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Redis will remain BSD licensed

antirez.com

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Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#161

Post by derefr »

rectang wrote: post #71
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…

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.

Commons Clause software isn't just "source available"; you can modify it and redistribute it, such that the regular FOSS workflow of "fork on GitHub and create a PR" is legal.

You just can't deploy your fork (or the original code) in a private service without paying for a license for that code.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

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

There is an ideological difference between the movements, but very little practical definitions between the OSI Open Source definition and the FSF Free Software definition. Yes, they are worded differently, but in practice they are virtually identical (I don't think a single license has been reviewed by both entities with a different conclusion.)

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#163

Post by derefr »

mrfredward wrote: post #119
vmlinuz wrote: post #80

This could have been made clear in a few simple sentences: We have created a new software license which we are calling the 'Redis Labs License' (RLL), by adding the Commons Clause terms as extra restrictions on top of the Apache 2.0 License. We recognise this will no longer be a true Open Source license, but we consider it a fair trade-off between our business needs and our responsibility and commitment to the Redis…

Redis went out of their way to obfuscate what they were doing with deceptive license names. Now they are struggling to control the damage caused in all the confusion. There's a lesson here...

> Redis

Redis Labs isn't Redis, any more than, say, Heroku is Ruby because Matz works there.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#164

Post by derefr »

prepend wrote: post #122
keepper wrote: post #95

What I find interesting is all of the comments saying "Well, I was going to use RedisLabs.. but because of this, i'll use AWS/elasticache" Which is just such a weird statement. So instead of supporting the OSS creators and main contributors, who want a way to monetize their "value add" modules, while still giving the core software freely; you rather support a huge corporation that gives almost zero back to OSS ( AWS…

“...gives almost zero back to OSS...” This is not true as Amazon not only releases it’s own projects but contributes really broadly [0]. I can’t speak for others, but I understand the decision to choose ElastiCache over CC software as I understand Amazon’s model a lot better than projects that change their license. So if I’m going to hinge on something non-OSS, I prefer the logical points where a utility that sells c…

> But we can’t comply with CC.

Why not? The point of the CC is literally "pay us to use it commercially." You can't just... pay them to use it? Even when that's exactly what you'd be doing by using an AWS service?

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#165

Post by derefr »

dilap wrote: post #23
antirez wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It was clear to me from a careful reading that the page did not refer to Redis, but it also seemed deliberately designed to suggest that it did. It seemed pretty scummy. And the name itself of "Commons Clause" is practically a tiny version of fake news, since it tries to give an "open source" feeling to what is essentially a proprietary license. As a practical/PR matter, I think Redis Labs have likely shot themselves…

> that the page did not refer to Redis, but it also seemed deliberately designed to suggest that it did

The thing that's going on here isn't that the page wants you to believe that the thing that changed license is Redis; the page (and Redis Labs' site in general) wants you to believe that they own Redis in some sense.

Redis Labs is essentially doing the same type of thing for Redis that e.g. RedHat or IBM does for OpenStack. They take this FOSS project, add their own secret sauce to it, brand the combined thing as "[our company] [FOSS project name]", and then try as hard as possible to conflate the "[our company] [FOSS project name]" distribution with the FOSS project itself. Because they want you to associate the brand-cachet of the FOSS project with their distribution.

That backfired in this specific instance, because people misinterpreted what Redis Labs was saying regarding "Redis Labs Redis" as applying to "Redis." But it's their whole business strategy, so they can't exactly stop.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#166

Post by derefr »

yarosv wrote: post #120
antirez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, now finally this is updated to specify exactly what changes license. Incidentally: nothing I ever worked to directly. It would be way cooler if also things like RediSearch or RediGraph could still be totally open source, but it's apparently very hard, Common Clause at least will allow it to be free-as-beer and with the source code available.

> Common Clause at least will allow it to be free-as-beer and with the source code available. The license is very vague. According to this > a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. What if I have big online shop with huge catalog and my software value "derives from the functionality of RedisSearch"? Do my only option not to host it at Redis Labs?

> my software value "derives from the functionality of RedisSearch"

Your software might just literally be 99% RedisSearch, but you're not making money from your software (e.g. by selling it); you're making money from operating your software, combined with content (e.g. by using it to facilitate e-commerce transactions.)

You'd be in trouble if you wanted to white-label "your technology" and sell it as a platform for other people to run their own online shops on, because it's not really "your technology" to sell.

But if your play isn't specifically that, then you're fine.

Also,

> Do my only option not to host it at Redis Labs?

this wouldn't be an option. The whole point of this license is that the software "RedisSearch" is owned by Redis Labs. Hosting it with Redis Labs themselves, or not, is irrelevant. You have to license the software (if you're deploying it yourself)—or rely on your DBaaS provider to license it for you (if they're deploying it.)

Basically exactly like a software patent, come to think of it.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#167

Post by mrob »

carapace wrote: post #117

(What I want to know is how does that #$%^ing page hijack the font even in Reader Mode!? WTF! I want serif body fonts goddamnit.)

The body text is contained in a 
 tag with newlines for paragraphs instead of the correct 
 tags. You can force Firefox to respect your font choice by adding a font:inherit to the 
's css with the developer tools. This will break pages with correctly used 
 tags.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#168

Post by derefr »

endorphone wrote: post #28
antirez wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that even after the project leader tells you it was just some confusion, the Github project still is marked as BSD, and nothing is written in the original announcement clearly stating that Redis would switch license, it is a bit strange that the information continues to spread regardless of what I continued to say.

"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" Crying fake news (which has been co-opted to mean "real news that I don't like or that you shouldn't pay attention to") complete…

> Crying fake news (which has been co-opted to mean "real news that I don't like or that you shouldn't pay attention to") completely undermined your statement.

You realize that antirez (Salvatore Sanfilippo) lives in Italy, speaks English as a second language, and isn't exposed to the US political climate, right? Crucifying him for the US-coloquial subtextual connotation of his word choice is pretty uncharitable.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#169

Post by endorphone »

derefr wrote: post #168
endorphone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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" Crying fake news (which has been co-opted to mean "real news that I don't like or that you shouldn't pay attention to") complete…

> Crying fake news (which has been co-opted to mean "real news that I don't like or that you shouldn't pay attention to") completely undermined your statement. You realize that antirez (Salvatore Sanfilippo) lives in Italy, speaks English as a second language, and isn't exposed to the US political climate, right? Crucifying him for the US-coloquial subtextual connotation of his word choice is pretty uncharitable.

Being charitable to the speaker isn't beneficial when a very large contingent of readers were coming away with the wrong impression. Hence why they changed the wording.

It remains that the official statement from the company has incredibly misleading wording, so it seems suspect to attack people who might "misinterpret" that, though. Uncharitable, even.

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed

#170

Post by e12e »

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…

> AGPL license but found two major drawbacks (a) AGPL does not prevent cloud providers (such as AWS) from building managed services from these modules

I'm not sure I understand this formulation. The * gp licenses are generally focused on defending the four freedoms[f] - and freedom zero is the freedom to run the software. How would anyone think that a * gp license would prevent that?

Am I correct in my interpretation that Redis Labs' original intention was to charge a fee for these modules, and in the case of various form of re-sales (like SaaS) - to partner with providers so that there was a revenue split?

I'm asking, not because I'm against commercial software (although I do prefer to run Free software) - but just to make sure I understand the [ed:"drawbacks"] of the AGPL as Redis Labs sees it?

[f] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

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