It's honestly getting tiresome reading about yet another company that rides on the wave of open source for popularity and growth, but only for as long as it suits their own bottom line. Just like every other example, the page is filled to the brim with borderline unparsable marketing speak and, excuse my french, pure bullshit. Here's an example:
> we are updating our licensing model to better serve our diverse community of users
One could hope that whoever wrote this at least had the decency to blush while doing so. So here's what's actually happening, as I understand it at least:
CockroachDB used to be split into "Core" and "Enterprise". Core was Apache 2.0 licensed (open source), Enterprise was BSL (fake open source, "source available", bullshit). After three years, BSL code becomes real open source. This setup that they are sunsetting is already pretty restrictive, and is by no means uncontroversially "open source".
The New And Improved(tm) idea they have to "better serve" their "diverse community of users" is even worse: it's free as in beer to use, but other than that it's completely proprietary, and it also includes *mandatory telemetry* for non-paying users. Any reference to "open" in regards to this product is a complete lie, because being able to read the source code does not make a product open source -- Microsoft allows you to read their code too, if you sign a piece of paper with them.
I've never used CockroachDB, but I'm glad I saw this, because now I know there's a 0% chance I will ever consider using it.
That's the problem with the term "open source". It is ambiguous and can mean anything from public domain to source available. If you just allow people to look at the source, you can call it "open source" and nobody can really argue.
If you did that and called it GPL, things would be different.
It's certainly not ambiguous, but the reason why companies like CockroachDB and others would like to make it appear so certainly is obvious. Anyone confused can just be referred to "The Open Source Definition"[1] by the OSI.
"the definition is the most common standard for open-source software."
It is not exclusive.
saying "open source" does not describe a license. It is a generic term.
And the point is that unless someone points to a standard or a license, they can call their software open source, just show you the source with restrictions and use ambiguity to do different things than expected.
It’s not like “freedom” because open source software was a term invented only a few decades ago. Definitions that stray from this definition do so for a very obvious reason in every case I’ve ever seen, and that reason is profit.
You can’t just take a well established term and say “well actually I don’t agree” and don’t expect to annoy people. If you don’t agree with the ideas of FLOSS then use something else and call it something else.
> we are updating our licensing model to better serve our diverse community of users
One could hope that whoever wrote this at least had the decency to blush while doing so. So here's what's actually happening, as I understand it at least:
CockroachDB used to be split into "Core" and "Enterprise". Core was Apache 2.0 licensed (open source), Enterprise was BSL (fake open source, "source available", bullshit). After three years, BSL code becomes real open source. This setup that they are sunsetting is already pretty restrictive, and is by no means uncontroversially "open source".
The New And Improved(tm) idea they have to "better serve" their "diverse community of users" is even worse: it's free as in beer to use, but other than that it's completely proprietary, and it also includes *mandatory telemetry* for non-paying users. Any reference to "open" in regards to this product is a complete lie, because being able to read the source code does not make a product open source -- Microsoft allows you to read their code too, if you sign a piece of paper with them.
I've never used CockroachDB, but I'm glad I saw this, because now I know there's a 0% chance I will ever consider using it.