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Redis is open source again

antirez.com

271–280 of 815 posts

Re: Redis is open source again

#271
Great to see this. 12 years ago I wrote https://github.com/rcarmo/miniredis during a very slow weekend where I both wanted to get a feel for the internals of how Redis worked and have a little PubSub server I could call my own.

I spent the entire weekend poring over the C code and found it some of the most beautiful C I'd ever read (ever since the heady years of SunOS), and now I feel I should at least go and update miniredis to asyncio/Python 3--for kicks...

Re: Redis is open source again

#272
When Antirez left Redis, he wrote an amazing blog post I go back to often [0]. In there he said:

"I write code in order to express myself, and I consider what I code an artifact, rather than just something useful to get things done. I would say that what I write is useful just as a side effect, but my first goal is to make something that is, in some way, beautiful. In essence, I would rather be remembered as a bad artist than a good programmer."

I'm glad Antirez was seeing his art losing it's beauty and now, is reclaiming it!

0. https://antirez.com/news/133

Re: Redis is open source again

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, Simon. I believe that cases like Elastic and Redis returning back to an open source license is like writing on the rock: "open source won", at least in the system software space. Companies get created, prosper and fail over time, but this message is here to stay with us for a long time, and shapes the society of tomorrow. It's a win of the software community itself.

It's a win for the community over and against the corporations that are Redis and Elastic. They're not the good guys for giving in to the pressure. They tried to ride FOSS to prominence and then extract wealth on the backs of the community and found that the community mattered more than they did. So sure, let's celebrate, but celebrate the community, not those who tried to pull the rug out from under them.

[deleted]

Re: Redis is open source again

#274
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't the Affero GPL v3 cover this? have seen some projects use it, I think it limits the server run parts of the software etc

Yes, it does! The "problem" with AGPL3 is that it has no carve-out for companies smaller than Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. If you use AGPL, you have to open source your entire stack. Not everyone thinks infectious copyleft / free software is a problem. But it will mean that if you use AGPL3, every part of your stack has to be open. That doesn't work for everyone. This is why "equitable source" / "fair source" is gai…

AGPL doesn’t require you to open source the entire stack. Only the changes you made to the AGPL software if you interact with over a network

AGPL does not and has not prevented hyperscalers from creating managed services for software licensed with it

That’s why mongo created the server side public license, which does require open sourcing the entire stack. MongoDB was AGPL before that

Re: Redis is open source again

#276
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing open source and open to contribution. Is SQLite not open-source?

Perhaps... when I look at an Open Source codebase, I expect there to not just be source you can read, but also a way to contribute and engage with the codebase creators, beyond just bug reporting (aka. Github Issues). While it may technically be open source due to it's license and you can literally go look at the source - Microsoft is operating these codebases as-if they are proprietary. Every decision is made out of…

I think most projects are genuinely like this though, even ones that accept outside contributions more earnestly. I understand why you'd associate open to contributions with open source but I think its a mistake to treat the relationship as required rather than common.

The sibling comments contain some sharper critique of Microsoft if you haven't read them yet.

Re: Redis is open source again

#277
post #11

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!

I am thinking the same that going to AGPL may actually push more people to Valkey. Although I haven't checked if ValKey any substantial development since the fork.

Well Valkey has more commits to their repository then Redis does, and more contributors. So it appears to be active.

https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey

https://github.com/redis/redis

Re: Redis is open source again

#278

I wonder whether they did deals with AWS and Google behinds the scenes. Something like "you poured money into Valkey, how about you give that kind of money to us instead and we'll switch to AGPL and you can stop confusing two customers with two practically identical but differently priced options". Could that ever work? (I have no idea)

Google is well known for having banned AGPL (https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty...).

Re: Redis is open source again

#279
post #33

I contributed a minor (but imho still neat :p) improvement to Redis under its original license, and personally moved to using redict when the unexpected license change to SSPL was announced - and I was feeling betrayed as a contributor to a properly-FOSS-codebase. (Had they switched to AGPL right away, I'd have been perfectly fine with that change from a moral perspective, ftr.) I have a great deal of respect for ant…

Microsoft made one called Garnet, I wouldn't say its a fork though, its basically compatible with Redis and implemented mostly in C#. It supports the RESP wire protocol from Redis for ease of compatibility. https://github.com/microsoft/garnet

Nice. I've been using Memurai (https://www.memurai.com/) for development on Windows (native, no WSL or Docker - for reasons), but this looks much better.

EDIT: Weird that being a program from Microsoft (well, it's Microsoft Research, so that probably explains it?) it has no installer and doesn't run as a service on its own.

Re: Redis is open source again

#280
post #218

MinIO also switched to AGPLv3 a while back, and they stated that “the AGPL license requires that all software connecting with MinIO be 100% open source for you/your users not to be in violation of the license.”[^1] Since Redis and MinIO are somewhat similar, (Both can be used to store and retrieve data. Redis uses a custom protocol, and MinIO uses an S3-compatible API.) Should I assume that this statement also applie…

I believe the AGPL doesn't actually require this, even though MinIO may think it does. I hope someone gets sued over this some day so we may find out

It would not even make sense. Since you do not even always know what license the thing has you are connecting to. And not even the fsf sees it that way.
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