licensing open-source-software is-x-legal
Can I use MongoDB Community for profit?
<p>Recently Mongo has relicensed MongoDB under their own custom license.</p>
<ul>
<li>Suppose that a developer D plans to use MongoDB Community on his or her own self hosted servers.</li>
<li>Suppose further that D will use MongoDB Community to power a closed source proprietary app that D and investors in D's business plan to profit from.</li>
</ul>
<p>Can D use MongoDB Community without paying Mongo or publishing D's source code?</p>
<p>Edit: <a href="https://github.com/mongodb/mongo/blob/master/LICENSE-Community.txt" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Link to license</a></p>

<h2>Probably not</h2>
<p>I suspect that D cannot do that legally.</p>
<p>Section  13 of the license (Offering the Program as a Service) provides that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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. 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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems to me that the hypothetical business plan violates section 13 of the license if the &quot;Service Source Code&quot; is not made available to each and every user. Whether D and D's associates plan to make, or in fact do make, a profit is irrelevant. The license requires releasing such source code even if the service is made available for free. If D is not willing to make such source code available, then D would be wise to use a database program available on different terms.</p>
<p>Note that if D merely intends to run the DB program on D's own servers, but not provide access to the functionality of the DB to users, then there would be no requirement to provide any source code to anyone under the linked license. Whether the app in fact &quot;provides access to the functionality of the DB&quot; will depend on the exact function of the app, and may be a question of interpretation of the license. From the very brief description of the app in the question, it seems to me that it would. Before undertaking any such plan, D or anyone in D's position would be wise to consult a lawyer knowledgeable in open-source license law as it is applied in D's jurisdiction (which is not stated in the question at this time).</p>

<p>MongoDB's SSPL license is designed to prevent competition to its Atlas DBaaS offering, not to prevent commercial use of self-hosted MongoDB instances. However, it is unclear how exactly section 13 of the SSPL should be interpreted, so that a more cautious approach may be warranted.</p>
<p>First of all, it's important to note that if SSPL section 13 triggers, then license compliance will usually be impossible. Its definition of “service source code” covers the entire stack, and would require that the source code for this entire software stack is made available under the terms of the SSPL. This is impossible if there are parts of your stack that you didn't create yourself, and were licensed to you under either proprietary terms or under other copyleft licenses (e.g. GPL or LGPL).</p>
<p>However, section 13 <em>probably</em> doesn't trigger for most users. It talks about services that derive their “primary value” from MongoDB, or offer as a service the “primary purpose” of MongoDB, or allow remote network interaction with MongoDB. This seems to be targeted against “database as a service (DBaaS)” offerings. In contrast, most services or websites only use the database to support the main activity, but don't derive most of their value/functionality from that database. For example, a web shop might use the database to manage inventory, but the main value of that site derives from the actual inventory, and while customers can access information about products from the database they can't actually use it as a database service.</p>
<p>For some people, “probably” might not be good enough. The SSPL's concept of “service” is ill-defined, and might be found to be significantly broader than expected by typical MBAs or software developers. Thus, software development projects might decide to manage this risk e.g. by buying a commercial license from MongoDB, by using a competing NoSQL database service such as DynamoDB, or by using a database with well-understood Open Source terms such as PostgreSQL.</p>
