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The race to replace Redis

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Re: The race to replace Redis

#221

Post by mahkeiro »

bramblerose wrote: post #174
ufocia wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is more about preventing AWS from eating their lunch by providing redis-as-a-service, without paying any sort of compensation to the redis developers. But the developers licensed the software at no charge. What kind of compensation are they entitled to then? Sounds like a case of sellers remorse/take-backsies one of the problems that open source was aiming to solve.

They are not entitled to compensation over their previous work, but you/me/AWS are also not entitled to their _future_ work.

But when you see that currently Redis is mainly developed by Chinese companies or AWS all of this is rather ironic.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#222

Post by dragonwriter »

klabb3 wrote: post #119
aragilar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It’s early. Everyone is confused.

No, it is not, it is decades in, in a well-understood area. Some VC-backed firms (and the VC’s backing them, who see this as critical beyond the immediate firms) want to trade on the idea and popularity of open source without its substance because open source as has has been known for decades is not a viable foundation for the kind of business model that they would like, but has at the same time secured the kind of mindshare in the market that makes it difficult for proprietary software to achieve the kind of rapid ramp-up that provides the timing and combination of returns they want. So they’ve decided to spend a lot of effort making everyone feel confused at some ginned up new threat to open-source, which is not a threat to open source, not something that open source community hasn’t known about for decades, but just a problem for a bait-and-switch business model in which software gains traction trading on the cachet of open source and then rakes in monopoly rents that avoiding is one of the benefits to users of open source licensing.

They want users to see them like Postgres, but they want to milk users like Oracle. That’s the problem – a marketing problem for proprietary software vendors. The attempt to sell confusion is an attempt to conceal that that is all the problem is.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#223

Post by c0l0 »

Kwpolska wrote: post #212
kqr wrote: post #162

I liked Andrew Kelleys perspective on this: let's treat Redict as a rename of the Redis project, and the project now called "Redis" a weird commercial fork of Redict. https://andrewkelley.me/post/redis-renamed-to-redict.html

This article lists the other contenders for the title of new Redis, and I think Redict is going to be the least successful thanks to its founder, niche hosting site, and the hostile AGPL licence.

It's not AGPL, but LGPL-3.0-only. Neither of these licenses is "hostile".

And ftr, in my eyes, a project being created/initiated by ddevault is an asset, certainly not a liability.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#224

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

8organicbits wrote: post #169
crabmusket wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I right in understanding that the relicensing was possible because of the CLA, not just because of the BSD license? Would a permissively licensed project that didn't use a CLA be vulnerable in the same way?

A key concern is that BSD isn't viral, so anyone can take BSD Redis and fork it into a commercial offering. If you want to, you can. The Redis trademark prevents anyone but Redis the company from calling their fork "Redis". A CLA may impact relicencing, it depends on the terms. A simple CLA may only say "I am the owner of the code and I release it under $LICENSE". The current Redis CLA also has a copyright grant, whi…

“Viral” just means that the license has a “no additional restrictions” clause, not that you can’t make a commercial offering out of it. That’s why GPL and AGPL don’t really solve the problem.

And the problem with the trademark model is that AWS, and especially Microsoft, already have established brand recognition with the people who sign the big SaaS and support contracts. The people who know what a Redis is are just nerds with no money, the real big shots do everything in Microsoft Excel.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#225

Post by mythz »

happymellon wrote: post #199
mythz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The licensing change only applies to their future versions which they own all contributions of which AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore.

> AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore. Doesn't AWS employ Madelyn Olson? I mean, AWS have paid for Redis development. Not exactly a leech.

Yep still the biggest leachers. Token hires and flowery PR campaigns doesn't entitle them to most of the profits of other vendors products or absolve them of their predatory behavior.

But they wont be able to leech Redis's future contributions. Knowing AWS they'll most likely create a fork to continue raking in most of the profits in the short-term.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#226

Post by gkbrk »

exe34 wrote: post #194
vasco wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you own the copyrights you had money to spend at some point. Other than that unless you are one of the contributors you are leeching, just different flavors of leeching.

Is buying the same as leaching now? Words really do get diluted to the point of meaningless...

It is if the thing they bought had contributions from many other people but pretty much all of them got nothing for it.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#227

Post by rmbyrro »

tsimionescu wrote: post #87
nerdponx wrote: post #41

Isn't this the reason why AGPL has started to get more popular? Everyone has to play by the very strict rules except the copyright holder, who can do whatever they want, but the community still benefits from the core software being open source. The BSD license in particular seems like a particularly bad way to run a business.

The whole move to new "open-core" licenses started with the most famous (infamous?) AGPL project - MongoDB. The AGPL is not what companies like this want (Mongo, Elastic, Redis etc). They don't want AWS's code: AWS is already providing that. They want AWS to pay them royalties or stop competing.

They dont't want AWS royalties. They wanna be able to command higher margins. Since AWS has lower costs and prices, Redis can't compete with good margins. The royalties are just a way to increase AWS costs, so that they raise their prices and give Redis the ability to keep high prices and margins, while still remaining attractive to customers (which don't have a cheaper choice anymore).

Re: The race to replace Redis

#228

Post by lukaszwojtow »

happymellon wrote: post #199
mythz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The licensing change only applies to their future versions which they own all contributions of which AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore.

> AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore. Doesn't AWS employ Madelyn Olson? I mean, AWS have paid for Redis development. Not exactly a leech.

Yes, they paid. And they can use the code they paid for. But it doesn't give them right to leech of any future code written by someone else IN THE FUTURE.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#229

Post by rnts08 »

harryf wrote: post #180

To me Redis has always seemed like a Trojan Horse for developers. The first impression is its this simple key-value database, so easy to use. Oh wait... it's also a cache, nice! Let's cache all the things too! And look... all the cool kids are are using it too, so it must be cool, meanwhile the old Unix mantra of make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by…

hear hear.

Re: The race to replace Redis

#230

Post by rnts08 »

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…

So you're suggesting the game engine model, you're free to use this software for whatever until you make $x from it?

Unity was like that before they screwed it up, I have heard of other systems as well but not sure since it's not my cup of tea.

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