MongoDB was never about open source but about making money. 10+ years ago they were trying to market their JSON store as capable of anything when it could not even handle objects larger than 64 MB: yeah I know you use collections not nesting but try to aggregate complex data without constantly working around that limit.

The fact that it still exists when there are alternatives that are faster and more efficient amazes me.

According to the company: https://www.mongodb.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/mongodb-issues-new-server-side-public-license-for-mongodb-community-server

Unfortunately, once an open source project becomes interesting, it is too easy for cloud vendors who have not developed the software to capture all of the value while contributing little back to the community

They are totally morally correct imo, but reality simply doesnt work like that. If you disallow free use of your software for commercial purposes, it will simply die. They also just spent a bit too much money on a single project from what it look like.

“We have invested approximately $300M in R&D over the past decade to offer a modern, general purpose, open source database for everyone. With the added protection of the SSPL, we can continue to invest in R&D and further drive innovation and value for the community.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MongoDB

MongoDB has been removed from the Debian, Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions because of the licensing change. Fedora determined that the SSPL version 1 is not a free software license because it is "intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory" towards commercial users.