Another week, another database changes its license.
ArangoDB moved from Apache 2.0 to BSL 1.1. Redis abandoned BSD for a dual source-available license. Elasticsearch dropped Apache 2.0 for SSPL. CockroachDB went fully proprietary. The pattern is unmistakable: venture-backed database companies adopt permissive licenses to build communities, then pull the rug once they’re entrenched.
ArcadeDB will never do this. We are Apache 2.0 today, and we will be Apache 2.0 forever. This is not a marketing slogan. It is a commitment from Arcade Data Ltd to every developer, company, and contributor who builds on ArcadeDB.
This post explains why we believe this matters, what the real cost of a license change is, and why our structure makes this promise credible.
The License Bait-and-Switch: A Growing List
Here is every major database or infrastructure project that has moved to a more restrictive license in recent years:
| Project | Original License | New License | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| MongoDB | AGPL v3 | SSPL | Oct 2018 |
| Elasticsearch | Apache 2.0 | SSPL + Elastic License | Jan 2021 |
| CockroachDB | Apache 2.0 | BSL 1.1, then proprietary | Jun 2019, Aug 2024 |
| ArangoDB | Apache 2.0 | BSL 1.1 | Oct 2023 |
| Redis | BSD 3-Clause | RSALv2 + SSPL | Mar 2024 |
| HashiCorp (Terraform, Vault) | MPL 2.0 | BSL 1.1 | Aug 2023 |
Every single one used the same playbook: grow with a permissive license, then change the terms once users are locked in.
None of these new licenses (SSPL, BSL, Elastic License, RSALv2) are recognized as open source by the OSI. Regardless of how they’re marketed, they are source-available, not open source. The distinction matters: source-available licenses restrict how you can use, distribute, and build on the software. If your product competes with the vendor’s cloud offering or you want to embed the database in a commercial product, you may suddenly need a commercial license, or you may be in violation.
The Community Fallout Is Real
These license changes are not received quietly. Every one triggered mass community backlash:
- MongoDB’s SSPL was rejected by Debian, Red Hat, and Fedora, who dropped MongoDB from their repositories entirely. The OSI declined to approve it.
- Elasticsearch’s license change prompted AWS to fork the project as OpenSearch, now a Linux Foundation project with its own thriving ecosystem.
- Redis’s relicensing led to Valkey, a community fork backed by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and the Linux Foundation. Within one year, Redis lost most of its external contributors — before the fork, 12 non-employees made 54% of commits; afterwards, zero non-employees contributed more than 5 commits.
- HashiCorp’s BSL move spawned OpenTofu, a Linux Foundation fork of Terraform. HashiCorp was subsequently acquired by IBM.
- ArangoDB’s announcement was met with disappointment on Hacker News, with users sharing how they felt betrayed after building products on top of what they believed was open source software.
The message from the community is consistent: trust, once broken, does not come back. Some of these projects have since tried to reverse course — Elastic added AGPL as an option in 2024, Redis added AGPL in 2025 — but the forks are thriving and the contributors have moved on.
The Real Cost of a License Change to Your Project
If a database you depend on changes its license, the immediate question is: can we still use this? The answer is rarely simple, and the cost of finding out is significant.
Legal review
Your legal team (or outside counsel, if you’re a startup) must review the new license terms against every way your product uses the database. Is it embedded? Distributed to customers? Offered as a service? Each scenario has different implications. Expect weeks of legal review and thousands of dollars in fees.
Vendor lock-in exposure
If the new license restricts your use case, you have two options: pay for a commercial license (at whatever price the vendor sets, since you have no leverage), or migrate to a different database. Both are expensive. The vendor knows this, which is exactly why the change was made.
Migration cost
Migrating a production database is one of the most expensive engineering projects a team can undertake. It involves:
- Schema redesign — different databases model data differently. A graph database migration requires rethinking your entire data model.
- Query rewriting — every query, stored procedure, and data access pattern must be rewritten and tested.
- Driver and ORM changes — application code that interacts with the database must be updated across every service.
- Data migration — moving terabytes of production data with zero downtime requires careful planning, tooling, and testing.
- Performance tuning — the new database will have different performance characteristics. Indexes, caching strategies, and query plans all need to be re-optimized.
- Team retraining — your engineers need to learn a new database, its quirks, its failure modes, and its operational procedures.
For a mid-size company, a database migration typically takes 6 to 18 months and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in engineering time alone. For larger organizations, the cost can reach millions. And during the entire migration, you’re running two systems in parallel, doubling your operational complexity.
Strategic uncertainty
Perhaps the most insidious cost is the uncertainty itself. Once a vendor has changed its license once, what stops them from doing it again? Every roadmap discussion, every architecture decision, every new feature that deepens your dependency on that database now carries an asterisk: terms subject to change.
This is why license stability is not a nice-to-have. It is a core infrastructure requirement.
Why ArcadeDB Can Make This Promise
We understand why other companies change their licenses. Most database startups follow the same path: raise venture capital, grow at all costs with a permissive license, then monetize by restricting the license when the VC money runs out and revenue targets loom.
ArcadeDB is structured differently.
Arcade Data Ltd is a private company that leads ArcadeDB development. We are not backed by venture capital funds demanding 10x returns. We don’t have a board of investors pushing us to restrict access to the software in order to hit revenue targets.
Instead, Arcade Data is sustainable through a diversified model that does not depend on license restrictions:
- GitHub Sponsors — individual and corporate sponsorships reinvested directly into development.
- Support & Consultancy — clients pay for professional support, training, and consulting services around ArcadeDB.
- Donors — organizations and individuals who believe in the project contribute to its growth.
- Cloud Marketplaces (coming soon) — managed ArcadeDB offerings through major cloud providers.
This is why our commitment is credible — our business model is built on providing value through services and expertise, not on restricting the software itself. We will never change ArcadeDB’s license because:
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We have no financial pressure to do so. There is no VC clock ticking. No Series C investors demanding a path to $100M ARR. Our revenue comes from helping users succeed with ArcadeDB, not from locking them in.
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Our competitive advantage IS the license. ArcadeDB competes with databases that have already burned their community’s trust. Apache 2.0 is not just a license for us — it is a strategic differentiator that becomes more valuable every time another database pulls a bait-and-switch.
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It’s the right thing to do. Open source software is built on trust. Contributors donate their time and expertise because they believe in the project and its values. Users build products and businesses on the foundation we provide. Changing the license would be a betrayal of that trust, and no short-term business gain is worth that.
What Apache 2.0 Means for You
The Apache 2.0 license is one of the most permissive licenses in existence. Here is what it concretely means for your project:
- Embed ArcadeDB in proprietary software. No obligation to open-source your code.
- Distribute ArcadeDB with your product. Commercial or otherwise.
- Modify ArcadeDB for your needs. Fork it, extend it, customize it.
- Offer ArcadeDB as part of a managed service. No restrictions.
- Use ArcadeDB in any industry, for any purpose. No usage limits, no dataset caps.
Every feature — including HA replication, clustering, multi-model support, and all six query languages — is available under the same Apache 2.0 license. No artificial limitations, no paywalled core functionality.
Choose Your Database’s License as Carefully as You Choose the Database
The next time you evaluate a database for your project, check the license before you check the benchmarks. Ask yourself:
- Is this license OSI-approved open source, or is it “source-available” marketed as open source?
- Has this vendor changed its license before?
- Is this vendor funded by VCs who will eventually demand monetization through license restrictions?
- What would it cost my project if the license changed in two years?
ArcadeDB is Apache 2.0 today. It was Apache 2.0 when we started. And it will be Apache 2.0 for as long as this project exists.
Build on a foundation that won’t shift beneath you. Get started with ArcadeDB.