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Redis will remain BSD licensed

antirez.com

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Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#61

Post by lima »

Murrawhip wrote: post #50
antirez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit that the communication was not great, but the announcement never said Redis would switch. Maybe I'm a bit biased, because before Redis Labs doing this license switch, we internally even agreed about taking the core BSD, so the goals of the company were always clear, regardless of the fact that this page in the company web site was unclear. But "Redis switching license" was factually incorrect since the start…

> but the announcement never said Redis would switch > Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed

https://redislabs.com/community/commons-clause/

It sounds a bit different when not taken out of context:

> Redis is an example of this paradigm. Today, most cloud providers offer Redis as a managed service over their infrastructure and enjoy huge income from software that was not developed by them. Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed. Redis Labs is leading and financing the development of open source Redis and deserves to enjoy the fruits of these efforts. Consequently, we decided to add Commons Clause to certain components of open source Redis. Cloud providers will no longer be able to use these components as part of their Redis-as-a-Service offerings, but all other users will be unaffected by this change.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#62

Post by leshow »

IMO people in the original thread had a pretty good understanding that Redis core was going to have the same license, and some of the modules RL developed would be proprietary (sorry, "source-available").

I think many people are just plain unhappy with that situation, no misunderstanding. I read comparisons drawn between android, taking more and more out of the open source core into proprietary modules, among others.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#63

Post by antirez »

scj wrote: post #48

If a project is licensed "BSD + antithetical_term" or "Apache + antithetical_term", then the names of BSD and Apache should not be invoked. They are free to make a RedisLab license though.

Redis core is just "BSD", nothing attached.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#64

Post by dwheeler »

But it does appear to be true that some Redis modules used to be open source software (OSS) and are now proprietary. As I understand it, some modules used to be licensed under the AGPL (an OSS license) and they are now under this new "Commons Clause" (which is a proprietary license). So while the core of Redis is OSS, if my understanding is correct, it's absolutely true that parts of Redis have switched to being proprietary software. That's different than organizations who license the software as "AGPL or proprietary" or "GPL or proprietary" - such licenses are also unambiguously OSS. Choosing "Apache WITH proprietary-rider" is fundamentally different; Redis has every right to do that, but it's fair to note that this isn't the same thing.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#65

Post by jim_bailie »

antirez wrote: post #17
js2 wrote: post #15

antirez: I understand your frustration and don’t mean to take away from the message, but please consider removing “fake news” from the wording. It unnecessarily politicizes the post and really leaves a bad taste. “Fake news” is the term of art that politicians are using to criticize true stories that they don’t like. In this case, you’re trying to correct an actual falsehood. The spreading of falsehoods and their bei…

Thanks, I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people, here in Italy it's the current government that is the master of fake news and is used by our left-wings to criticize what they do. In the doubt I changed the wording. I did not expect the term to be political.

Antirez, don't worry about it! It's a very effective and accurate phrase that inflames a small minority of overly vocal folks who are irritated that the double standard in left-leaning western media is now becoming better understood. Anyway, enough of that, thanks again for your incredible contribution to humanity.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#66

Post by detaro »

lima wrote: post #61
Murrawhip wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the announcement never said Redis would switch > Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed

https://redislabs.com/community/commons-clause/ It sounds a bit different when not taken out of context: > Redis is an example of this paradigm. Today, most cloud providers offer Redis as a managed service over their infrastructure and enjoy huge income from software that was not developed by them. Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed. Redis Labs is leading…

But Redislabs extensions were AGPL, not BSD beforehand.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

Yiftach wrote: post #55

Hi, this is Yiftach, CTO and Co-founder of Redis Labs. First, let me assure you that Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license. For avoiding any doubt - commons clause (as defined in commonsclause.com) is applied only to add-ons (modules), on top of Redis (e.g. RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, Redis-ML, Rebloom) that were developed by Redis Labs . We initially released these modules under AGPL li…

> we got requests from developers, working at large enterprises to move from AGPL to a more permissive license

...so you did exactly the opposite, though with naming that makes it sound like you honored that request until you actually read the license terms.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#68

Post by detaro »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
Yiftach wrote: post #55

Hi, this is Yiftach, CTO and Co-founder of Redis Labs. First, let me assure you that Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license. For avoiding any doubt - commons clause (as defined in commonsclause.com) is applied only to add-ons (modules), on top of Redis (e.g. RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, Redis-ML, Rebloom) that were developed by Redis Labs . We initially released these modules under AGPL li…

> we got requests from developers, working at large enterprises to move from AGPL to a more permissive license ...so you did exactly the opposite, though with naming that makes it sound like you honored that request until you actually read the license terms.

it's more permissive for some enterprise use cases if you're worried about AGPL consequences. You now can use it in internal systems. (Assuming you feel comfortable interpreting the vague bits of the "Commons Clause")

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#69

Post by [deleted] »

antirez wrote: post #7
stingraycharles wrote: post #2

I’m happy to hear that Redis will remain BSD, but it’s a bit weird to play the “fake news” card. Can you really blame people for interpreting this the wrong way? Especially when the original announcement was specifically targeting cloud providers, who, afaik, are just running vanilla redis. If there is anything that we can learn from this, is that a little bit of forethought when putting these announcements out there…

Honestly my colleagues did a poor job with such an announcement there, and I did not get a chance to read it (which is actually a good thing, it means that the OSS division, I'm part of, is independent and can work to the Github repositories without caring about what the commercial side does). But it was kinda of a manifest to announce that certain things made inside Redis Labs are now Common Clause licensed. In doub…

[deleted]

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#70

Post by zokier »

Yiftach wrote: post #55

Hi, this is Yiftach, CTO and Co-founder of Redis Labs. First, let me assure you that Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license. For avoiding any doubt - commons clause (as defined in commonsclause.com) is applied only to add-ons (modules), on top of Redis (e.g. RediSearch, Redis Graph, ReJSON, Redis-ML, Rebloom) that were developed by Redis Labs . We initially released these modules under AGPL li…

First of all, I do appreciate your reply here.

> we got requests from developers, working at large enterprises to move from AGPL to a more permissive license, because the use of AGPL is against their company’s policy.

It's not clear how Commons Clause will help here. I can't imagine many corporations liking Commons Clause if they have decided against AGPL.

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