That's interesting that you know Vicky, Thomas. That was actually the first 
article I read before posting to this listserv. It was interesting.

Thanks for that excerpt, Jonathan, although I think you have omitted a very 
important part where they define a service:

"""
Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third 
parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to 
interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely 
through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or 
primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or 
offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the 
Program or modified version.
"""

Personally, I find the definition from 1.3 to be vague as "enabling third 
parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version 
remotely through a computer network" or "offering a service the value of which 
entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified 
version" could really be interpreted a variety of ways. Not good.

If you read "1.3 Offering the Program as a Service" from the Elastic 
perspective, that text makes some sense. They're trying to prevent AWS (and 
other cloud providers) from providing Elasticsearch as a managed service, as 
they think that the competition directly impacts their own managed service 
business. MongoDB created the SSPL licence and started using it in October 
2018. Of course, it seems that Amazon just forked the last AGPL version of 
MongoDB to create Amazon DocumentDB in January 2019 
(https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-documentdb-with-mongodb-compatibility-fast-scalable-and-highly-available/).
 Redis also changed some of its licensing a while ago: 
https://redislabs.com/legal/licenses/. 

But, at this point, I don't think there have been any legal cases that actually 
test the SSPL. But it's still early days. 

I suppose when considering products, we might want to consider the life of the 
product too. Here is a critical article on MongoDB's finances: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/07/20/dont-chase-growth-with-mongodb/?sh=568631c64ef3.
 Perhaps the licence change won't be enough and they'll eventually be bought by 
a larger tech company. 

No idea. 

David Cook
Software Engineer
Prosentient Systems
Suite 7.03
6a Glen St
Milsons Point NSW 2061
Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899
Online: 02 8005 0595

-----Original Message-----
From: Koha-devel <koha-devel-boun...@lists.koha-community.org> On Behalf Of 
Jonathan Druart
Sent: Friday, 15 January 2021 10:22 PM
To: koha-devel <koha-devel@lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Elasticsearch changing licences

Thanks Thomas, great article.

It's what I thought this morning when I read their FAQ and the license, they 
don't mean the same.

The license clearly states:
"""
If you make the functionality of the Program or a modified version available to 
third parties as a service, you must make the Service Source Code available via 
network download to everyone at no charge, under the terms of this License.
[...]
“Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the 
modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to 
make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without 
limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program 
interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage 
software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of 
the service using the Service Source Code you make available.
"""

That's crazy!

Le ven. 15 janv. 2021 à 11:47, Thomas Klausner <d...@plix.at> a écrit :
>
> Hi!
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 10:11:20AM +0000, Hugo Agud Andreu wrote:
>
> > as far as I have understood we still could use as ES license is 
> > still open, tha changes only affects to those that change the code 
> > of ES that they will be forced to publish their own developments, as 
> > Koha only uses API and none code modification is done, then no 
> > problem with ussing ES
>
> I haven't looked into the detail myself, but I know Vicky, and assume 
> that she spend a fair shair of thinking before publishing this:
> https://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2021/01/14/elasticsearch-and-kiba
> na-are-now-business-risks
>
> I'm using ES in a few projects, so I will have to consider if I just 
> freeze ES at the current version, and/or look for some alternatives in 
> the future. Or maybe they won't go through with the new license? Or 
> maybe it will be clarified how the license actually affects projects 
> just using ES.
>
> Greetings,
> domm
>
> --
> #!/usr/bin/perl                              http://domm.plix.at
> for(ref bless{},just'another'perl'hacker){s-:+-$"-g&&print$_.$/}
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