Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Redis is open source again

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 815 posts

Re: Redis is open source again

#381

Post by eduction »

skrebbel wrote: post #318
eduction wrote: post #263

I'm always grateful for open source code, but on AGPL I can only quote the lawyer Kyle Mitchell: "Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke..." "It’s not just hard for lawyers, who have the legal picture and can parse the whole license very carefully without passing out...It’s also hard for hackers, even those familiar with free software lore, who lack the legal side o…

This is the first time I read about OSL3 ( https://opensource.org/license/osl-3-0-php ). I'm bad at licenses, and I admit I don't completely get it. At first glance, it seems like a simpler more readable license that tries to accomplish something similar to AGPL. I think the "license terminates when you sue me for patent infringement" clause is nifty. But it says that an "external deployment" counts as "distribution"…

> But how does that in practice prevent AWS and GCP from cloud-hosting your software without giving back? Seems to me that if Redis went OSL3, GCP could host it fine so long as they'd OSL3-distribute any changes they made.

What is your definition of “giving back?” To me that means open sourcing your changes, which as you note is what the license requires.

Re: Redis is open source again

#382

Post by eduction »

em-bee wrote: post #358
eduction wrote: post #263

I'm always grateful for open source code, but on AGPL I can only quote the lawyer Kyle Mitchell: "Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke..." "It’s not just hard for lawyers, who have the legal picture and can parse the whole license very carefully without passing out...It’s also hard for hackers, even those familiar with free software lore, who lack the legal side o…

maybe if you are a lawyer, and if you are trying to get around the license somehow, or of you have to defend the license against an abuser then the AGPL is challenging, but as a FOSS user and developer, it is pretty straightforward: the software runs on a server, you connect to it, you get access to the source that is running on the server. if you believe in the spirit of Free Software then there is no question what…

> if you are fussing about the details which code you need to share and which not then you are not following the spirit of Free Software. it's as simple as that.

Kyle’s point is pretty clear: it’s really hard to tell what agpl actually requires. So it’s a bad, unclear license whatever your position is - whether you think your code should virally make everything that links it open source, or if you expressly don’t want that and only want the library itself network copyleft. What does agpl actually require? Even lawyers are stumped.

Re: Redis is open source again

#383

Post by _msw_ »

kmeisthax wrote: post #359
NewsaHackO wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? How did MongoDB rug pull?

MongoDB used to be AGPLv3. A year after their IPO they realized "aww shit, Wall Street wants continuous growth, being profitable isn't enough" and decided to migrate to a completely new license, SSPL, that's designed to put everything surrounding the software in scope of the copyleft. The implication being that if Amazon were to offer MongoDB they'd also have to release all of AWS RDS[0] as a thing you could just dow…

AWS never offered the AGPLv3 licensed version of the MongoDB server as part of any managed service. There were large cloud providers in China that _did_ offer MongoDB as a service. They also provided the corresponding source code [1]. Despite signs that they were complying with the obligations of the license, they had the SSPL drafted anyway.

Because once it was clear that software as a service was a compelling model, it was no longer appealing to give everyone the permissions needed to offer the software as part of a service (as AGPLv3 was always designed to do).

Changing the license seemingly worked, as a partnership was eventually announced [2].

[1] https://github.com/Tencent/CMONGO

[2] https://www.mongodb.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/tenc...

Re: Redis is open source again

#384

Post by skrebbel »

eduction wrote: post #381
skrebbel wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I read about OSL3 ( https://opensource.org/license/osl-3-0-php ). I'm bad at licenses, and I admit I don't completely get it. At first glance, it seems like a simpler more readable license that tries to accomplish something similar to AGPL. I think the "license terminates when you sue me for patent infringement" clause is nifty. But it says that an "external deployment" counts as "distribution"…

> But how does that in practice prevent AWS and GCP from cloud-hosting your software without giving back? Seems to me that if Redis went OSL3, GCP could host it fine so long as they'd OSL3-distribute any changes they made. What is your definition of “giving back?” To me that means open sourcing your changes, which as you note is what the license requires.

Yeah sorry, stupid choice of words given the subject. I meant paying them for the privilege somehow, which has been Redis (the company)'s goal this whole time. GP suggests OSL3 solves this and I'm trying to figure out how.

Re: Redis is open source again

#385

Post by prmoustache »

echelon wrote: post #174
tough wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad as an open source lover how money fucks it all

If you open source something, the rich trillion dollar companies just steal it. If you're okay with that, that's cool. But they'll profit off of your work and labor. And the worst part is that at scale, the advantages of the sum total of open source is used to compete with you and put price pressure on your salary and career options. To rephrase that, the hyperscalers are in a position to leverage open source to take…

They aren't stealing anything, they use the rights they are granted by the developers of the project.

Re: Redis is open source again

#386

Post by lolinder »

hmottestad wrote: post #371
lolinder wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we just did this whole ride with Elastic [0]: company changes the license out from under the community, community revolts, company gives up and changes it back. Both companies even pulled the same "it worked" excuse ("while it was painful, it worked", "this achieved our goal"). Neither company has built in a legal safety mechanism to prevent themselves from pulling the rug again later and both companies have sh…

Dunno about Redis, but for Elastic I still feel sorry for them being thrown around like a rag doll by Amazon. On principal I will not use the Amazon fork, because I don’t want to support a company that would prefer to fork a project rather than fork over some cash. Amazon is more than willing to sell you their Elasticsearch fork at a loss as long as they can eventually recoup the losses when Elastic inevitably dies.…

> being thrown around like a rag doll by Amazon

Can you elaborate on what exactly Amazon did to Elastic? I read all of their blog posts and the only thing I really got out of it was "they sell hosted Elastic cheaper than we can", which is hardly surprising given that Elastic really just packages up AWS/GCP/Azure cloud infra. That doesn't have to be AWS selling at a loss, AWS just doesn't need to pay itself.

And by all accounts I've read Amazon did contribute back to Elastic development up until Elastic switched the license on them. At that point they forked, but it's hard to blame them when they were deliberately locked out of the original project.

Most of the arguments I've seen against Amazon with regard to Elastic have tended to be very vibe-based. Amazon bullied Elastic because that's always what Amazon does! It's plausible, but it's also plausible that Elastic thought they could use Amazon's terrible reputation as a weapon against it without there being any substance.

Re: Redis is open source again

#387

Post by skywhopper »

sigzero wrote: post #265
Alupis wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people switched to Valkey and didn't even know it. A lot like how many users are using MariaDB but think they are using MySQL. Several major linux distros transparently switched to Valkey and the users are none-the-wiser. On Fedora, for example, doing `sudo dnf install redis` just installs Valkey.

Well that's a reason not to use a distro right? If I type `sudo dnf install redis`, I want to install redis not valkey.

Not really. Post-closing the source, the thing called “Redis” was the actual fork, and Valkey was the original community-built product. Users who want existing configurations to continue working on the same terms need “install redis” command not to break their licensing expectations.

Re: Redis is open source again

#388

Post by skywhopper »

ksec wrote: post #11
placatedmayhem wrote: post #3

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.

In fact, some of Redis 8’s new features were taken from Valkey source code.

Re: Redis is open source again

#389

Post by lolinder »

blibble wrote: post #369
echelon wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This keeps happening: 1. People put a lot of work into building databases. The license choice is OSS / FOSS. 2. Some people in the community (original authors, community leads) make a company around the database and continue developing it for years on end. They sometimes raise venture capital to expand the business. 3. Amazon / Google / Microsoft offer managed versions of the database and make bank on it. Easily mill…

the problem is the definition of Open Source is controlled by the Open Source Initiative, which has been captured by the hyperscalers which is sort of funny because the term "Open Source" was itself coined to make it possible for people to seek funding to build companies based on the (crazy?) idea of producing software, then giving away its source code 20 years later, the structure of the industry has now changed, an…

It's really not though. The OSI quickly loses credibility when they try to push a definition that the community doesn't like (see the Open Source AI kerfuffle).

Both the OSI and the FSF are agreed that Source Available with bans on specific use cases is not FOSS. When you've got freaking Richard Stallman opposing you you really have to do better than just scream "corporate capture". Engage with his idea of Freedom, don't set up straw men.

Re: Redis is open source again

#390

Post by bionhoward »

Again? Didn’t it go from BSD to some infectious copyleft thing? Doesn’t seem “open source again” to me if we can’t use it in private work projects without being forced to open source our project. Isn’t AGPL even WORSE than what they switched from? Wouldn’t “open source again” imply going back to BSD?
Post reply on HN