omitted, alas. It explains
| the title as well as giving a reason why a private company
| couldn't release something under whatever license they like.
|
| Basically: they can, but cannot give the license a
| trademarked name then.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think that would change the actual license on the
| code though? Just that fsf could sue them over using that
| name
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