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Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

redict.io

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Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#101

Post by marcinzm »

frant-hartm wrote: post #42
drewdevault wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the careful use of private modifications as not requiring disclosure of the source code. You only have to include source in the very specific situation of building Redict and providing it in compiled form to customers directly. Like, if you give someone the ELF file. If you run it on their behalf as a cloud service or something you have no obligation to provide source, which is the most common commercial use-cas…

> legal department works for you, not the other way around. Not sure what planet you live on. Unless you are one of the execs, Legal (and other compliance departments like HR) work pretty much against you. They exist to protect the company and the exec team.

In my experience, legal is perfectly supportive assuming you're sane, reasonable and not a dick to them. They have expertise and constraints (ie: client contracts, bandwidth, etc.) that you are not aware of but that's different than being your enemy. If your attitude to them is that they're your enemy then they will be your enemy because why would they treat someone who is clearly antagonistic to them as a friend?

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#102

Post by drewdevault »

endisneigh wrote: post #99
drewdevault wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hypothetical license that said "no forks allowed" would not be an open source license. If Redis used the LGPL we could still fork it, we'd just have to use the LGPL for our fork; likewise anyone can fork Redict so long as they use the LGPL for their fork.* * Technically you do have more options than this with the LGPL but this is a layman's explanation.

I did not say it would be an open source license. My point is simply that Redict takes something more permissive and makes it restrictive, which is true.

I don't think that's true. It's only true if freedom == freedom from obligation, which is a naive view of freedom. But if freedom == guarantees of rights, then Redict is more free. This is how freedoms actually work in practice: freedom of the press is guaranteed by restricting the government from censorship, workers rights are guaranteed by restricting the freedom of businesses to exploit them, etc. In practice all freedoms require someone to give something up. Even with permissive licenses, you are giving up the sole right to your IP and the sole to commercialize your software.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#103

Post by 8organicbits »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #28
kryptiskt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redis Labs didn't start Redis, they didn't contribute most of the code. They just own the trademark. They have about as much right to extract money from AWS and Google for Redis as I have, all they are doing is that they are hijacking an open source project to make themselves rich. They're not a victim of the cloud providers, they are a leech trying to make a score while fucking over all the other contributors to Red…

Hmm, so anyone can just start a company with the name of an open source project and try to monetise it? Like someone could start e.g. "Rust Labs" and sell a commercial version of Rust? I don't know much about the genesis of Redis or Redis Labs, who key people and dates are, etc. I guess this obfuscation is part of the problem.

You can sell a commercial version of Rust (MIT, BSD, and Apache licensed), but you'd need to change the name for trademark reasons.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#104

Post by endisneigh »

drewdevault wrote: post #102
endisneigh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not say it would be an open source license. My point is simply that Redict takes something more permissive and makes it restrictive, which is true.

I don't think that's true. It's only true if freedom == freedom from obligation, which is a naive view of freedom. But if freedom == guarantees of rights, then Redict is more free. This is how freedoms actually work in practice: freedom of the press is guaranteed by restricting the government from censorship, workers rights are guaranteed by restricting the freedom of businesses to exploit them, etc. In practice all…

With all due respect I do not think that makes any sense.

You’re creating this metaphor with the government, but this isn’t the government.

In the end freedom is a spectrum and you are free to do more with MIT than LGPL.

Even if someone forked MIT and made it closed source that does not in any way stop or restrict those who prefer the project pre-fork.

Indeed, that is the very logic that has made Redict possible to begin with. This is the illustration of why MIT is maximally free.

Suppose the EU said code must be closed source, and you must distribute encrypted binaries. In this hypothetical it wouldn’t be possible to use Redict at all. This is another example of why the MIT, and permissiveness in general, is superior.

—-

As an aside your freedom of the press example is yet another reason for permissiveness. The government isn’t permissive by default, which is why “freedom of the press” is even a thing.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#105

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

endisneigh wrote: post #69

I read the post and it’s not clear why it’s not MIT licensed. Why not allow attempts to “create proprietary distributions?” That’s what open source would allow, no? I honestly do not see this as being different than Redis. Do BSD or MIT and be done with it. It seems needlessly ideological. Everyone wants to call their stuff open source but have strings attached.

> That’s what open source would allow, no?

That's what a permissive license would allow, which is a subset of Open Source.

> I honestly do not see this as being different than Redis.

Redis doesn't give you the 4 freedoms; in point, "The freedom to run the program for any purpose".

> Everyone wants to call their stuff open source but have strings attached.

This literally is open source.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#106

Post by drewdevault »

endisneigh wrote: post #104
drewdevault wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. It's only true if freedom == freedom from obligation, which is a naive view of freedom. But if freedom == guarantees of rights, then Redict is more free. This is how freedoms actually work in practice: freedom of the press is guaranteed by restricting the government from censorship, workers rights are guaranteed by restricting the freedom of businesses to exploit them, etc. In practice all…

With all due respect I do not think that makes any sense. You’re creating this metaphor with the government, but this isn’t the government. In the end freedom is a spectrum and you are free to do more with MIT than LGPL. Even if someone forked MIT and made it closed source that does not in any way stop or restrict those who prefer the project pre-fork. Indeed, that is the very logic that has made Redict possible to b…

Governments, businesses, they're all just institutions and I see no reason not to use them as illustrative examples.

The MIT maximally enables exploitation; copyleft maximally enables freedom. From the point of a proprietary fork of a permissively licensed project onwards, users of the proprietary fork enjoy fewer freedoms than before. You are advocating for freedoms for the few (business owners making proprietary forks of free software for profit) at the expense of the freedom of many (everyone else).

Redict would also be possible if Redis used a copyleft license. The space for Redict to exist is not afforded to us because of the use of a permissive license in some way that Redict denies to anyone else through the use of a copyleft license.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#107

Post by GrumpySloth »

drewdevault wrote: post #53
JoshTriplett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valkey has the support of various Redis developers who moved over, keeps the same license as the original Redis did, and stayed on GitHub to keep the workflow that Redis developers and contributors are used to, so I expect it'll end up winning out. GitHub is proprietary and not ideal, but when trying to get developers on board after a fork, using GitHub and using the same license as the original avoids spending innov…

Codeberg was chosen over other candidates because it has a workflow similar to GitHub, to ease the transition for the existing community. In my opinion, we're going through a big shake-up anyway and there's no better time than now to consider changes like this. We did discuss moving it to GitHub or another platform entirely, but as a community we decided to stay on Codeberg. Changing the license was an absolutely ess…

> As far as we're concerned, not being copyleft was a bug that was exploited by Redis Ltd

Disclaimer: I don’t have anything against the relicensing to LGPL. I think it’s your right and I root for you.

That said, correct me if I’m wrong, but, as far as I understand, what Redis Ltd did, they could do regardless of the license. Copyleft wouldn’t have stopped them, given the CLA.

Moreover I wouldn’t call that exploitation. To people outside of Redis Ltd who don’t want to be Redis Ltd customers this move is indistinguishable from them just closing down business and stopping development of Redis. Would that be exploitation? Are they obliged to provide free work on Redis indefinitely? They can’t retroactively change the licence of previous versions of Redis, so they can’t actually take anything away. The existence of the 2 forks is proof of that.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#108

Post by ksec »

endisneigh wrote: post #83
ksec wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "Everyone wants to call their stuff open source but have strings attached" implies GPL ( or CopyLeft, Non-BSD / MIT license ) have strings attached. So the parent was asking isn't Linux Open Source but with strings attached? And if so are you happy with Linux? Although I am assume what you meant was that Redis was originally a BSD / MIT, and re-licensing it to LGPL seems ideological. But I could be wrong.

Copyleft is a string. The default would be complete permissiveness. If someone gave you something the correct presumption would be that you can do as you like with it, unless - and what follows are strings, like copy left. It isn’t inherently bad, but it is what it is. My happiness with Linux is irrelevant because Linux to my knowledge was not re licensed to be more restrictive.

Let's just recap

>"I read the post and it’s not clear why it’s not MIT licensed. Why not allow attempts to “create proprietary distributions?” That’s what open source would allow, no? "

Your "That's what Open Source would allow", clearly implies anything but MIT / BSD license are not Open Source. Hence why people ask about Linux, which is Open Source but copy left aka non MIT / BSD.

>Edit: Linux was always GPL, Redis was not, so I don’t see the relevance.

Your first sentence implies GPL are not open source, the relevance here is why the parent ask "do you think Linux as Open Source" or happy with it. And:

>My happiness with Linux is irrelevant because Linux to my knowledge was not re licensed to be more restrictive.

Your happiness with Linux contradict with the first "quoted" sentence to what a lot of people think you meant.

Just in case, I am on the BSD / MIT camp but what you wrote create a lot of confusion.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#109

Post by danielovichdk »

fmajid wrote: post #73
treprinum wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I was mistaken then. I thought Redis Labs folks created Redis initially.

No, they didn't, although they misleadingly claimed to be the "Home of Redis" for a number of years. Then they hired Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez), the author of Redis, and eventually purchased the copyright from him. Very sleazy outfit that fully deserves all the scorn poured on them.

If one sells a copyright to another, how can that be considered sleazy ? Someone made the sell - to make money I presume - and another bought it, to perhaps make more money ? Seems not that out of reach ?

I don't understand the bitterness around this debate, it seems most people are frustated that they have to pay for something that was free, but at the same time, they probably made money from what was free.

I totally understand, with todays mess of maintainers not getting paid in full, that at some point, someone wants money for their work. Be it a person, a company or you doesn't matter. But right has to be right.

I think we will see a lot of this the next 10 years, simply because we cannot afford maintainers not detecting backdoors in a code-review from some bad actor.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#110

Post by endisneigh »

drewdevault wrote: post #106
endisneigh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect I do not think that makes any sense. You’re creating this metaphor with the government, but this isn’t the government. In the end freedom is a spectrum and you are free to do more with MIT than LGPL. Even if someone forked MIT and made it closed source that does not in any way stop or restrict those who prefer the project pre-fork. Indeed, that is the very logic that has made Redict possible to b…

Governments, businesses, they're all just institutions and I see no reason not to use them as illustrative examples. The MIT maximally enables exploitation; copyleft maximally enables freedom. From the point of a proprietary fork of a permissively licensed project onwards, users of the proprietary fork enjoy fewer freedoms than before. You are advocating for freedoms for the few (business owners making proprietary fo…

I really don’t understand you. Even if there was a closed source fork, users would still be free to use the open source one. There is no restriction or diminishing of options. In fact, now there are even more options and thus more freedom.

In any case we can agree to disagree.

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