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From where I left

antirez.com

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Re: From where I left

#431

Post by PeterZaitsev »

strbean wrote: post #248
PeterZaitsev wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument about "evil megacorp" is problematic because you can't really isolate those from the small and wonderful startups. Specifically I've been directly involved in MongoDB ecosystem with FerretDB and there are so many small indie providers worldwide would love to offer MongoDB Atlas alternative to their customers, but can't because of SSPL license. I know, for many it is hard to make piece with it - Open Sou…

Small indie providers should absolutely be able to sell their MongoDB / Redis / XYZ as a service, but they should absolutely also be required by the license to contribute back their modifications to the software. Like I said, I understand the complaints about the line-drawing issues with these licenses. I don't understand the viewpoint that the current state of OSS, where hosting != distribution, is acceptable.

I think the "root" of the problem goes to what is the purpose of Open Source ? I see a lot of VC Funded founder convinced what Open Source should make their business model easy, hence licenses such such as SSPL should be called Open Source.

I believe Open Source is about software users and maximizing their freedom, which among other things choice of truly independent vendors in all circumstances, as such non compete licenses as SSPL are not

Are they better than Oracle-like proprietary licenses ? Of course! but they are not Open Source

Re: From where I left

#432

Post by worik »

nijave wrote: post #374
worik wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 servic…

I care about getting things done but don't want to take on the risk of an encumbered license and the volatility that comes with license changes. To me, these products are booby traps that are more likely to need replaced in the future when something changes again. Put another way, it's a sign of an unhealthy ecosystem. There's so much gray area in these terms you have to keep the lawyers involved not only in the init…

> I care about getting things done

Yes. But you care about more than just that....

Re: From where I left

#433

Post by thayne »

evanelias wrote: post #420
jillyboel wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the title: "Redis will remain BSD licensed" You can try to be a smartass and add random caveats but that's not how language works. Imagine if everyone thought like you did: "Sure I promise to do X" (not saying that I mean for the next 5 minutes and will then ignore my past promise)

Again, where is the word "promise" in this post? The post title in its original context is clearly referring to the confusion discussed in the very first sentence : "Today a page about the new Common Clause license in the Redis Labs web site was interpreted as if Redis itself switched license." The title is saying that Redis core's license was not switched to Common Clause at that time in 2018. That's all. It is not…

> This is not the case, Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed.

True, he doesn't explicitly say for how long, but I don't think it is unreasonable to read "will remain" as "will remain indefinitely" and not as "will remain so until we change our minds".

Re: From where I left

#434

Post by _msw_ »

hellcow wrote: post #223
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…

Mongo was AGPL until 2018. The AGPL didn’t stop Amazon from abusing the open source social contract, hence why Mongo modified the license.

Disclosure: I work for Amazon.

AWS never offered a service based on the AGPLv3 version of the MongoDB server. Therefore the change of license terms to SSPLv1 was not directly caused by Amazon’s use of the software as part of an offered service, and had no impact to Amazon DocumentDB as an independently developed interoperable protocol implementation.

There were cloud providers headquartered in Asia that did offer AGPLv3 based MongoDB server as a service.

Re: From where I left

#435

Post by Jonanin »

ribadeo wrote: post #327

This piece, while providing context, makes me question basically everything about Redis, despite it's lovely API. Antirez extolling the virtue of the current LLM wave of hype coupled with his bizarre apologism for Redis Labs behavior is less strange than "why is this guy not 1)personally extremely wealthy 2)having reserved some key powers and control from Redis Labs from day1 such that he could have steered this, aka…

What's truly bizarre is the popularity on this site of questioning someone's own stated experience with finding LLM tools useful. On a site called hacker news, that usually celebrates useful computer tools. I'll never understand the obvious luddism here.

Re: From where I left

#436

Post by matt_kantor »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #426
matt_kantor wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying Xfree86 is a fork of X.org, MySQL is a fork of MariaDB, or OpenOffice is a fork of LibreOffice. "Forking" is an event that happens in time, so project A cannot be a fork of project B if A existed before B.

They both were the same project with the same codebase and the same contributors before they split. It was as much project A as it was project B.

> It was as much project A as it was project B.

Valkey is as much Redis as it is Valkey? Then why isn't it called "Redis"? Clearly there's a distinction or the fork would never have happened. Is Redis also as much Valkey as it is Redis?

Names signal who has control over a project, not anything about its history/implementation/license. Otherwise every piece of software that goes through a rewrite should change its name.

Re: From where I left

#438

Post by saghm »

matsemann wrote: post #353
saghm wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like your opinion is that the communication around the relicensing was the issue rather the relicensing itself, but from the standpoint of the people who decided there was enough of an issue to switch away from Redis, is that the case? As an outsider to the Redis community both before and after the schism, I don't know that you're wrong, but I have to imagine that if I were someone concerned enough to consi…

How many, outside a few vocal voices, actually cares about the licensing? My company would choose Redis 100/100 times, because it's the known and trusted brand, and not some fork they've never even heard of. And the license change doesn't affect us in any way. Additionally, I think it's a bit entitled to be so up in arms about a product everyone is using for free. There is a big issue with how open source is unmainta…

I don't personally have a strong opinion about relicenses to try to prevent competitors from selling cloud-bases services (either in the case of Redis or in general; if anything, having worked at MongoDB at the time when it was relicensed to SSPL biases me a little bit in favor of companies who do relicenses like this). My perception is that there's a non-trivial contingent of users who migrate whenever something like this occurs, but you're not wrong that this might be influenced by a smaller number of louder voices.

I do agree with you about open source developers being within their rights to maintain as they see fit. My personal philosophy is that while open source maintainers have no obligation to maintain in a way that conforms to user expectations, users still have the right to voice their opinions on that (although the maintainers are free to ignore it, per the previous point). To me, the distinction that matters isn't about whether users are "entitled" or not but whether they're voicing opinions about an open source project (including decisions about how to maintain it) versus personal insults at individuals. I don't see anything wrong with someone being vocally upset about a license change; I just also don't see anything wrong with a maintainer choosing not to care about it.

Re: From where I left

#439

Post by liveoneggs »

samtheprogram wrote: post #425
liveoneggs wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BSD license doesn't allow changing it to another license any more or less than GPL.

Yes it does. You can make a private, proprietary app that’s just tweaking a few bits of a BSD project. You can’t do that with the GPL. Following that, unless the project has a CLA (so that the owner of the project reserves all rights of the code that’s contributed and essentially owns the contribution), any contributions made under the GPL cannot be made closed source, can’t be switched to an incompatible license, et…

Creating a commercial version of a thing is not a license change.

Re: From where I left

#440

Post by evanelias »

thayne wrote: post #433
evanelias wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, where is the word "promise" in this post? The post title in its original context is clearly referring to the confusion discussed in the very first sentence : "Today a page about the new Common Clause license in the Redis Labs web site was interpreted as if Redis itself switched license." The title is saying that Redis core's license was not switched to Common Clause at that time in 2018. That's all. It is not…

> This is not the case, Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed. True, he doesn't explicitly say for how long, but I don't think it is unreasonable to read "will remain" as "will remain indefinitely" and not as "will remain so until we change our minds".

> I don't think it is unreasonable to read "will remain" as "will remain indefinitely"

That's a reasonable interpretation. But it involves an assumption on behalf of the reader, of words that are not there. I think it's a stretch to consider that specific post a "literal promise" by Antirez.

That said, I just did more research and must admit I am completely wrong with regards to the bigger picture there. My genuine apologies. In the HN commentary on that same post [1], the cofounder/CTO of Redis Labs (Yiftach) apparently made a much more direct statement that "Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license". Due to use of the word "always", that I think can unambiguously be called a literal promise that was broken by the Redis company.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818647

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