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From where I left

antirez.com

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Re: From where I left

#261

Post by girvo »

_acco wrote: post #214
simonw wrote: post #68

For me, the license change upset me mainly for two reasons: 1. Many people had contributed their efforts to the Redis project for free - both in terms of code but also in advocacy, writing tutorials, publishing example code etc - and when they did that it was under the understanding that project would remain under the same open source license. It honestly felt like a betrayal of trust. 2. From a purely selfish point…

AFAIK, the reason for these changes is basically "prevent AWS from eating our business". Is that right? If so, are these trends harmful to open source? Are we not choosing between: 1. A world where all revenue in OSS infrastructure ultimately flows to a few big platform companies. 2. A world where these carve-outs are commonplace. Meta's carve-out with Llama is so interesting because it practically calls the big comp…

> Should there be a similar standard license for open source infrastructure?

Yes, I think there should be. The tech world is basically a monopoly at this point, and that's dangerous for a thousand reasons. The least those monopoly owners can do is financially contribute if they want to use these tools.

It's sad to me that the tech world is rallying around Valkey, which is Big Tech's fork: AWS et al are the ones behind it. We continue to give more and more power to the biggest players.

Re: From where I left

#262

Post by sanderjd »

homebrewer wrote: post #220
weinzierl wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Folk ask themselves, why contribute to this thing (MIT/GPL licenses) if there some for-profit entity involved?" You put MIT or GPL in the same bucket here, but really shouldn't because the difference is all that matters. There is no "rug-pull" as you call it. What happened with Redis is what the BSD license allows and what people should expect to happen. The combination of GPL (or AGPL) with a large enough and diver…

> The combination of GPL (or AGPL) with a large enough and diverse set of contributors who keep their rights in their contributions is a proven way to prevent what happened with Redis. Also the lack of a CLA (and/or copyright assignment) because many "modern" projects under the GPL ask you to waive your rights away, thus nullifying the license. Do not contribute to them if you have any self-respect. https://drewdevau…

I have self-respect and have no problem contributing to projects with a CLA and copyright assignment. I recognize that I don't control what happens with my contributions, as I have consciously agreed to their terms. Controlling what happens in the future of a project simply has never had anything to do with my motivations for contributing to a project.

Re: From where I left

#263

Post by girvo »

munificent wrote: post #64

> However, during the “writing years” (I’m still writing, by the way), I often returned to coding, as a way to take breaks from intense writing sessions (writing is the only mental activity I found to be a great deal more taxing than coding) This has been my experience too. With both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters", writing the code was a joy while writing the prose was hard work. Gratifying,…

> Game Programming Patterns

Huh, I own this in a print copy. Thank you so much for writing it :)

Re: From where I left

#264

Post by stephenr »

I think there are two important factors here that the author overlooked:

- the vast, vast majority of end users will get their software from a package manager, and for something as relatively feature stable (for what the vast majority of people use it for) as redis/clones, there's a good chance it's coming from a distro repo. Practically no one is installing it by building from source. The licence change means it won't be (at least new versions) in those distro repos any more, but the direct fork and spiritual successor (valkey) likely will be, and in some cases valkey will likely take over the redis name in those repos.

- this isn't the first time Redis the company has pulled this kind of trick, and I think it's foolish to believe the community is going to hang around and wait for the next time they say "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further"

Re: From where I left

#265

Post by mmaunder »

I’m amazed Antirez didn’t fork Redis and start fresh like Monty did MySQL. AWS, Azure and GC would be thrilled to support his work on an OSS fork. After 9 years surely any contractual constraints have expired? Maybe a sense of moral obligation? Or perhaps Redis Inc recruited him to prevent exactly this?

Either way we all very much appreciate the work you have done. Redis has been a game changer for many of us running small businesses on tiny budgets.

Re: From where I left

#266

Post by stephenr »

bornfreddy wrote: post #198
bitexploder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud providers offer productized versions of Redis, so their interest in Valkey should be obvious :)

Yep. It is still a bit ironic that the community rallied behind Big Tech instead of a small startup though. Just saying.

The community rallied around a community fork with an open source licence instead of a VC funded startup with a penchant for changing licences.

Re: From where I left

#267

Post by hnfong »

eudoxus wrote: post #255
gpderetta wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affero GPL-style copyleft licenses are an option, although they are treated as radioactive by most companies. A clause that triggers the extensions over GPL only for companies beyond a certain size might make them more platable.

> although they are treated as radioactive by most companies Isn't this reason enough to not consider it an option?

AFAIK, the main issue of the GPL family of licenses is that they are rather poorly drafted. The GNU project has great evangelists but ideological-minded people make bad lawyers. Their licenses are long winded and hard to interpret, and often make assumptions about unsettled bits of copyright law. Their legal theories (eg. "GPL is not a contract") have been rejected by courts.

In short, if you're a company wanting to use some AGPL-like license, you'd probably want to use a license that's better drafted over the original AGPL.

Re: From where I left

#268

Post by stephenr »

jcgrillo wrote: post #165
jchw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but how is this a good answer? If you really only care about "two/three users in the world" and don't want users to worry about legal implications, why not explicitly write that in the license? It doesn't matter how good your intentions are, in the long run, it's not you or Redis, inc. we have to trust, it's anyone who potentially inherits the rights of these licensed IPs, at which point the courts will no…

> Redis, Inc. could some day be acquired by Oracle This is truly the nightmare scenario, and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out when such a thing happens. Not saying specifically with these two companies, but so far these licenses aren't particularly tested, and it seems we just can't really know what will actually happen without running the experiment.

TBH oracle have been better stewards of MySQL since they bought Sun than Redis the company has been of Redis for the last five or so years.

Re: From where I left

#269

Post by vvillena »

zokier wrote: post #106
antirez wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about this is that since the companies are copyright holder of the code, if this creates issues, the licenses can be rewritten and modified in order to be as sharp as possible in the use cases they want to avoid (which is... two/three users in the world :D).

the issues of sspl have been frequently and loudly been brought up previously, and nothing has happened. just to reiterate, this section is ridiculously expansive: > “Service Source Code” means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, manage…

Redis puts Redis into the open, and companies exposing Redis put everything they use to expose Redis into the open too.

The key enabler in that whole business is still Redis, so the knowledge exchange appears fair.

Re: From where I left

#270

Post by worik »

antirez wrote: post #109
fishtoaster wrote: post #80

I'm really interested in this bit: "the fracture with the community is not about licensing, or at least it’s not mainly about licensing" I wish he'd elaborated a bit more on what he thought it was about. My understanding is that it's 100% about the license. That's certainly why I'll reach for valkey instead of redis next time I need it. That's also what I've heard from everyone else in a similar position. What else w…

For somebody, like you and many others, it was very important to retain an OSI license. But I feel that in general given that the new license is IMHO good for almost every user, from the POV of what they can do with the code, and that the cloud situation was quite self evident, I believe that with better communication, and immediate developments/merges in the core, to counter balance the license switch, many people w…

> But I feel that in general given that the new license is IMHO good for almost every user

That is the nub of the sticking point.

The new is OK for people who only care about getting things done. But for people interested in building and being part of a community, giving as well as taking, not so much

This:

You may not make the functionality of the Software or a Modified version available to third parties as a service or distribute the Software or a Modified version in a manner that makes the functionality of the Software available to third parties.

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