Major licensing issues about go-agent

[vinhnewrelic]

@mihaitodor @relistan I've been working on this with @nehaduggal . I understand the challenge folks are having with the language in the current license and had another conversation with our legal team. We were able to adjust the language so that it isn't as restrictive. This change has been merged into the build for the upcoming release (coming in the next few weeks).

Sorry about the wait! Let me know if you have any questions.

[subvocal]

Still working on it, @relistan. I'm targeting early next week to have an update for you.

[vinhnewrelic]

Update: We pushed out v1.10 of the agent today and it contains the license update (along with a few other things).

[relistan]

I should point out that these clauses are not present in at least two other agents:

• the Ruby agent: https://github.com/newrelic/rpm/blob/master/LICENSE
• the Node agent: https://github.com/newrelic/node-newrelic/blob/master/LICENSE

The changes in the Go agent license appear to have been intentionally introduced here

[subvocal]

@relistan - thanks for the feedback on the license. I'm discussing this with our Legal team.

[relistan]

@victorNewRelic awesome, thanks!

[relistan]

Any update here @victorNewRelic?

[relistan]

Thanks @victorNewRelic

[subvocal]

Hi @relistan,
We've talked this through internally and we feel the existing terms are still aligned with our requirements. The intent of those terms is to make sure the New Relic Go agent is used only with the New Relic services, whether paid or "Lite" subscriptions. In the case where your subscription lapses, the subscription reverts to "Lite" so you’re fine.

Your situation with regards to the license limiting what you can do with your open source project presents a different kind of use case. At the end of the day, what you need is for all your library dependencies to be compliant with your project's license. New Relic's license will not be broadly compatible with open source licenses because of the provision that the Go agent only be used in conjunction with New Relic services. I wonder though, would an open source project want to include vendor specific instrumentation?

I'm a huge fan of open source authors including instrumentation in their projects and there's a way that folks can do that with OpenTracing without tying their projects to specific vendor implementations or licenses. New Relic doesn't support OpenTracing yet though.

Thanks,
-Victor

[relistan]

Hi Victor. Thanks for reviewing but I think you guys missed the point of the argument. The main thing is that this prevents anyone from using the agent at all:

These files and their contents shall not be used in conjunction with any other
product or software, including but not limited to those that may compete with
any New Relic product, feature, or software.

The way this is worded, you cannot even use it compiled with any another library. That doesn't make sense. "In conjunction with" has the same legal definition that it does in plain English. This license prevents you from using the agent with anything at all.

Secondly, in our case we need to run a piece of software that is licensed with the AGPL. This requires that you open source any modifications to the software. Since we'd be instrumenting it with the Go agent, thus modifying it, we'd have to open source it. But we can't open source it under the terms of the New Relic agent license because anyone who uses it still has to register with New Relic to get a Lite subscription. This wouldn't comply with AGPL.

Third, in the case of general open source: it's not a problem at all to have New Relic instrumentation in a service as long as the instrumentation can be disabled. I'm not sure why you guys think that's a problem? Lots of things have instrumentation in them that people don't use. The problem with the license in this case is that it doesn't distinguish between compiling against the library and using the service. Which I believe are entirely separable (per, for example, Node and Ruby agents).

[relistan]

@victorNewRelic Any response on this yet? I spoke with @benders who I believe was under the impression that there was some motion here. We're blocked on this, and honestly all of your customers should be blocked on this if they were to read the license.

[relistan]

@victorNewRelic if you guys aren't going to take action it would be good to know that for sure so we can give up on the Go agent. I'd rather get resolution instead, but either way an update would be great.

[nehaduggal-zz]

@relistan I am sorry for the delay in responding while we continue to work on this. The terms you mentioned were put in the agreement to prevent misuse of our code. It was never our intention to confuse folks with our language.

Use of this agent has presented use cases that we had not foreseen and not considered when we initially drafted the license. We are working with our legal team on clarifying the language and getting you a license that will work for your use case.

[mihaitodor]

@nehaduggal @victorNewRelic Is there any update on this? It's been almost 6 months since this issue was raised and it would be good to know if we should expect to be able to use this NewRelic agent in production anytime soon. Thank you!

[relistan]

@vinhnewrelic Thanks! Looking forward to a saner license!