This means this project is abandoning open source and free software, as the Elastic License is not an open source license.<p>> <i>The Apollo developer community is at the heart of everything we do. As stewards of our community, we have a responsibility to prevent harm from anyone who intends to exploit our work without contributing back. We want to continue serving you by funding the development of important open-source graph technology for years to come. To honor that commitment, we’re moving Apollo Federation 2 to the Elastic License v2 (ELv2).</i><p>One of these things can't be true.<p>It's really disheartening to see fake-open-source projects like this tout "the community" without realizing that taking software freedoms away (which is what this not-open-source license does) is ultimately an antisocial move. Being able to run a business off of a private fork of the <i>software you gave away</i> is not a bug, it's a feature. It's not exploiting anyone.<p>There are lot of fake open source people and companies around now. Docker Desktop, for example, isn't even source available.<p>Similarly, I personally view the AGPL as a nonfree license, although it's being pushed by anticapitalist zealots at the FSF who of course invented the notion of software freedom in the first place so my classification is, of course, controversial.
I used to be a Copyleft zealot. Thanks to the emergence of AWS and GCP, I’ve come around to being OK with licenses like Elastic, and if I start a software company in the future, I wouldn’t rule out protecting myself by licensing critical parts of my code with Elastic or a similar license.<p>I don’t even agree that these kinds of licenses are inherently “anti-FOSS”, but I do object to them being portrayed as actual FOSS licenses. “Source-available” is a reasonably well-defined term that should be used more often in these kinds of situations.<p>Edit: “You’re either with us or against us” is corrosive whether it’s in war, politics, software licensing, or any other realm.
There's another HN submission [0] of Drew Devault's take [1] on the license change: "Breaking down Apollo Federation's anti-FOSS corporate gaslighting".<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29116938" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29116938</a><p>[1] <a href="https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/05/Apollo-federation-2-gaslighting.html" rel="nofollow">https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/05/Apollo-federation-2-gasli...</a>
Here are 2 MIT alternatives:
<a href="https://github.com/jensneuse/graphql-go-tools" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jensneuse/graphql-go-tools</a>, written in Go, I'm the author.
<a href="https://github.com/mercurius-js/mercurius" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mercurius-js/mercurius</a>, written in NodeJS.
Here's a benchmark comparing the two with Apollo: <a href="https://wundergraph.com/blog/benchmark_apollo_federation_gateway_v1_vs_v2_vs_wundergraph" rel="nofollow">https://wundergraph.com/blog/benchmark_apollo_federation_gat...</a>
> A call for a standard open license<p>If Elastic wants to see this sustainable licensing model adopted as the norm, it's in their interest to rename the license so it's not branded to a single company.
The only reasonable commercial license to have on an open source friendly project is the Business Source License which MariaDB created and which eg. Sentry has adopted as well.<p>That license will always to resolve to a GPL-compatible license after at most 4 years after release, ensuring that even if the creator goes out of business, the code will always be forkable eventually.<p>More info: <a href="https://perens.com/2017/02/14/bsl-1-1/" rel="nofollow">https://perens.com/2017/02/14/bsl-1-1/</a>
> Many successful companies built on open-source technology (such as Elastic, MongoDB, and Confluent) have followed the path we’re taking to protect their communities<p>I'm pretty sure Confluent's licensing isn't to protect the Kafka community.