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Redis is open source again

antirez.com

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Re: Redis is open source again

#391

Post by kmeisthax »

echelon wrote: post #259
tough wrote: 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…

No, SSPL requires you to open source your entire stack. That's why the OSI and FSF rejected it.

AGPLv3 says, if you modify the software and put it on a network, you have to provide a link for anyone accessing the software to download the modified source. There's numerous drafting and technical problems with this arrangement[0] but the only parts of your stack you have to release are the parts that are actually part of the program covered by AGPLv3.

The "strong copyleft" strategy[1] is to identify a specific freedom-restricting behavior we don't like and prohibit just that. We're not saying "Amazon is not allowed to use this software", we're saying "Anyone who turns this software into a service needs to provide a way to fork the service and get the software back without losing anything". If such a copyleft license happens to scare a company into buying license exceptions, that's a happy accident.

In contrast equitable source doesn't say anything about freedom, it just says "these people need to pay a license fee". That's not FOSS, that's shareware. In FOSS, free-riding is not a bug. The problem with AWS isn't that they aren't paying a license fee, it's that they are building roach motels out of community projects.

[0] I'd link to Hector Martin's incredibly informative Mastodon posts regarding the subject, but he deleted his account after crashing out of LKML. As a substitute for that, I'll summarize my hazy memories:

- The intended compliance mechanism is to make your app a quine; but that only makes sense for webapps written in PHP/Python/etc. Someone actually put AGPLv3 on an Ethernet stack - how do you comply with that?

- It's unclear how license compliance works in a pull request driven Git workflow. If you're running the server locally for testing, and someone accesses it, have you violated the license?

- You can filter out the source offer with an HTTP proxy not covered by AGPLv3. That seems like a very wide loophole which the FSF apparently believes would work.

[1] e.g. AGPL, SSPL, OpenWatcom, etc

Re: Redis is open source again

#392

Post by lolinder »

echelon wrote: post #367
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…

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 solution is clear: start your new database with an "equitable source / source available" license from day one. Nobody will complain about a relicense since your license will handle the hyperscalers right off the bat.

Yes, this would be the honest thing to do, but people don't do it because using a non-FOSS license loses you adoption. The step you're missing in your little timeline is that the only reason the project takes off at all and becomes big enough that anyone is making money off of it is because it's Open Source. Proprietary databases, programming languages, and similar have lost big time and that's not changing any time soon.

So what's really happening is that these FOSS companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to release code for free so that other devs will use it and then make money from the project while somehow banning other companies from also making money off it.

Re: Redis is open source again

#393

Post by skywhopper »

kiitos wrote: post #284
joshstrange wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their stats are "I asked an LLM", no, that's not joke, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860256

[flagged]

But if that’s your typical method of research, I have bad news for you about the quality of the statistics you’re relying on.

Re: Redis is open source again

#394

Post by s1mplicissimus »

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.

> 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.

Using a distro that handles things your way is your privilege. I assume most people who install packages care about the functionality they provide, not the brand name - so it seems like a fair default for distros that aim to appeal to broad user bases imo.

Re: Redis is open source again

#395

Post by otterley »

jonny_eh wrote: post #352
otterley wrote: post #209

If there's a lesson to be learned from this drama, it's that changing a software license from a liberal open-source one to a anti-competitive one (even if the source is still available and open to contribution) is a one-way door and loses trust. Once done, even if you recognize your error and revert the license, you're not getting that trust back.

> you're not getting that trust back It's not black and white. They'll get some trust back at least.

Anyone capable of pulling a rug once is capable of doing it twice.

Re: Redis is open source again

#396

Post by jonny_eh »

otterley wrote: post #395
jonny_eh wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not getting that trust back It's not black and white. They'll get some trust back at least.

Anyone capable of pulling a rug once is capable of doing it twice.

You can't win all the trust back at once, it's a process.

Re: Redis is open source again

#397

Post by skywhopper »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #172
xiwenc wrote: post #9

A bit more info from CEO: https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ Sounds like SSPL did not yield the desired outcome. Glad AGPL is an option now.

It did yield the desired outcome: Google and AWS are no longer using it.

Not sure how the hyperscale clouds switching to a compatible/competing project from which Redis Labs gets no value or contribution is a win.

Re: Redis is open source again

#398

Post by redbell »

Ironically, when Redis changed their license a couple of months ago, I commented back then [1]:

But who knows what the future holds? Maybe the Redis team will change their mind and revert back the decision like Elastic Search did a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394797

Yeah, that future had come, and Redis is free again!

Thanks antirez and to all the team behind Redis.

_________________

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41611636#41612750

Re: Redis is open source again

#399

Post by atombender »

lolinder wrote: post #225
c0l0 wrote: 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…

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…

NATS almost ended up doing it recently, too. Fortunately they caved in just today, after the CNCF and the community protested. [1] While the outcome is great, it was a bunch of drama for nothing, and their reputation has been harmed.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43863721

Re: Redis is open source again

#400

Post by badlucklottery »

jaapz wrote: post #356
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…

Interestingly their CEO states that AWS an Google forking redis and maintaining it separately was their "goal" all along. Because fragmentation is apparently good?

> Because fragmentation is apparently good?

I think it's more "they are no longer piggybacking off our work for free".

I also think what they actually wanted was that plus "...and they paid us".

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