Vice President of the Open Source Initiative here.
MongoDB submitted this new license for approval by OSI at the same time that they announced that they'd relicensed all of their code. We wish they'd started the process prior to the announcement, but what's done is done. The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE.
As the license review process only started this morning, there's no way to estimate how long the process will take. There also is no guarantee that the license will be found to obey the Open Source Definition, and therefore no guarantee that it will be approved.
Hopefully this will all be resolved soon, but there are far too many question marks around this license (and therefore also around any software using it) right now. It's probably best to limit your legal risk by not upgrading to an SSPL-licensed MongoDB at this point. The previous AGPL-licensed version should always be available.
> The result, however, is that at this moment, MongoDB is under a non-approved license and therefore IS NOT OPEN SOURCE.
Perhaps you meant to say "is not OSI Certified", because the OSI don't appear to have a right to restrict use of the phrase "open source". See what's on your own website: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...
On the other comments in this thread, even though MongoDB have "submitted" to having the OSI review their license, OSI still aren't capable of restricting anyone's rights on the use of the phrase "open source" including MongoDB's.
I can see your organization tries to make sure that there is an approved set of principles that identify libre/free software which is good. The phrase "open source" has been used in myriad ways since its early days, and not just for software.
I'm a programmer who has written open source since 2000. I would defend you when it comes to the benefits of libre software, but you can't restrict others over using something that you don't legally own.
So, yes, technically, OSI does not own the term open source, and it could be that this license does comply with everything set out in the Open Source Definition (https://opensource.org/osd), and that means that, technically, "(the latest version of) MongoDB is not open source" is overstating the case.
Except that, as a non-lawyer developer who generally agrees with the Open Source Definition, "under an OSI-approved license" is my working definition of "open source". I believe the same is true for many others. And, under that definition, if Ms. Brasseur doesn't consider it to be open source (yet), I'm happy to fall in line with that.
She went on to say the magic words that mean so much more to me on this front than any debate about who gets to own the term: "It's probably best to limit your legal risk," and, "at this point." OSI's recommendations are a key part of how I limit my legal risk, and they're working on vetting it as we speak. My best course of action is to sit on my hands and wait for their advice.
Open source for most people means whether you can see and modify the source code.
Not whether OSI gives it some arbitrary stamp of approval.
Yeah, but that's a really dangerous position to take and if they'd work with me I'd be quick to set them straight. Because that path leads to legal adventure.
What you are describing is "source available", not "open source". And that's a huge difference in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software