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We haven't read anything about their intentions yet. Have they addressed this confusion?
It's been asked several times to him on this topic, and quite frankly, he's had ample time to respond to someone.
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> corporate grab of open source software Well then fork them. I mean it. ‘Licenses applied to previous versions cannot be revoked’ - https://commonsclause.com My understanding (IANAL), is that only new code can be subjected to new conditions/licenses. Old code can still be used under the old license.
Developer and volunteer time and attention is a finite resource though. Effort that was spent on open software that's now spent on proprietary software is less effort being spent on open source. Furthermore if you're now expending effort to fork something - in this case possibly many things - thats effort you're not spending on what used to be your higher priorities. Yes forking might in some cases be the only option…
I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded. Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers, people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches, etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts o…
The public cloud changed everything. Having Amazon just extract all the value of and strip mine the commercial value of these projects without contributing anything back has left a sour taste in peoples mouths. It made more sense when you could release a product openly and then start a business around supporting it, consulting and training and selling "enterprise" versions for serious customers. But now that's even h…
Whether Commons Clause is the right solution or not (and I have my opinion on that), at least the Redis people are trying something to fix the problem of unstustainable one-way resource extraction by mega-corporations. Of the hundreds of people criticizing them here, often in ways that question their motivation and integrity, how many are offering alternative solutions? As far as I can tell, it's a depressingly small number.
After everything Antirez has contributed to us, he deserves better than this avalanche of unconstructive negativity. If you think Commons Clause is not the correct solution to the problem of unsustainable exploitation of open-source projects, what do you propose?
Regardless of whether or not it is harmful to open source, I find the choice to use two words beginning with C (thus CC as an acronym) flawed, as that abbreviation is typically used to refer to Creative Commons, and Commons Clause and Creative Commons sound quite similar too since they both use the word Commons. I would hope this was not an intentional choice to sow confusion. Edit: obvious spelling error :)
In my mind, this fact somewhat diminishes the scale of the deception.
I wish there were more publications on how open source is really funded. Earlier Linux and BSD kernels were made by a combination of researchers, people with spare time, volunteers as well as big companies who paid people full time. We see much more of the latter. Intel has an entire OSS division in Portland, OR that writes most of the drives, works on Linux kernel patches, etc. Nintendo and Sony both use big parts o…
AWS started offering SaaS products based on open source software without contributing anything back to the original projects. Combined with that, and wholesale cloud adoption over the last decade, revenue streams for "enterprise" editions, services have dried up. In the 90s and 2000s, OSS project were more grass roots efforts. In the past decade, there have been a series of primarily commercial OSS projects like Redi…
I think that's very unfair. Both Redis and ElasticSearch are definitely grassroots projects - both Salvatore (Antirez) and Shai worked on their projects for years, with minimal support from the outside world, grew their community organically, and managed to build something useful for thousands of grateful developers. Later, they looked for ways to make a good living while continuing to invest in the success of their projects. In the process they built (or joined, in the case of Salvatore) businesses dedicated to supporting the development of their project. There is no perfect solution, but in both cases I would say that they succeeded - they are making a good living, and their projects have continued to grow and make many users happy, in great part thanks to them and the business they work with.
To use that success as an argument against them - to present their business efforts as opposite to their community efforts is just not true, and I think it’s harmful. It punishes them, the creators and maintainers of a great and useful project, for wanting fair compensation for their efforts, and making the effort to give back in the process - when so many others profit from their work, and give back nothing, or the bare minimum to make themselves look good.
Another problematic aspect of this is that to me the Redis situation seems like a corporate grab of open source software after the fact. By that I mean, Redis Labs are not the creators of Redis. They are a consulting agency that then hired the creator of Redis. In other words, they only exist because the original Redis was not Commons Clause. Now they want to build a moat so others can't do what they did. Not a good…
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Hi Kevin, Drew here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your response, but I find it frustratingly vauge. What kinds of bad things happen to open source projects that drive them to this? If you are fearful of open source becoming more closed, why are you promoting that very approach? Did you consider promoting alternatives like AGPL first? Before I see an option violating one of the four essential freedom…
An open source project can (and some do) require copyright assignment such that there is a single owner who can re-license at will. It's a fair thing to do: would-be contributors know this is happening and can choose to not participate. I have no objection to owners taking a codebase proprietary. It doesn't change the fact that earlier versions stay open source and third parties (including the community) can still fo…
Software is hard to monetize, whether it be open source or not. The best open source monetization case I've seen yet may be SQLite3, which is in the public domain. SQLite3 has a consortium, has some proprietary products (e.g., the more extensive test suite) not available to the public at large (in source form or otherwise), and is so ubiquitous that there are a number of large companies that are so utterly dependent…