Comment by danhab99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danhab99 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> I'm not sure what "eat section 13 of Mongo's license" means

Buncha weeks ago I had a paranoid fit about the legalities of this app I wanna try to launch. I read some conserning things about the MongoDB license, mainly that the open source initiative didn't approve it bc Mongo pulled out. I read the controvertial paragraph and now I am 80% convinced that I'm not allowed to self-host a MongoDB server for my own profit.. I'd have to pay.. which why should I when SQL is free. BUT I DON'T WANNA USE SQL. And frankly MongoDB wasn't living up to the stresses I wanted from it but Dgraph does.

Asking for help on stackexchange didn't do me any better https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/74510/can-i-use-mong...

I was planning on self-hosting my Dgraph database anyways, and if this app actually ends up being something, I would beable to calculate milestones that I'd need to reach before considering upgrading to Dgraph Enterprise. Now I'm more worried about future support. Is Dgraph going to be sunsetted, and will I have the features I might need in the future. IDK I think I just freaked out about something I didn't understand, sry guys.

IANAL but from what I know about Mongos current license (Server Side Public License) the restrictions of section 13 only apply if you are making a service with the express interest in providing DB functionality directly to your customers/users. IE: If you are making a Database as a Service platform, similar to Mongo Atlas or AWS RDS.

If you are just using mongo as a backend DB to fulfill some other internal requirement in your application, like general CRUD operations, then you are fine.

Arite, now the tally is even. I've heard the same number of people say to me that it's safe to use Mongo to power an app so long as I don't expose it, as have told me that I can't because I have to opensource all of my code that interacts with Mongo.

Euxodus is right. As long as you’re not building a product where the primary value of it is just delivering MongoDB as a service, you’re fine. There’s an FAQ that addresses that and more here https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license...

I suggest to differentiate between selling MongoDB as a service (which would break the SSPL) using MongoDB as a database in your solution where you bind your application to the MongoDB driver that are licensed under Apache 2 (and which is the reason the knock offs can use MongoDB drivers and state they are MongoDB whatever compliant and be not because their stuff has nothing to do with MongoDB server but I digress). Nothing prevents you from utilising MongoDB Community in your own project/solution as DB backend.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com