In other news I suspect someone will soon be forking Redis and development of an open source/free software fork will continue...
Commons Clause
361–370 of 496 posts
Re: Commons Clause
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The GPL exists for a reason. AGPL would be more appropriate for Redis IMHO as Redis as a service is not "distributed" to users so GPL alone wouldn't have desired effect. On top of that commercial license for people that don't want to share their modifications.
So why aren't they simply re-licensing under AGPL? That's what I would do.
That might make existing users/contributors motivated enough to make fork, with the code before the relicensing. If the major Redis-as-Service providers would stick with that version, it might end up being the defacto standard Redis.
This is always a possibility with FOSS, but probably way less likely with this added clause to only some modules.
Re: Commons Clause
#363I would think a lawyer could poke enough holes through a Commons Clause license for it to resemble swiss cheese afterwards. I am not a lawyer, but software you get is under one license or another. Some are dual licensed, but you choose which license you are operating under when you publish your derivative work.
Base on what I read it's either Apache License or Commons Clause, not both. And if it's Commons Clause then it seems misrepresentation to say 'license: Apache License', as the example gave.
I think GPL has gone out of fashion, in some circles, because of fear. I work in a shop where GPL is outright forbidden, except where absolutely necessary, because of horror stories senior management has heard that exaggerate the risk of using GPL software, and because of real experiences.
I know of one such experience myself, according to my friend, his team was forced to rewrite an entire software package to use the Postgres JDBC driver and Postgres-specific migration scripts, because they were told MySQL driver use an redistribution did not require them to open source their code, and then they were told something different by a second member of the MySQL team. Shortly after that a memo was sent to all teams at that research lab, ordering no further use of GPL software except where no other option exists (and with lots of legal documentation in that case).
If you can deal with a service model for your business, then open source your software with BSD or other permissive license and sell consulting services. If you want a product model, then the one I see repeatedly work well is an open source core with enterprise commercial add-ons.
Mentioning consulting in the license further muddies the water. I know I was thinking of using Redis for a new project with a client, and now I won't. I won't be using Redis again until this license gets changed, and I encourage everyone else to do the same.
In today's security environment, and with software quality issues being what they are, I think having all your software be closed source, or restrictive non-free open source, is going the way of the dinosaur.
This Commons Clause seems to me to be a open source license, but seems restrictive and a step backward. The wording coul be taken to be deceptive. And calling it 'Commons' anything is adding insult to injury.
Re: Commons Clause
#364The primary target here seems to be cloud hosting companies that provide Redis-as-a-Service. But the seemingly wide definition of Sell, including how consulting/support services are mention makes me confused. Can I as a software developer working as a consultant, still create an app for customers which uses Redis with modules under Commons Clause? ...the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.…
Yeah it's awful. But in answer to your question: Maybe.
It looks a lot more forgiving if you flip it over from "what do they say I can do?" to "what could I get away with?". They'd have to find you first. Then prove you were paid. Then they'd have to prove that use-case was substantially dependent on their software.
Unless your employer went to Redis an announces all this, their ability to go after consulting/freelance developers is very limited.
I think this is, as others have said, a cash-grab at the cloud market who advertise these sorts of services publicly. They're easy targets.
Re: Commons Clause
#365The naming of this is wrong and should be changed quickly and I'll explain why.
Commons Clause (abbreviated to CC) conflicts with Creative Commons (also CC). Creative Commons also has the word Commons which refers to a more established and well known thing. Commons Clause goes against the principles of the actual commons. it has nothing to do with a commons, or what is widely understood as "the commons". Call it something better - call it a proprietary clause instead. Maybe it's aim is to stop the "tragedy of the commons"?
Re: Commons Clause
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
Redis was not funded by those companies. Salvatore was sponsored to work on his own project they had a business need for. All copyright and trademarks belonged and still belong to Salvatore, according to redis.io To my understanding, this was a sponsorship, ie a support contract to debug and improve an open source product VMware and Pivotal (same people, different name) were using and depending upon for their product…
How is "paying the creator money to work on it" not "funding a project"?
Well in that case, we are all funding Jeff Bezos and he owes us.
Re: Commons Clause
#367Hi folks. Kevin from http://fossa.io here. I worked on bringing the Commons Clause to life ( https://commonsclause.com/ ) and led many of the project efforts here. Happy to answer questions here (or on Twitter @kevinverse). I wanted to write a blog post to set some context because the real story is a lot less salacious then "Redis just went proprietary", but here's a quick summary: 1/ No, Redis isn't proprietary. It'…
>Happy to answer questions here You didn't answer many (any) questions. Here's mine, why is this needed? Redis could have adopted AGPL as the base license which would have effectively prevented any cloud vendors from using it as a manged service. For those companies, Redis could have provided a paid proprietary option. Why even bother with this?
AGPL would prevent a ton of companies from using Redis at all. A surprising number of big companies flat out ban all AGPL code.
Re: Commons Clause
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's clearly not open source. It meets no definition of open source that has ever existed. Even other things like the debian free software guidelines (which date back to 1997. Seee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guideline... ) would not consider this free It's also clear the goal is to "seem" open source by reusing the license names of open source licenses.
Can you point me to the line in the license file that clearly demonstrates Redis is not open source? https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/COPYING
As noted even in the initial comment in thus subthread, Redis itself is not under this new license, and thus still Open Source.
Re: Commons Clause
#369In other news I suspect someone will soon be forking Redis and development of an open source/free software fork will continue...
The license for Redis itself has not changed and will not change, I doubt there's a need to fork it.
Re: Commons Clause
#370The problem this license is trying to solve is a reasonable one: that cloud providers package up open source products as their own service and capture the majority of the value without adding much themselves. This license might not be the best way around it but the issue should be addressed.
How is this different from a startup using open source software (cost savings) instead of building everything in-house? In both cases, the startup benefits and the project doesn't receive upstream contributions.
The startup doesn't compete with Redislabs, so it's not contributing, but also not hurting.