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Redis is open source again

antirez.com

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Re: Redis is open source again

#83

While I applaud the effort to repair developer trust, do note that many organizations prohibit the use of AGPL. Linked below is Google's own stance on why AGPL is banned: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

My personal opinion: we shouldn't let Google's bad policy poison our brains. The people who wrote that policy had their reasons for taking this position. It might have been the right thing for Google at the time the policy was written.

That doesn't mean it's the right position for you, or for every situation. Many organizations with a higher levels of maturity in open source matters will take a more nuanced approach when it comes to AGPLv3 licensed software.

Re: Redis is open source again

#84

While I applaud the effort to repair developer trust, do note that many organizations prohibit the use of AGPL. Linked below is Google's own stance on why AGPL is banned: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...

Their loss, at some point…

I'm quite fed up with this GAFAM FUD against the AGPL and the GPLv3.

Re: Redis is open source again

#85
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there usage stats available? How do you know this?

My guess is most people are using Redis via cloud providers. Did any cloud providers switch away from Redis?

AWS supports Valkey for Elasticache, and they actually bill it 33% cheaper. We use it and it works well.

Re: Redis is open source again

#86
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there usage stats available? How do you know this?

My guess is most people are using Redis via cloud providers. Did any cloud providers switch away from Redis?

AWS Elasticache gave a nice discount to switch to valkey w/ 1 button click no downtime migration path

Re: Redis is open source again

#87
post #68

I'm curious whether the community will trust Redis-the-company again after this, or if they'll choose to stick with Valkey. The other concern is at least some big company legal departments are wary of AGPL software, which makes Valkey, still BSD, more attractive to them. Edit: Regardless, thank you and the rest of the folks inside Redis for pushing to bring this back to OSS!

Statistically nobody is using valkey.

Amazon really encourages valkey in the elasticache dashboard. There's a banner advertising lower prices and it's listed first in the dropdown when you go to create one. Default settings do have power.

Re: Redis is open source again

#88

I'm curious whether the community will trust Redis-the-company again after this, or if they'll choose to stick with Valkey. The other concern is at least some big company legal departments are wary of AGPL software, which makes Valkey, still BSD, more attractive to them. Edit: Regardless, thank you and the rest of the folks inside Redis for pushing to bring this back to OSS!

All of this aside, Redis-the-company has some of the least tactful salespeople I've come across in my long stint in this industry. Used car sales level tactics.

Between that and the licensing, I would never consider dealing with them.

Re: Redis is open source again

#89
I am starting a new web app project and I wanted an in-memory store for session data. I just defaulted to Redis, literally yesterday doing the `npm install`.

I mean, I remembered the whole Valkey saga after the license switch. I guess I'm just not as ideological as some here? I just thought "I need a fast in memory object store" and went with Redis as my default. I treat it like an appliance within my infrastructure.

I also vaguely recall antirez going back to Redis (the company) during the AI boom to work on vector extensions to Redis. I believe he is a big part of why Redis is such a rock-solid piece of tech. I am more confident in this product with him influencing the trajectory.

I also have the decision on license in the back of my mind. As I said, I am not an OSS zealot, but I do like the idea of an OSS license that has some protection against someone completely ripping off the code with no recourse. AGPL might be a decent compromise, especially with a dual license.

Re: Redis is open source again

#90
post #74

Gladly, Valkey has other benefits besides its more permissive license compared to Redis. One of them is multi-threading support, which makes it pretty easy for someone like me—who has a bit of a skill issue with DevOps—to actually utilize all CPU cores for my caching layer.

The I/O threading was initially implemented by myself, when I was still working on the core before rejoining, and is also available in Redis. So this is actually another case of the benefits ValKey got for being able to clone Redis, receiving money from the hyper-scalers that just want to maximize their revenues... They made certain improvements later, but Redis 8 (see the release notes in my blog post if you are cur…

The Valkey implementation of multi-threading is fundamentally different than what existed in Redis. The history dates back to work done in ElastiCache that was released as "Enhanced IO", https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/03/amazon-el.... The version released in Redis could only do about 350k RPS because of poor memory locality of operations, the inability to do command processing while handling I/O, and the inability to offload much of the TCP read path. The new version in Valkey can achieve 1.2M RPS.

"They made certain improvements later", should be "we threw away the old implementation and built a better one."

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