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The race to replace Redis

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Re: The race to replace Redis

#111

Post by [deleted] »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #85
klabb3 wrote: post #70

Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…

I think you'll find that the vast vast majority of us don't care about the whole "cannot be used for bezos yacht" problem when we contribute to free software. I contribute with no expectation of monitory gain and absolutely zero desire for some random foundation or company that's part or almost always created later to make any money. If some contributors want to make money become consultants the "amazon problem" isn'…

[deleted]

Re: The race to replace Redis

#112

Post by ajmurmann »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #98
Temporary_31337 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you make money?

I work a normal job.... Open source is a couple of hours a week at most. It's a hobby for me some months I do nothing other I crush bugs like it was my job.

The problem is that big OSS database projects have teams of paid developers working on them and they want to make their money back. You can do this by offering paid support or a hosted offering. Having someone like Amazon take your product and build their own hosted version really cuts into that revenue.

Now, Redis was AFAIK pretty much just written by antirez and maybe it could have stayed that way, but even exceptional individuals clearly want to move on eventually and you'll likely need a team of maintainers. Distributed data products are complex and need people who contribute more than nights and weekends.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#113

Post by ajmurmann »

dehrmann wrote: post #93
klabb3 wrote: post #70

Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…

> re-selling your product” and not much more That's not what AWS is doing. AWS is selling management services. The fact that managed DBs are as popular as they are says this is a significant value add.

And that's also how DB companies try to monetize. So a hyperscaler offering this directly really undermines your entire business. In the past you could offer a Enterprise version with support, but with the move to the cloud that market is shrinking and Amazon is eating the new market themselves

Re: The race to replace Redis

#114

Post by PHGamer »

Do we need to "FIX" opensource? I am being serious here. It seems like people aren't getting it. Open Source is about openess and the ability to modify. Yes, people can lose money to cloud provider hosting but why does an Open Source project need to make a lot of money?

I say alot because its not like they can't still make money. They can still consult, they can still offer support or hosting but because theyre not making millions they want a "new" license.

Its stupid. you solve the itch then your done unless your doing maintance. people making open source software like paid software, constantly adding new features and changing things to justify their existance. You dont need millions in devs if your just solving a core problem.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#115

Post by ajmurmann »

crasshit wrote: post #78
brody_hamer wrote: post #48

It wasn’t clear to me until I read their blog, that redis will remain free to use in their “community edition”, which will continue to be supported and maintained (and improved!) So we as developers don’t have to scramble to replace redis in our SAAS apps and web based software. This is more about preventing AWS from eating their lunch by providing redis-as-a-service, without paying any sort of compensation to the re…

> without paying any sort of compensation to the redis developers. Redis organization doesn't pay any sort of compensation to developers who contribute to redis source code. I do not see any difference here.

Doesn't Redis Labs employ paid contributors? Does Amazon donate their contributions back to the community?

Re: The race to replace Redis

#116

Post by fractalb »

I feel copyleft licenses look more favourable at this point of time. What’s the value of more free/business friendly licenses if you can’t guarantee that the same license will apply for all the future releases? Looks more like a bait and switch policy.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#117

Post by lolinder »

klabb3 wrote: post #70

Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…

> that you can slap on a project without a legal team

The thing is, this kind of license is only really relevant to the kinds of projects that do have legal teams.

If you're writing a hobby project you probably shouldn't waste time worrying about feeding the AWS machine, because the odds that you'll get noticed and used are tiny. Just pick GPL or MIT and be done with it.

If you're participating in a large decentralized project like Postgres, then having a big player like Amazon providing managed hosting is actually a huge plus because you get lots of contributions from the big players [0]. There's very little downside for a project like this, and lots of upside.

The only type of FOSS project that needs an "AWS can't use this" license is a project that is driven by a single for-profit company which decided to make their business model "provide a managed solution layered on top of AWS". Unsurprisingly, it's hard to compete with AWS on price when you're using AWS itself as your vendor, so these companies tend to be the ones that switch licenses to tell AWS they're not allowed to compete.

These companies almost certainly have their own legal counsel and they represent a tiny minority of FOSS projects, so it's not obvious to me that we need a new standardized anti-AWS license. Maybe we should instead acknowledge that "managed-hosting-supported FOSS database" is an impossible business model and try something different next time.

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/

Re: The race to replace Redis

#118

Post by busterarm »

BoorishBears wrote: post #73
gymbeaux wrote: post #67

AWS also forked ElasticSearch into their “OpenSearch” DBaaS. It caused some issues at my last job because OpenSearch limited us to a particular version of the NEST .NET library that was missing some newer functionality. Real bummer and feels like a step in the wrong direction given all we’ve accomplished in tech over the last 20 years.

OpenSearch infuriates me to no end. It lacks so many improvements and advancements since the ancient version it was forked at, but because AWS already has an org's payments details, teams often refuse to look at Elasticsearch. Even basic things like autocompleting queries have been WIP for half a decade now: https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/sample-code/... https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSear…

Teams should refuse to look at Elasticsearch. It's license is SSPL and they ship free and non-free features in the same binary. It's a ticking time bomb to run it in your company.

Also you can just keep your data in postgres and use paradedb and stop having to deal with dramatically more expensive infrastructure and the JVM.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#119

Post by klabb3 »

aragilar wrote: post #95
klabb3 wrote: post #70

Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…

Define "fix". By definition you cannot have an open source licence which says "cannot be used for bezos yacht". Either you accept that, and don't rely on exclusivity for income (which really what the whole relicensing thing is about), or you don't open source your code (and accept that not being open source is a problem for some people). Open source + exclusivity for income is an unstable state, and really only works…

> Define "fix".

It’s early. Everyone is confused. If I could define it, I would have provided a defintion.

At this stage, it’s about acquiring requirements and looking at prior art. And being humble about the solution space. No? If you don’t think there’s any problem today, then argue that point.

> By definition you cannot have an open source licence which says "cannot be used for bezos yacht".

By definition by what definition? There are already disagreements about what open source is, long before these business models. The problem solving comes first, and then there may or not be a debate whether about whether the solution fits better into an existing definition or a new one.

> Either you accept that […] or you don't open source your code

But why? Is this an intrinsic duality or an anccidental/historical one? Or is it about preventing scope creep of the open source term? The latter is easy to solve - don’t call it open source. Or at least defer the debate.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#120

Post by pininja »

wmf wrote: post #103
verdverm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open core only became a word people said 10 years ago, it's on the rise as a business model from what I can tell. Do you have suggestions for alternative funding/support models? What is open core being replaced by from your perspective?

Open core is being replaced by "selling exceptions" to AGPL/SSPL/BUSL/FSL. See MongoDB, Elastic, Hashicorp, Redis, etc. Personally I prefer the Adam Jacob trademark business model but it's not that proven and it can't be retrofitted.

https://medium.com/@adamhjk/introducing-the-community-compac... for folks wondering what Adam’s buisness model is about
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