What are Redis's alternatives? Might be a good idea to have one, had their VC backers pushed them too far into monetization, leading to even more drastic licensing changes.
Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
51–60 of 140 posts
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#52> the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it. Assuming "community" means general open source devs/users, this doesn't speak for everyone. The (admittedly small) stuff I make open source is given to…
One thing I've found surprising and interesting over the past decade or so is the popularity of permissive licenses like BSD, MIT, and others. I would have expected the essential share-alike fairness of copyleft to resonate more. I don't know if it's down to marketing (the whole viral thing), the influence of commercial users, or if it's fundamentally what people prefer, as you do.
> I would have expected the essential share-alike fairness of copyleft to resonate more.
I have so much to say on this topic I could write a novel, e.g about commercial artists versus those who just want their art to be seen versus art commissioned with money obtained elsewhere. But in the most simple terms, at least with me, is I prefer to write and to use software with as few restrictions on/from others as possible. Can't feed my family on that of course and wouldn't try. If public domain were more accepted than MIT, I'd do it, but for now I just slap MIT on it and move on. If you make a million dollars on it, keeping changes hidden or not, good for you. I'm trying to do the same in my day job, the primary code of which is of course closed.
As for the prevalence of restrictionless licenses on non-hobbyist software, you can attribute that to their stewards simply recognizing the value of hobbyists working with it (the company reputation gained, the influence, bug finding, etc). People want fewer restrictions, companies want people.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all their users are threatening to switch to some AWS managed service because it is better for them, then perhaps the software should fall into disrepair and the developers should get other jobs. There isn't anything wrong with this, it happens all the time. It's probably true that Amazon is able to accomplish this only through strong-arm tactics, but it also seems unfortunate that Redis Labs feels the need to res…
What jobs? How can the developers get other jobs if no one is paying for their open source software in the first place?
I don't understand, there are still lots of companies that fund FOSS. Publishing FOSS doesn't mean you can't go out of business, it means customers get an additional layer of protection from you going out of business or deciding you don't want to be in a certain market anymore, as Redis Labs has clearly done here.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Redis had some big product people used, and their Redis server was just a middleware component, it could be a great side business where they sell support, but not the primary business. All the other big players like Google/Facebook will open source those middle pieces to help people who will make apps that will most likely have to interact with their platforms. They'll never release the source to actual end produc…
RedHat is (was?) sortof an example, but their product wasn't the open source software per-se, it was the guarantees their consulting and support offers. RedHat makes, for example, patches for kernel vulnerabilities, but they actually give that away for free. What they sell is a promise that when there's a new vulnerability, you can get a patch from them quickly. They also spread this service across MANY different ope…
>RedHat makes, for example, patches for kernel vulnerabilities, but they actually give that away for free. What they sell is a promise that when there's a new vulnerability, you can get a patch from them quickly.
What's preventing someone from freeloading? It sounds like regardless of whether you're paying, you can still get the patches.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#55> “When we came out with this new license, there were many different views,” he acknowledged. “Some people condemned that. But after the initial noise calmed down — and especially after some other companies came out with a similar concept — the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly…
I acknowledge that sustainability is a problem in Open Source.
I strongly disagree that this is a problem with the original concept of Open Source, and I strongly disagree that Redis's solution is applicable.
Redis is talking out of its butt with this claim. The solution it proposes is throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- saying, "we can't figure out how to fund Open Source, so let's just agree that it was a mistake and make something else that's vaguely adjacent to it."
I personally think it's massively egotistical for them to claim to speak for all developers, or even most developers. Redis hasn't proposed anything new or revolutionary. Source Available licenses have been around for ages. I don't see what's new here.
I personally feel like Redis is stepping into a general debate over Open vs proprietary software that is older than their company; and I don't feel like they're bringing anything new to the table. They've clearly decided that proprietary is the way to go. Now they're acting like this is some kind of significant decision, and that the entire Open Source ecosystem should change to accommodate and bless their specific business model.
It rubs me the wrong way. I often disagree with decisions that companies make, but this press release actually gets under my skin. I'm not dumb enough to try and speak for anyone else other than myself, but if their goal here was to spark dialog in the Open Source community, I am personally way less interested now in hearing what they have to say.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
RedHat is (was?) sortof an example, but their product wasn't the open source software per-se, it was the guarantees their consulting and support offers. RedHat makes, for example, patches for kernel vulnerabilities, but they actually give that away for free. What they sell is a promise that when there's a new vulnerability, you can get a patch from them quickly. They also spread this service across MANY different ope…
>RedHat makes, for example, patches for kernel vulnerabilities, but they actually give that away for free. What they sell is a promise that when there's a new vulnerability, you can get a patch from them quickly. What's preventing someone from freeloading? It sounds like regardless of whether you're paying, you can still get the patches.
Nothing. CentOS is RHEL without the logos and tech support.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#57> the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it. Assuming "community" means general open source devs/users, this doesn't speak for everyone. The (admittedly small) stuff I make open source is given to…
One thing I've found surprising and interesting over the past decade or so is the popularity of permissive licenses like BSD, MIT, and others. I would have expected the essential share-alike fairness of copyleft to resonate more. I don't know if it's down to marketing (the whole viral thing), the influence of commercial users, or if it's fundamentally what people prefer, as you do.
In my case, I’ve been disappointed many times at work because some library I wanted to use was GPL. I don’t want anyone to have that experience with the stuff I build.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#58"The community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed." Well, how lucky for the community that a wise startup came along and fixed open source. I get that open source business models are hard, especially in an increasingly commoditized space like databases. Still, it rubs me the wrong way when a business wants the goodwill of open source, then tries its hardest to bend the rules in i…
Rubs me the wrong way when a cloud computing company repackages open source code and starts making huge money without contributing. Rubs me the wrong way when these same companies can just re implement the API and cause massive hurt to an open source competitor.
This is what web hosting companies have been doing for many years. It's not new to AWS or cloud computing. There's an entire industry built up around running and maintaining open source software for customers. Redis Labs itself is part of that industry, selling a service called "Redis Enterprise Cloud". I imagine that somewhere in that stack they're using open source software that they don't contribute to, don't you?
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#59What are Redis's alternatives? Might be a good idea to have one, had their VC backers pushed them too far into monetization, leading to even more drastic licensing changes.
It doesn't look like Redis requires a copyright assignment from its contributors. The bulk of the files have a copyright statement for Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez), but other contributors have copyrights in there as well (including Redis Labs). Redis Labs employs antirez and bought the trademark from him, but it doesn't appear that he transferred copyright to them. Even if he had, I don't think Redis Labs would be able to unilaterally relicense Redis.
What Redis Labs owns (and is distributing under this new proprietary license) is a set of modules that they developed for use with Redis. They aren't officially part of Redis.
Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again
#60I don't really see how cloud providers are using their "monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it". The fact that e.g. AWS is a (near) monopoly, or even just massive has little to do with it. They provide VMs, those VMs can run software, and if you want they'll manage the VMs with the given software for you if you'd rather not worry about it. Rackspace does the same thing, and they're a million miles away from a monopoly.
I don't see how these measures are practical either. Redis is much easier to do a cleanroom implementation of than MongoDB, so I doubt this kind of thing will produce any other kind of response from Amazon.