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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

#111

Post by wyldfire »

endisneigh wrote: post #96
wyldfire wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone wants to call their stuff open source but have strings attached. The term 'Open Source' is well-defined and includes licenses like the one redict picked (LGPL 3.0). It is incorrect to try and lump this in with source-available licenses that are IMO anathema to Open Source.

The OSI doesn’t represent everyone. It’s simply a fact that MIT for instance allows things like Redict and this discussion to take place, as well as other things. It is maximally permissive.

> The OSI doesn’t represent everyone.

Sure, sure. But the term Open Source has a meaning. Ultimately terms have meaning based on their usage in the language. For 'Open Source', its usage happens to reflect the same meaning enshrined by OSI.

> It is maximally permissive.

It appears that there are now several redis forks, with several licenses. For the most part: everybody wins. If you prefer the MIT license, maybe you would prefer to contribute to the BSD-licensed Valkey. And if not, you can fork redis too.

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

#112

Post by endisneigh »

falcor84 wrote: post #94
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.

As another comment mentioned, copyleft would prevent commits to this project from being merged into Redis, intentionally making this a "hard fork". I do think it's ideological, but it's doesn't seem needless to me - there is a real ideological battle to be fought here.

I don’t understand why that is a bad thing. Perhaps a closed source fork will end up being superior through incentives only available through closing the source. Humanity still can use an open source fork. More options must be superior, no?

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

#113

Post by ksec »

drewdevault wrote: post #90
endisneigh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Copyleft is a string. The default would be complete permissiveness. I have answered a similar line of questioning before. Arguing strongly for permissive licenses is arguing for a kind of passive freedom which presents as freedom from obligations. Copyleft is the sort of active freedom which presents as a guarantee of rights.

This is off topic.

I am going to assume this isn't impersonation, but Drew what happen to your old HN account? ( I had it on RSS feed and hasn't shown any update for ages I thought you left HN )

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

#114

Post by xorcist »

yunohn wrote: post #92
verdverm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source seems to be doing fine without the clarity. Even fields that have nothing to do with software are adopting the mindset. The movement only gains in steam

Most popular OSS projects use Apache and MIT in my experience, precisely because GPLs are problematic for commercial usage and contributions from employed people.

That has been a popular opinion since FreeBSD was a complete operating system and Linux and bunch of disparate tarballs. Yet here we are.

There have been other examples where copyleft products have competed with more permissively licensed products as commercial products. The results are overwhelmingly in favor of the former.

Empirically, cooperation works much better on a level playing field where your company's work won't be included in a competitors closed fork.

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

#115

Post by drewdevault »

endisneigh wrote: post #110
drewdevault wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're missing the reciprocal nature of the arrangement here. Since you seem to assert that it's acceptable to release software under a proprietary license (and I agree with you, most of the time), you must believe that the authors of a work have a right to distribute it under whatever terms they like. So: is it appropriate for someone to say "I am willing to offer my labor to this collaborative project, and release the source code for free, and allow people to build from my work, under the condition that they extend the same rights back to everyone else"? It's much more generous than what proprietary software offers, after all.

Why is copyleft subject to more scrutiny than proprietary software for you? You suggest that permissive licenses are better because they allow permissive derivatives of the software, which suggests that permissive derivatives are good. But copyleft derivatives are... not good? Copyleft offers more freedoms than proprietary software.

Moreover, this line of reasoning completely disregards the social contract. Many people worked on, used, popularized Redis under the presumption that they were participating in a collaborative effort from which all participants would benefit, only -- surprise -- now the trademark holder has changed the terms so that only they benefit from a product of which, by objective measures, 80% was made by the community.

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

#116

Post by drewdevault »

ksec wrote: post #113
drewdevault wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyleft is a string. The default would be complete permissiveness. I have answered a similar line of questioning before. Arguing strongly for permissive licenses is arguing for a kind of passive freedom which presents as freedom from obligations. Copyleft is the sort of active freedom which presents as a guarantee of rights.

This is off topic. I am going to assume this isn't impersonation, but Drew what happen to your old HN account? ( I had it on RSS feed and hasn't shown any update for ages I thought you left HN )

I don't see any reason why this is off-topic. Naturally the license change is a distinguishing feature of Redict and a reasonable subject for discussion.

I lost the password to my old account.

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

#117

Post by drewdevault »

GrumpySloth wrote: post #107
drewdevault wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exploitatio…

>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.

Redis never had a CLA and Redis Ltd does not hold the copyright for the work, it's held in aggregate by all contributors. Redis Ltd did use a CLA for their products surrounding Redis, like RedisJSON, but Redis itself did not use a CLA.

>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.

Redis Ltd was only ever responsible for about 20% of the development of Redis. If they wanted to shut down operations in good faith they would just hand it over to the other 80% to manage. Instead they used their trademark to try and do a hostile takeover of the IP.

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

#118

Post by lolinder »

sgerenser wrote: post #2

Hopefully they don’t get legal pressure from Redis Labs over name similarity. Didn’t OpenTF have to change to OpenTofu for that reason?

The difference is that TF is a widely-used acronym for Terraform, while Redict is a distinct word. That doesn't mean Redis won't try to put pressure, but it does mean it's not as obvious that they'd win if it came down to it.

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

#119

Post by elzbardico »

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.

Legal may sometimes be stubborn dicks, they can be overly conservative and afraid, but basically they are there to protect you from doing stuff that would create problems for the company and usually lead to you being fired or even being arrested in consequence. And they are working from the context of potentially fighting against a hostile legal challenge from people like them working for other companies, agencies, the law or the government. Yeah, they know that we are talking is just common-sense, but the law machinery not always work according to common-sense, and they know it far better than you.

Be cooperative with them, and they will usually try to help you. And don't try to teach them their work, after all, they don't try to teach you how to architect and code.

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

#120

Post by xorcist »

gadders wrote: post #24
drewdevault wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substantial portions of Redis were written by AWS and Google. People are upset because Redis is a collaborative project with many people working on it and Redis Ltd wants the sole right to commercialize the work of an entire community. LWN has a good overview: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/8bc9d155d4e2afb3/ Redis Ltd is only responsible for about 20% of the work.

>>Substantial portions of Redis were written by AWS and Google Employees on their own time, or paid to do it? So I'm clear though - if I wrote a SAAS product tomorrow that under the covers used Redis, I'm OK, but if I spun up a bunch of servers and offered managed Redis as a product, I would need to pay?

That's what many people seem to think, but it has not been legally challenged yet. We won't know for sure until Google or AWS decides to test the limits, in your jurisdiction.

You should probably ask Redis, Inc. what their intention is. Keep in mind, though, the run the risk of being re-rug-pulled. They have changed the license once and they can do it again.

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