The rise of the Server Side Public License (SSPL)

[nolski (Mike Nolan)]

@chris

But on the other hand imagine you are a hosting co-op which wants to provide Elasticsearch as a service to other co-ops, to do this the hosting co-op would have to release the whole software stack providing this service under the SSPL — this is basically an impossible requirement as you would have to have an operating system that is released under the SSPL to run it on and no such thing exists…

This is the one thing that confuses me. If your stack and be run using essentially docker-compose or kubernetes and all the images are freely available, does that adhere to the SSPL? When my non-lawyer eyes read the AGPL/SSPL comparison, I want to say yes.

I’ve seen some lawyers make vague gestures saying that pretty much no one can use SSPL licensed software if you’re going to host it as a service but the only ones who I’ve seen say that work for a FAANG or IBM.