David Pollak:

I have a greenfield project where the choice of database is open. I have been very interested in Datomic for a couple of years now and figured that I’d try Datomic out for the project. Then I tried to actually download and install it and decided against it… mostly because the value of Datomic does not clearly outweigh the cost of using proprietary software. I am writing this post to communicate my perception.

I’m pretty sure that not everyone is studying the licenses in such detail, but a database is the core of an application and users will pay attention to it. In an abundance economy, even if the technical advantage of your product outweight competitors, any sort of friction leads to losing potential users. You can go with a tricky license that looks OK at a cursory read for an YANAL, or you can choose to go with a clear license or at least a known license. It’s sounds obvious, but every hoop you make your potential user jump through is another opportunity to lose a customer.

✚ This is not a singular case either. See the long, extremely legalese, conversation about OpenStack and MongoDB’s AGPL license.

Original title and link: My thoughts on the Datomic license (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://blog.goodstuff.im/datomic_license