Add Company: Batteries Inclued

[elliottneilclark]

Company Name

Batteries Included

Announcement Link

https://www.batteriesincl.com/posts/fairsource / https://www.batteriesincl.com/posts/public-beta-announcement

Background Color

#FFFFFF

Description

Logo: https://github.com/batteries-included/batteries-included/blob/master/static/src/assets/images/logo-with-text-stacked.svg

License: https://www.batteriesincl.com/LICENSE-1.0

• Time Bound Apache 2.0
• Always Free for small clusters
• Developed in the open

Github: https://github.com/batteries-included/batteries-included/

Batteries Included is a self-hosted software infrastructure platform. The user chooses where and for what purpose they would like to set up a Kubernetes cluster and all related services. The automation then starts everything on their machines or in their cloud account. All services are permissively licensed (BSD-3, MIT, Apache 2.0), while the automation and control servers are Fair Source.

[ezekg]

Love to see it. Has this feedback by @chadwhitacre been addressed per #21 (comment)?

Returning here from working on the FAQ, for "Is Fair Source software safe to use?" I want to say, "Yes. Fair Source licenses are written such that it is difficult to violate them." On the one hand, ensuring that is true would likely require adding this to the definition. On the other, thinking through how our existing crop of licenses would fare against this requirement, the BUSL is sorta out the window due to its variability (we'll need to vet individual implementations of companies rather than being able to depend on the license itself), but for FSL and FCL I believe this holds true. However, I don't think it's true of BIL, where I find this:

A Permitted Purpose is use of any single instance of the Software on a cluster of up to 3 nodes, where a “node” is any network host in a container system, whether physical, virtual, or para-virtualized.

This puts a burden on the user to carefully read the license and self-monitor their usage of the software. This is in contrast to FSL and FCL where a user who does not read the license is highly unlikely to violate it in the normal course of using the software. One does not stand up a competing SaaS service or circumvent license key restrictions accidentally.

I think it would greatly aid the growth of Fair Source if we can guarantee that it is safe to run for 99.999% of cases. I don't see that we can accept BIL as it stands and keep that guarantee.

@elliottneilclark Could Batteries Included be written in such a way as to determine programmatically if it is being run on a cluster of more than three nodes, and require a license key or simply fail to run if so?

[elliottneilclark]

Has this feedback by @chadwhitacre been addressed per #21 (comment)?

No, and I don't have a timeline for it. Right now all billing is turned off, so it won't be a top priority for quite a while. When we do, we'll do our best to keep billing surprises to a minimum.

But I'm disappointed that the Fair Source community is trying to say that automating making sure that no one breaks our license is a requirement. My understanding was that this wasn't about someone's definition of license purity. It's supposed to meet two parts: minimal restrictions and time-delayed open source.

We have minimal restrictions, and they are very clear and definitive. Our license allows most home use (I have three servers in my cluster, and the fan noise is rough already), most production use cases on large servers (we only need 2 AWS nodes to run every service other than Kubernetes), and all development use (which is on a Docker kind cluster with one node).

You will be billed if your Kube cluster has more than three nodes. This isn't up for interpretation or change by an outside entity, so it's easy to understand, and the user can agree to it or not, knowing that both sides are likely to agree on infringing behaviors.

Our license goes to Apache 2 after a time.

This is in contrast to FSL and FCL where a user who does not read the license is highly unlikely to violate

Gotta say this stance disappoints me.

The FCL and similar agreements require an understanding of all parties' competing business interests. Business interests are ever-changing and ill-defined even in medium-sized enterprises, meaning that they can be pretty ambiguous and that conflicts can easily arise. It's much harder to promise to follow intent/competing use-based licenses now and in the future.

This is just a reminder that Elastic started out only offering consulting on how to run ES. Then, they added a cloud offering. Cloudera acquired cloud services after being all about self-hosted. So, if they were using "permitted usage" language, the amount of restrictions that they asserted would change drastically.

Even with that, the FSL/FCL is fine for Fair Source because it's a good compromise that meets all the criteria.

If, instead, there's a set of ever-expanding, nice-to-have requirements for being Fair Source, it will devolve into the no-true Scotsman of OSI defining open source.

[ezekg]

For what it's worth, I personally want Batteries Included to be a part of Fair Source. So I hope you don't feel pushed out here; not my intentions.

We have minimal restrictions, and they are very clear and definitive. Our license allows most home use (I have three servers in my cluster, and the fan noise is rough already), most production use cases on large servers (we only need 2 AWS nodes to run every service other than Kubernetes), and all development use (which is on a Docker kind cluster with one node).

You will be billed if your Kube cluster has more than three nodes. This isn't up for interpretation or change by an outside entity, so it's easy to understand, and the user can agree to it or not, knowing that both sides are likely to agree on infringing behaviors.

Is this currently an honor system or is it enforced at the software layer? e.g. can a user easily spin up 8 nodes accidentally, or is that not possible or they'll somehow be billed? What helps prevent a user, or business, from violating the limit?

I think that's what we're trying to get at here — license violations should be intentional, not accidental; that's what we mean when we say a Fair Source license should be "safe to use." (See #64.)

(I also think a business violating a "competing use" clause would fall under an intentional violation, but maybe that's conjecture, for the reasons mentioned.)

I saw you closed this issue, but let me know if you're interested in finding a way forward here.