Redis will remain BSD licensed • Hacker News Board

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#101

Post by pritambaral » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #89

zokier wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that what happens here is that enterprises don't like a license where there is this concept of open sourcing internal changes. They are happier with limiting the kind of use you can do with the code instead, like doing SaaS, that most of them don't plan to do at all.

AGPL doesn't require releasing internal changes unless the changed code is served (like in SaaS) externally. Organizations are free to internally modify, run, and distribute changes to AGPL code as long as the modified code is made available on the internal network.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#102

Post by lazyloop » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #73

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…

BTW, you should probably change https://redislabs.com/community/oss-projects/ to match the the non-Open-Source-licenses most things have there. (yes, they are listed, but the page pretends everything on it is Open Source)

You're mixing up Open Source and Free Software, those two are not the same.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#103

Post by mindcrime » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

XiZhao wrote: post #74

rectang wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the explanation. I see no problem with this approach in principle and wish your business the best of luck. However, you have made a big mistake with how the "Commons Clause" confuses Open Source under the OSD with "source available". You were not well served by those who advised you to do so.

The Commons Clause clearly acknowledges this in the FAQ: https://commonsclause.com/

That's irrelevant. Nobody is going to read your FAQ. You intentionally created something that tries to muddy the lines between Open Source and Non Open Source. It's dishonest, and deceitful.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#104

Post by esterly » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

Best to check the source, license unchanged: https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/COPYING

Thank you Salvatore for Redis, it has benefited so many projects.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#105

Post by hannob » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

Seems a severe case of "we tried really hard to obfuscate our words with marketing bullshit speak and then it backfired and we got a shitstorm instead, because noone understoond what we were really trying to say".

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#106

Post by adrianmonk » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

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…

I agree with your complaint but I wouldn't use the terminology "fake news". To me, that's more of a specific term that refers to media bias as a propaganda tool. Whereas this is more of a rumor mill going wild as rumor mills naturally tend to do.

But yes, while hoards of people behave in a bit of a crazy manner, it is a known thing, and if you're responsible for public communication, you should understand those quirks and their predictable consequences. And you should realize that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure by just making everything as clear as possible from the beginning.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#107

Post by ramshorns » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

lazyloop wrote: post #102

detaro wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, you should probably change https://redislabs.com/community/oss-projects/ to match the the non-Open-Source-licenses most things have there. (yes, they are listed, but the page pretends everything on it is Open Source)

You're mixing up Open Source and Free Software, those two are not the same.

They have different ideologies behind them, but they refer to almost exactly the same class of software. A license that doesn't allow commercial use is proprietary and closed source.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#108

Post by dang » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #76

XiZhao wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Commons Clause clearly acknowledges this in the FAQ: https://commonsclause.com/

From that page: > The Commons Clause is a license condition drafted by Heather Meeker that applies a minimal-form commercial restriction on top of an existing open source license Making it proprietary and failing the Open Source Definition. You cannot have Commons Clause 'on top' of an existing Open Source license. This is impossible. You can only replace the existing Open Source license with Commons Clause. The page…

There's no need to get personal about it, even when you disagree about licensing. Please don't.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#109

Post by ecnahc515 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:57 PM UTC

pritambaral wrote: post #101

antirez wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that what happens here is that enterprises don't like a license where there is this concept of open sourcing internal changes. They are happier with limiting the kind of use you can do with the code instead, like doing SaaS, that most of them don't plan to do at all.

AGPL doesn't require releasing internal changes unless the changed code is served (like in SaaS) externally. Organizations are free to internally modify, run, and distribute changes to AGPL code as long as the modified code is made available on the internal network.

Im generally curious, what's the definition of "externally"? It's a bit more vague compared to "operating as a service", since you may expose your service externally, but only allow access to internal users.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#110

Post by dang » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #103

XiZhao wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Commons Clause clearly acknowledges this in the FAQ: https://commonsclause.com/

That's irrelevant. Nobody is going to read your FAQ. You intentionally created something that tries to muddy the lines between Open Source and Non Open Source. It's dishonest, and deceitful.

You can't abuse anyone like that here regardless of how wrong they are or how you feel they are. Please keep the online shaming culture well away from HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html