licensing of dependencies/components

[Matthias Weiler]

Hi everyone!

I noticed that tldraw changed to a custom, proprietary license. (or will
change to that license with the release of v2?)

https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/blob/main/LICENSE.md

> You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works
> in any form for commercial purposes.

To my understanding this means that organizations that use BigBlueButton
"for commercial purposes" have to get (and pay) a license from tldraw.

A similar problem is MongoDB. BigBlueButton depends on that component
but it is licensed under SSPL which means (from Wikipedia)

> anyone who offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed software to
> third-parties as a service must release the entirety of their source
> code, including all software, APIs, and other software that would be
> required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves,
> under the SSPL.

So local changes to a BigBlueButton-installation have to be published if
I understand this correctly. (IANAL)

Fred commented on this a while ago here:
https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bbb-install/issues/261#issuecomment-761094702

I think those dependencies and their license-requirements should at
least be clearly mentioned in the repository. Here is an example:
https://github.com/nextcloud/server/blob/master/COPYING-README

Matthias

[sd...@distancelearning.cloud]

Hi Mattias, believe the project has tagged the last release of TLdraw that was open and is working with this as a basis to integrate to 3.0
Fred can speak to plans to support both the free and future commercial versions

Regards,
Stephen

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[Anton Georgiev]

Hi!

We forked tldraw/tldraw as bigbluebutton/tldraw and are in the process of switching the dependency in the client and in bbb-playback. In BBB 3.0 we will keep using tldraw v2 alpha ~19 which is the last tag tldraw had prior to the licence change. There is still work in this area but this is the idea.

And regarding MongoDB -- BBB 3.0 has seen a huge amount of work transitioning away from Meteor (and MongoDB). We expect to be able to drop the MongoDB dependency later in 2024.

-Anton

[Marcel Hellkamp]

> A similar problem is MongoDB. BigBlueButton depends on that component
> but it is licensed under SSPL which means (from Wikipedia)
>
>> anyone who offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed software to
>> third-parties as a service must release the entirety of their source
>> code, including all software, APIs, and other software that would be
>> required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves,
>> under the SSPL.
>
> So local changes to a BigBlueButton-installation have to be published
> if I understand this correctly. (IANAL)

No, since BBB does not "offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed
software to third-parties as a service". The problematic SSPL license
terms only apply if you are offering MongoDB (or a database similar to
it) as a service. The intention was to prevent large cloud providers
(e.g. aws) from offering re-branded MongoDB instances as a payed service
without paying or giving back to the project. Simply using MongoDB as a
database is fine, even in commercial products or services.

I still support moving away from non-FOSS software whenever possible.

VG, Marcel

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Marcel,

Thanks for following up and clarifying for Matthias.  Your response is correct.

Regards,.. Fred

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