Open washing, which is to say the proliferation of licenses that look FOSS if you squint but don’t work if you look closer, and practices related to these licenses. Here we have big players like Elastic, Redis, MongoDB, and numerous smaller cases as well. The practice of building off of the lavish advantages of being in the FOSS ecosystem, then pulling the rug and seeking exclusive commercial monopolization of the end result.

Someone help me understand why this is a problem. I am willing to accept that I’m missing something. As I see it,

1. Strong copyleft licenses like GPL attempt to put restrictions on what you can do with the software because of ways that corporations have exploited more permissively licensed FOSS projects.
2. Examples include the “TiVo” stuff in GPL v3 which forces users to not lock people into specific executables or AGPL which prevents a loop hole of wrapping GPL software in something to allow usage over a network and not be considered distributing.
3. Some FOSS advocates go so far as to call permissive licenses derogatory things like “cuck licenses” because of how they potentially allow corporations to exploit your work.
4. Mongo, Elastic, and now Redis felt exploited by companies and that AGPL (what I believe is generally accepted as the most restrictive FOSS license) was not restrictive enough to meet their needs and switched to SSPL. Mongo in particular was even already using AGPL.
5. The SSPL was rejected by the OSI because it allegedly discriminates against would-be SaaS providers which would violate OSD #6. I don’t see how that’s any more true than saying GPL v3 “discriminates against DVR manufacturers” because it had a clause specifically to combat what TiVo was doing or even saying AGPL “discriminates against SaaS providers” because it requires network use to be considered distribution (Google specifically warns against it).
6. AGPL closed a loop hole in GPL. That’s a fact. I don’t think that’s debatable. I believe SSPL is closing a loop hole in AGPL and I am confused why others disagree.
7. Mongo, Elastic, and Redis are available under the SSPL but the requirements are strict enough that no SaaS providers want to use them. They are also available under commercial licenses which lift those restrictions for a price. The goal of this is to allow the benefits of open source without being exploited. While people disagreeing with me about SSPL being FOSS might say that this is intended to make it difficult for SaaS providers, I’d point out that dual licensing is common and acceptable. Take Qt for example. You can either use Qt and be bound by GPL (which means it is difficult for you and you have to release some of your would-be proprietary code) or you can pay for a commercial license and not be bound by GPL.

So… My question is, what’s different about SSPL?

• Why is SSPL not considered FOSS while other restrictive licenses like AGPL and GPL v3 are?
• How are companies behind FOSS projects meant to prevent their code from being exploited by SaaS providers?
• Is there some hypothetical lesser version of SSPL that still captures the essence of it while still being more restrictive than AGPL that would prevent exploitation by SaaS providers?