Alex Woodie has an article covering Confluent’s recent licensing change:
Confluent this month became the latest commercial open source software company to restrict the use of its software in the cloud. The move prevents cloud companies from using parts of the Confluent Platform, such as the KSQL component that uses SQL to process streaming data, as standalone software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
Jay Kreps, the co-creator of Apache Kafka and the CEO of Confluent, explained the significance of switching the Confluent Platform from the Apache 2.0 license to the new Confluent Community License.
Over at Aiven, CTO Heikki Nousiainen shares his thoughts:
The new Confluent Community License is a proprietary software license, specifically excluding “making available any software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other similar online service that competes with Confluent products or services that provide the Software.”
While the license change does apply to all future versions of the specific software, it doesn’t alter the licensing status of the components in the versions that have been released and utilized by Aiven.
I believe it would be best to read the latter article looking for the significant silences.