> /v1/glossary/sspl · LICENSE-MODEL
Server Side Public License(SSPL)
A copyleft license invented by MongoDB that requires anyone offering the software as a service to open source their entire stack.
The Server Side Public License (SSPL) was created by MongoDB Inc. in 2018 as a fork of the GNU AGPLv3. It includes Section 13 — a "service source code" requirement that demands anyone running the software as a publicly accessible service must release the source code of their entire service infrastructure under SSPL.
Because of that section, the SSPL is not OSI-approved as open source. The OSI argues the section is unenforceable and discriminates against fields of endeavor. The Free Software Foundation has not commented officially.
Major adopters: MongoDB, Elastic (post-2021 fork from Apache 2.0), Redis (mid-2024 alongside RSALv2), Sentry (briefly, before moving to BSL).
Practical effect: cloud providers like AWS can't offer "MongoDB-as-a-service" using SSPL'd code without releasing the rest of their cloud infra. AWS responded by forking pre-SSPL versions (e.g. OpenSearch was forked from Elasticsearch).
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