The developers of the data visualization platform Grafana have announced their transition to the AGPLv3 license, replacing the previously used Apache 2.0 license. A similar license change has been made for the log aggregation system Loki and the distributed tracing backend Tempo. Plugins, agents, and some libraries will continue to be provided under the Apache 2.0 license.
Interestingly, some users note that one of the reasons for the early success of the Grafana project, which initially aimed to optimize the interface of an already existing product Kibana for visualizing time-series data and move away from dependence on the Elasticsearch storage, was the choice of a more permissive code license. Over time, the Grafana developers formed the company Grafana Labs, which began promoting commercial products such as the cloud system Grafana Cloud and the commercial solution Grafana Enterprise Stack.
The decision to change the license was made to stay afloat and remain competitive with vendors who do not participate in development but use modified versions of Grafana in their products. Unlike the radical measures taken by projects like ElasticSearch, Redis, MongoDB, Timescale, and Cockroach, which switched to a non-open license, Grafana Labs attempted to strike a balance between community and business interests. Transitioning to AGPLv3, in Grafana Labs' view, is the optimal solution: on one hand, AGPLv3 meets the criteria for free and open licenses, while on the other hand, it prevents exploitation of open projects.
Those who use unmodified versions of Grafana in their services or publish code changes (for example, Red Hat Openshift and Cloud Foundry) will not be affected by the license change. The change will also not impact Amazon, which provides the cloud product Amazon Managed Service for Grafana (AMG), as this company is a strategic partner in the development and provides many services to the project. Companies with a corporate policy prohibiting the use of the AGPL license may continue to use older releases under the Apache license, for which updates to fix vulnerabilities will continue to be published. Another option is to use the proprietary Enterprise edition of Grafana, which can be used for free if additional paid features are not activated by purchasing a key.
It should be noted that the AGPLv3 license introduces additional restrictions for applications that enable the operation of network services. When using AGPL components to support a service, the developer is required to provide users with the source code of all modifications made to these components, even if the underlying software is not distributed and is used solely within the internal infrastructure for service operation. The AGPLv3 license is only compatible with GPLv3, leading to a licensing conflict with applications licensed under GPLv2. For instance, distributing a library under AGPLv3 requires all applications that use this library to distribute their code under the AGPLv3 or GPLv3 license, which is why some Grafana libraries remain under the Apache 2.0 license.
In addition to the license change, the Grafana project has transitioned to a new agreement with developers (CLA), defining the transfer of ownership rights to the code, which allows Grafana Labs to change the license without approval from all development participants. Instead of the old agreement based on the Harmony Contributor Agreement, a new agreement has been introduced, based on a document signed by participants of the Apache Foundation. It is stated that this new agreement is clearer and more familiar to developers.
Source: opennet.ru
