Vendors abandoning open source licencing accused of cakeism

As Lightbend becomes the latest adoptor of 'source available' for Akka, companies pretending they are still open source are accused of wanting to have their cake and eat it

Software vendor Lightbend this week became the latest to shift away from its open source heritage in favour of so-called 'source available' licencing.

Akka, a popular middleware project, was until this week licenced under Apache 2.0, but Lightbend has now moved it to Business Source License (BSL) v1.1, a licencing system pioneered by MariaDB and later adopted by Cockroach Labs and others, which is not recognised as open source.

Akka is a toolkit and runtime designed to simplify the construction of concurrent and distributed applications on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It has a significant community of developers, with more than 24,000 commits and 12,400 stars on GitHub, and couts PayPal, Walmart and Unicredit Group among its user base.

New Akka licence, new Akka pricing

Apache 2.0 is one of the most permissive licences, with few restrictions on the use of the code, but BSL imposes some strict rules, at least for larger organisations.

Previously, like most open source firms, Lightbend earned money from support, but now organisations earning more than US$25 million in annual revenue will have to fork out a hefty $1,995 per core per year for production usage of Akka and its modules, rising to $2,995 for 24/7 support. Smaller organisations can still use it for free, but must apply for a licence to do so.

In an unusual step, after three years, Akka code will revert automatically to the Apache 2.0 scheme, but controversially, Lightbend will not allow backporting (using new code with the old Apache-licenced codebase), which could mean that new security patches, for example, won't be applicable to users of the previous version of Akka.

The move is likely to prove unpopular with some in the Akka developer community who will see Lightbend, a company formed by Scala creator Martin Odersky and current CEO and Akka creator Jonas Bonér, which has received $42 million in VC funding, profiting financially from their work.

Why do some open source projects move to source available licences?

Open source firms like Lightbend with VC backing looking for an exit are often the most inclined to shift to source available licences like BSL, Elastic License or MongoDB's, Server Side Public License (SSPL) as they see it as being the best way to boost revenues.

Another motivation is to prevent their core products being resold and rebadged by big cloud vendors, who are frequently accused of making negligible contributions to the code itself. And adopters also tend to be projects where a large proportion of the code is written by one company rather than a broad community, which is the primary reason for Lightbend's move, at least according to its website.

In a blog post, Bonér said Apache 2.0 is not suitable for "large, global project" like Akka.

"Apache 2.0 is a very liberal license well suited for early, small open source projects establishing community. It essentially gives users the right to do whatever they want without any restrictions or obligations to contribute back to the community and the project from which they benefit," he wrote.

"Over the years, Lightbend has steadily borne more of the support for Akka. With Akka now considered critical infrastructure for many large organisations, the Apache 2.0 model becomes increasingly risky when a small company solely carries the maintenance effort. Balancing the global demands of our corporate community while supporting these needs of a vast open source base is a tremendous weight to bear."

BSL, he continued, "means that companies using the software for profit need to give something back, either code, documentation, community work, or money. In sustainable open source, participants feel the need and moral obligation to contribute."

But source available is not open source

Bonér describes Lightbend's combination of BSL with relicencing after three years plus a free tier as "a form of productive and sustainable open source", but the arbiter on such issues, the Open Source Institute (OSI), refuses to classify BSL and other source available licences as as open source.

Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, a not-for-profit that advocates for open technology, is also sceptical. She sees the practice of trying to lever in new definitions as harmful. No matter how companies like Lightbend try to frame it, open source is open source, proprietary is proprietary, she said.

"Source available, public source etc., are a form of proprietary licencing as they don't meet the standard of the Open Source Definition or have OSI approval for the licences, Brock told Computing in an email.

"Individuals and organisations labelling licences that don't have this as open source has the potential to threaten the whole ecosystem of open source software that so many have spent so much personal and business resources building."

Companies like Lightbend and Cockroach misunderstand open source, treating it as a business model rather than a way to speed innovation for all, she said.

Brock expressed "disappointment" in "those who have engaged in the open source software ecosystem failing to understand its meaning or worse taking advantage of the benefits of Open Source adoption and the ubiquity it can create, as a marketing tool then flipping out to a proprietary model - however that is dressed up."

She continued: "In Lightbend's case we see another 'Doubling Down on Open' [a reference to Elastic's attempt to reframe open source to suit its purposes] where an organisation is - whether intentionally or misguidedly - creating FUD by labelling proprietary licencing open source."

Her sentiments were echoed by Peter Zaitsev, CEO of database consultancy Percona, who said that unilateral efforts to expand the definition of open source "erode trust".

"Another day, another company announces they will change their licence away from open source, stating ‘we believe in a model of sustainable open source'," Zaitsev said.

"What Jonas Bonér really means is that they do not believe an open source licence suits their business goals best any longer and a proprietary, source available license (BSL) will work better than Apache 2.0"

Open source is not about making it easy for you to do business, he added, it is about freedoms for the users of your software.

"There is nothing to be ashamed of if your business needs a proprietary (including source available) licence to be successful for part or all of the software you produce. Where I have a problem, though, is this attempt to redefine what open source software means because you want to have a cake and eat it too."

Lightbend has been approached for comment.