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0 pointspavlov9y ago0 comments

The IP is open source, and Stripe owes nothing to RethinkDB's investors.

Why buy something you can have for free?

0 comments

Just a hypothetical - if you actually own the IP, you may be able to release future versions under non-free licenses. However I don't see Stripe in the premium-DB business.

ithkuil9y ago

yeah. RethinkDB is AGPL, which means that some people cannot use it (e.g. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sourc...). While a very well grounded interpretation says that merely using the AGPL'd service via a public API doesn't force you to release the clients, some companies would prefer buying a commercial license rather than facing the legal risk.

zeveb9y ago

> RethinkDB is AGPL, which means that some people cannot use it

That's completely false: anyone has the right to use it, for any purpose; that's what Freedom Zero is all about.

Some people do not want to both use it and also comply with its terms, but that is their choice; they can and may use it, but choose not to.

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st3v3r9y ago

"yeah. RethinkDB is AGPL, which means that some people cannot use it"

No, it means some people CHOOSE not to use it. There is nothing stopping them from deciding to use it, other than their own fears.

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reitanqild9y ago

There might still be copyrights, trademarks, domains (and even patents).

troymc9y ago

The copyrights and patents are already covered under the licenses they used (AGPL v3 and Apache v2). A search for RETHINKDB on the USPTO trademark search engine turns up no results.

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