MongoDB Wire Protocol Specification License

Is the wire protocol copyrightable? If not, then this license only affects the _document_ itself, not downstream implementations that may _use_ the document.<p>And if there is a differently-licenses _implementation_ of the protocol, one would assume that it is possible to implement (or just use directly) that implementation without any reliance on this specific specification document.<p>In other words: IANAL but I don&#x27;t think this will accomplish what they want (which is Amazon re-implementing a wire-compatible-with-MongoDB database)<p>As an example: I (probably) can&#x27;t scan and redistribute an entire cookbook, but I can bake cookies from a recipe in the cookbook and sell them.

It&#x27;s seems a bit pointless to publish a protocol with a restrictive license.<p>The basic purpose of a protocol is interoperability, yet the restrictive license works directly against that.<p>I also wonder about the reach of this kind of license. It&#x27;s a license on the published work. So suppose I read this, whole-heartedly agree to the terms of the license, and use it to create a MongoDB Interop framework. I include attribution and release it under BSD.<p>Am I good?<p>I did not use the work for a commercial purpose and provided attribution, etc.<p>Now suppose some commercial cloud provider picks up my framework and uses it to implement MongoDB interop. Aren&#x27;t <i>they</i> good too? They followed my license. They may not even be aware of the protocol specification, much less have viewed or used it in any way.<p>So what exactly has the protocol specification license accomplished?<p>(I am not a lawyer, so I&#x27;m sure I don&#x27;t understand, but I&#x27;d like to.)

Out of curiosity, why did Mongo get so popular? I used it in university when it was hyped and it was pleasant to get started with. The ability to query your data is so inconvenient though, I switched to SQL and I&#x27;m confused about what made experienced developers switch from SQL to mongo in the past. Is it just because you can scale up more easily when your database gets massive?<p>Like NodeJS and many web technologies, almost everything I read about it years ago turned out to be hype and not based on facts (eg, nodejs being faster for large numbers of requests than traditional backends is not true, but it was widely repeated on the first 10 pages of google search results)<p>edit: very well said, thanks for all the replies!

Does the linked license <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;creativecommons.org&#x2F;licenses&#x2F;by-nc-sa&#x2F;3.0&#x2F;us&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;creativecommons.org&#x2F;licenses&#x2F;by-nc-sa&#x2F;3.0&#x2F;us&#x2F;</a> really mean you cannot read it, and then write a piece of software that implements it?<p>My reading of the license implies it covers _the document_, like a book or a song could be licensed that you cannot modify and redistribute the results, or maybe not redistribute at all: not what you make with the information you gain from reading it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.creativecommons.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;NonCommercial_interpretation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.creativecommons.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;NonCommercial_interpre...</a> makes me think the license is about _copyright_, not about what you make with the document. The page also has the explanation about &quot;Explanations of NC do not modify the CC license&quot;.<p>Even if the NC clarification somehow held true, then I still don&#x27;t see how it would prevent someone from writing e.g. a MIT-licensed library implementing the interface (the non-commercial use bit) and then someone else just takes it and uses it for whatever, within the limitations of the MIT license.

HN is reacting as if this licensing change was made today, but it was made back in <i>2012</i>, when they licensed their specification under a Creative Commons non-commercial variant. Today&#x27;s linked commit is merely a text blurb reminding human beings of that license.

A company I worked at was hounded by MongoDB to the point where the sales rep turned up unannounced and talked his way to the dev department. He was quickly escorted off site.

I wonder if this MongoDB&#x27;s interpretation of Creative Commons is even correct. Typically restrictions apply to reuse at the specific material not use of the knowledge derived from the material.

This appears to be the licence for the documentation on the wire protocol, not the actual wire protocol itself. That would be essentially a part of MongoDB itself, or likely as the Google vs Oracle case decided, not something that can be licenced.<p>At least that&#x27;s my understanding. Am I missing something here? It&#x27;s fairly reasonable for a company to licence their docs with a non-commercial licence like this.

The original version of MongoDB valued speed over durability, which was not a good look for a database. Since then I have never been able to trust them, even though I&#x27;ve been told repeatedly that &quot;they have changed now&quot;.<p>They have great marketing and appear to solve problems for some customers, but they also seem to cause major problems for customers.<p>So I&#x27;ll just keep advocating to stay away from it.

Just another reason why mongodb is trash - does it even go without saying anymore?<p>Every single company I&#x27;ve ever worked for was crushed by the unreliability of mongo. They&#x27;re ultra-expensive consulting is also a ripoff - in one case the guy came, suggested a bunch of stuff w.r.t. changing up our queries and indexes, left, then a day later the database exploded and we had to roll back everything he suggested. We tried again piecemeal, which eventually lead to the same thing happening again. Eventually spending the cash to train the engineers and admins to be able to do the tuning ourselves - which ended up being completely different than the garbage the consultant suggested. Let me emphasize that this consultant was from the MongoDB company - not some third party. Completely incompetent company at all levels.<p>Mongodb exists to extort money from idiots on their cloud offering where costs balloon out of control. It was easily 40% of our monthly infrastructure bill and what we got out of it definitely did not reflect that.<p>We refused to pay them. Don&#x27;t ever give Atlas money.

This feels restrictive, especially in comparison to Postgresql. Where you have projects like CockroachDB which utilize the Postgresql wire protocol because of how well documented it is.

Could this be targeted against people who implement Mongodb API without being Mongodb? See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;azure&#x2F;cosmos-db&#x2F;mongodb-introduction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;azure&#x2F;cosmos-db&#x2F;mongodb-int...</a>

AWS benefits heavily from a rich foss ecosystem, but foss systems also makes it easier for users to migrate to similar platforms. If they were to disrupt the foss ecosystem enough, do we enter a world of heavy reliance on proprietary cloud-based systems?<p>If you were intending to create a profitable business, and really wanted your product to be foss, and Amazon might just fork your project, honestly, what are your options? I&#x27;m honestly curious, it seems like such a difficult situation