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Why AWS Supports Valkey

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Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#111

Post by growse »

graemep wrote: post #102
Kwpolska wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The licence forbids > offering a product or service, the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Software or Modified version How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count?

> How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count? It will be if your app is a data store service . i.e. your apps is a thin wrapper around Redis. If your app is more than that, then its clear the value does not primarily derive from Redis. There are inevitably grey areas (e.g. if your app is a Redis based data store but adds a lot of functi…

> If your app is more than that, then its clear the value does not primarily derive from Redis.

This is about as far from clear as it's possible to get.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#112

Post by growse »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #103
chrisoverzero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] rather than collaborate with the creators. How do you propose AWS “collaborate” with Elastic or Redis Labs under the terms of the SSPL? Also, who do you believe the creators of Redis are?

> How do you propose AWS “collaborate” with Elastic or Redis Labs under the terms of the SSPL? This is quite simple, and should have happened before these companies decide to switch licenses because of Amazon. Each time Amazon decides to use an open source product, instead of doing it for free, they should contact the parent company and offer them a fee. There are many advantages of such an arrangement: a single vers…

> Each time Amazon decides to use an open source prouct, instead of doing it for free, they should contact the parent company and offer them a fee.

What if, instead of doing that, they hired some of the people making significant contributions to the project? Would that count?

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#113

Post by halJordan »

dontupvoteme wrote: post #93
jillesvangurp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do. People think of OSS as manna from heaven, which is naive. The reality is that almost all OSS is made possible by large amounts of companies that are sponsoring development directly or indirectly. Even developers working on OSS in their spare time get their money from somewhere. And quite often OSS interests and professional activities of course align; i.e. their OSS activities are paying their bills…

They do that because it's required of them out of sheer necessity, but it's the absolute bare minimum they can do because capitalism dictates it so Just like you might imagine a leech could evolve some attribute to help defend its host against other predators. I can't speak on the elastic vs open search topic though - does being part of the fiefdom of amazon work as a survival strategy?

But this just isnt true, and hasnt been true. There are bad companies out there: There are also good companies out there. This reductive "every company is capitalism and every capitalism is evil" mindset for sure feels good, but is wrong. And there's really no further argument beyond a simple denial until you decide to take cognizance of the ecosystem you're detracting.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#114

Post by chipdart »

clvx wrote: post #78
chipdart wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the contributions from collaborative effort is still usable under the same terms in those versions. So what’s this “bait and switch”? It's undoubtedly bait and switch. You have a company that portrays itself as the host of a project that relies on community contributions for maintenance, and all of a sudden that host unilaterally forces a licensing change where all users, including those who have been directly a…

Which is included in the as is part of the license. A ton of projects have stopped working which forced to fork or replace completely due maintainers not caring anymore, getting sick or just switching priorities. Why is this different. For all the licenses change cases, contributors who disagreed forked and stablished a new route. This is 100% the spirit of the license.

I have no idea what you tried to say. Your comment sounds like machine-generated garbage.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#115

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

growse wrote: post #112
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you propose AWS “collaborate” with Elastic or Redis Labs under the terms of the SSPL? This is quite simple, and should have happened before these companies decide to switch licenses because of Amazon. Each time Amazon decides to use an open source product, instead of doing it for free, they should contact the parent company and offer them a fee. There are many advantages of such an arrangement: a single vers…

> Each time Amazon decides to use an open source prouct, instead of doing it for free, they should contact the parent company and offer them a fee. What if, instead of doing that, they hired some of the people making significant contributions to the project? Would that count?

It depends. For example, when Ubuntu first appeared and Canonical hired some prominent Debian maintainers, they were criticized for that. But I believe the final net benefit was positive.

The problem here is what happens when Amazon stops to pay them. If the owner of the project is a foundation or a similar organization, it may have better chances of survival.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#116

Post by evanelias »

growse wrote: post #110
graemep wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With Server Side Public License (SSPL) it's an even bigger shit show, as it forces any business that uses the software to release under the very same license all software and systems and even user interfaces (?!) that directly or indirectly interact with their project. As it is very easy to understand, this prohibits any company from adopting any software released under that license. Not "any business", only a busi…

> Not "any business", only a business that offers a hosted version of the software. AWS has a problem offering a hosted Redis service, but no one who self-hosts (including running it on a cloud) is affected. Does "hosted version of the software" mean that the hosted service has to exactly match the API semantics to count? Or does it mean any service that's semantically similar (and powered by) the software (e.g. simp…

The license defines it: "Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version."

I'm definitely not a lawyer; but as a layman I would interpret that as meaning you can't just change a few cosmetic things in the API to get around these terms, since that clearly still "entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version" as well as "accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version".

There's certainly edge cases here which I assume will remain a gray area unless they're eventually worked out in court as part of some lawsuit. But given the intent of the license terms and motivation for adopting it (preventing cloud providers from reselling infrastructure software as a managed service), I would really not expect to see lawsuits against non-cloud providers. I mean there's no logical motivation whatsoever for vendors of SSPL-licensed software to start suing random users who aren't competitors. If they wanted payments from all self-host users, they would have used a very different license.

So my guess is the only way this goes to court is if a cloud provider blatantly violates those SSPL terms, which seems unlikely to happen.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#117

Post by evanelias »

zokier wrote: post #72

I would be far more sympathetic to these sspl corporations if they subjected themselves to those same license terms. But instead they play this some animals are more equal than others game.

That wouldn't ever make sense though. They're the licensor. You don't ever need a license in order to use intellectual property that you own. By definition the license is what allows third parties to use or redistribute copyrighted software.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#118

Post by growse »

evanelias wrote: post #116
growse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not "any business", only a business that offers a hosted version of the software. AWS has a problem offering a hosted Redis service, but no one who self-hosts (including running it on a cloud) is affected. Does "hosted version of the software" mean that the hosted service has to exactly match the API semantics to count? Or does it mean any service that's semantically similar (and powered by) the software (e.g. simp…

The license defines it: "Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a se…

> There's certainly edge cases here which I assume will remain a gray area unless they're eventually worked out in court as part of some lawsuit.

Alternatively, I could just use Valkey and not worry about being sued.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#119

Post by evanelias »

growse wrote: post #118
evanelias wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license defines it: "Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a se…

> There's certainly edge cases here which I assume will remain a gray area unless they're eventually worked out in court as part of some lawsuit. Alternatively, I could just use Valkey and not worry about being sued.

I have more thoughts on this, but seeing as you already ignored the several sentences I wrote after the one you've quoted here, I suppose it isn't productive to discuss further.

Re: Why AWS Supports Valkey

#120

Post by xenago »

zokier wrote: post #72

I would be far more sympathetic to these sspl corporations if they subjected themselves to those same license terms. But instead they play this some animals are more equal than others game.

They're total hypocrites! For instance Graylog switched to OpenSearch to reap the benefits, but themselves push the awful SSPL on their users.

I have no respect for these organizations. Provide real open source software or start up closed from the get-go, don't build on community contributions for a while and then switch to closed while marketing as being open!

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