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Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

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Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#81

Post by sauceop »

meditate wrote: post #36
wmf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does one have to make money with open source? Making money is really a shorthand for sustainability. If developers aren't paid, their code can easily fall into disrepair which hurts all their users. Out of curiosity would the GPLv3 at least force providers like Amazon to release any modifications they make to FOSS stuff to turn it into a hosted/managed service? They may not make any modifications and those modifi…

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…

It's a free-rider problem - if large cloud companies fork every successful open source infrastructure project, don't contribute back, and pull away a significant chunk of users, then there's a lot less incentive for other companies to invest in future open source development, because they'll have fewer users and get fewer code contributions.

Potentially that shifts things from a good equilibrium where everyone reaps the benefit of many people contributing to the same projects, to a bad equilibrium where every major cloud player develops closed-source products separately.

I don't think it affects all open-source projects, particularly not small ones or ones where some is scratching their own it. But it's hard to build certain types of complex production-quality infrastructure without full-time employed developers working on it.

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#82

Post by Legogris »

doesnt_know wrote: post #72
dcbadacd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's still open-source, it's just not free (as in freedom) software. I'm annoyed how suddenly redis, even when source is available, is put into the same bin as say MSSQL, with rest of the "proprietary software".

They are the same. The full .NET framework effectively had the full source code available to read as the "Reference Source" but there was never any doubt it was proprietary. https://referencesource.microsoft.com/ You can mince words and make inconsequential adjustments to proprietary software licenses but they are still proprietary.

The current iteration of the .NET Framework, .NET Core, is proper Open Source under the MIT license. .NET Framework 4.x above is a different beast all-together and requires Mono for cross-platform compatibility. I am guessing you are fully aware of the difference, but worth pointing out for readers who might not be :)

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#83

Post by sauceop »

gruez wrote: post #54
spectre256 wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

If you're running IT for a major corporation and you have an issue with your OS that prevents your business from operating, what do you do? Hope that your IT team figures out an issue they've never seen before in code they have no particular expertise in? No, you want to be able to pull in people who actually know the technology and have seen it all before.

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#84

Post by sauceop »

kodablah wrote: post #19

> 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…

The open source projects that are most threatened like this are the more complex infrastructure software that doesn't naturally get build as a side-effect of other work.

If you look at a company like Red Hat, they're focused on building things that will work reliably for the diverse needs of their thousands of paying customers. Whereas a lot of open-source contributions are really about solving the contributor's specific problem.

Sometimes if you get many people each making a contribution that scratches their specific itch you end up with something great. Other times it isn't cohesive.

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#86

Post by pferde »

e12e wrote: post #71
SloopJon wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19223687 The gpl was always about end user freedom. The bsd/mit is more about developer freedom. Neither guarantees upstreaming of changes - but many see the gpl as effectively requiring publication of changes. And it does prevent restricting such publication. But if you develop a point-of-sale system (say) and sell it to a store chain - they might not h…

"But if you develop a point-of-sale system (say) and sell it to a store chain - they might not have any motivation to publish the source - even if it includes a patched mysql, or some gpl code etc (maybe a patched Linux kernel?)."

They also have no obligation to publish it. You are distributing the software to them, you have to give them the source code along with it. They are using the software, not distributing it further, therefore GPL does not require them to publish the source code.

(I'm not trying to argue with you here, as I think you know this - I just thing your comment does not make this detail clear enough. :) )

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#89

Post by paulstovell »

burtonator wrote: post #62
djsumdog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does one have to make money with open source? Why does that have to be a goal in and of itself. Are people going to take your stuff and not contribute back? Possibly .. that's why there's the FSF/Stallman and GPLv3 argument. Out of curiosity would the GPLv3 at least force providers like Amazon to release any modifications they make to FOSS stuff to turn it into a hosted/managed service? With things like Apache/BS…

> Why does one have to make money with open source? Why does that have to be a goal in and of itself Money is air... without money good luck competing against other technologies. I find that the OSS community is insanely naive about where OSS comes from. There's this assumption that it just comes for free like manna from heaven. I seem HN geeks (saying that in a good way) say how they want to use Firefox vs Chrome be…

So much this!

At first the huge corporations saw OSS as a threat. Their model had been to spend money building software, then charge people for that software. Competing with $0 software scared them and caught them off guard.

Now the corporations and VCs figured out how to use OSS as a weapon. And it’s a deadly one!

The developer insistence on everything being open source means that it’s very easy for a large corporation to destroy a whole lot of ISVs by just releasing an OSS equivalent. VCs know this too.

OSS is used as a PR tool. Projects like React and Angular go a long way to making the parent companies look developer-friendly, even though many developers would normally consider those company’s missions against their values.

OSS is also a powerful way for corporations to commodotise their complements. You see this with the cloud vendors jumping behind Kubernetes to ensure Docker wouldn’t be the next Oracle.

Developers expect everything to be free and open source. We’ll end up in a world where the only programming jobs left will be at the corporations who weaponise OSS the best.

Re: Redis Labs Changes Its Open-Source License Again

#90

Post by jandrewrogers »

djsumdog wrote: post #12
SloopJon wrote: post #5

"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…

Why does one have to make money with open source? Why does that have to be a goal in and of itself. Are people going to take your stuff and not contribute back? Possibly .. that's why there's the FSF/Stallman and GPLv3 argument. Out of curiosity would the GPLv3 at least force providers like Amazon to release any modifications they make to FOSS stuff to turn it into a hosted/managed service? With things like Apache/BS…

There are generally useful software projects that require initial investment of time and expertise that exceed what can be realistically achieved as a hobby for a first version. Most of the gaps in open source are software systems of this type.

If you need a type of software system that requires 100k LoC of high-expertise code to get to a Version 1.0, you will need to spend millions of dollars. You can neither recruit non-experts to do a credible job, severely limiting the pool of people that could contribute in practice, and most people with a day job will be reluctant to spend the additional time required to write tens of kLoC of difficult, production-quality code -- man-years essentially.

And this ignores that most "high-expertise" software designers are prohibited from working on open source versions of what they do separate from their paying job. This is the reason, for example, that the myriad exotic high-performance database engines don't have open source equivalents -- only a handful of people know how to design those systems and their closed source work precludes participation in open source. But even if they could, the level of individual effort required will exceed what they are likely to want to do for free.

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