It wasn’t clear to me until I read their blog, that redis will remain free to use in their “community edition”, which will continue to be supported and maintained (and improved!) So we as developers don’t have to scramble to replace redis in our SAAS apps and web based software. This is more about preventing AWS from eating their lunch by providing redis-as-a-service, without paying any sort of compensation to the re…
Well, except for the fact that "redis" the organization didn't create redis and isn't even the main developer of redis. The origin of Redis the company is literally as a hosting provider for the open source redis that they didn't create.
Not only that, AWS has been offering redis-as-a-service longer than the "Redis" organization has been.
Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…
The best idea I've come up with is a license which only grants the rights to a natural person to use the software otherwise it is identical to the MIT, GPL or AGPL, whatever your cup of tea is. If you're a corporation then you need to buy a license.
Certainly not a new idea. As recently as early 1990s I licensed shareware that had terms requiring corporations to pay for a license with different fees and/or restrictions as those for individual, non-commercial users. Somehow this ideal was lost. Today, software authors seems allegiant to so-called "tech" companies, not to individual, non-commercial end users. As a non-commercial end user, I would prefer to use versions of open source software that are _not_ receiving contributions from so-called "tech" companies. But I never see software licenses that say, in so many words, "If you are Amazon, Google, etc., then you need to contact the author for a commercial license." I used to think back in the 1990s that open source software was aimed at least in part at giving individuals an option to use software outside the control or influence of large corporations. This type of software does not feel as if it has the same goal today. It feels like it is literally _made for_ those large companies, not individual, non-commercial end users. Software authors seem delighted to engage with the companies, but generally prefer to avoid engagement with non-commercial end users.
I'd be more interested in the race to build a business model that works with open source and venture funding, myself. A grand unified theory of software goods funding, if you will.
Maybe we instead need a model where FOSS is not about profits for anybody, and is just a passion of love, from a large community of amateurs doing it for the technology and fun. Projects could still be funded by community users, but "venture funding"? That's how projects turn to shit.
Universal basic income & bug/feature bounties, for example.
I work a normal job.... Open source is a couple of hours a week at most. It's a hobby for me some months I do nothing other I crush bugs like it was my job.
The problem is that big OSS database projects have teams of paid developers working on them and they want to make their money back. You can do this by offering paid support or a hosted offering. Having someone like Amazon take your product and build their own hosted version really cuts into that revenue. Now, Redis was AFAIK pretty much just written by antirez and maybe it could have stayed that way, but even excepti…
The best open source software is developed by unpaid people. Even the ones with companies around them, the best work is done in the first phase when everyone is still unpaid.
The "cuts into their revenues" part usually mostly affects their ability to keep developing the non open source parts anyway, their SaaS dashboard, their billing, etc.
Take redis, you could never change it again and it's fine. There's no need to support anyone, it's complete software that stands on its own.
Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…
There's many things that I don't like about how open source works, but non-discriminatory licensing is not one of them.
In fact, the concept of the four freedoms as necessary parts of a more fundamental freedom is one of the things that I value the most about the free software/open source world.
In hindsight, I think that the probability that things turned out the way they did in this regard was relatively low, but the ideological drive of GNU and RMS made the world see the problem from a philosophical perspective rather than a practical one (even among people that don't fully agree with RMS/GNU/FSF).
> without paying any sort of compensation to the redis developers. Redis organization doesn't pay any sort of compensation to developers who contribute to redis source code. I do not see any difference here.
Doesn't Redis Labs employ paid contributors? Does Amazon donate their contributions back to the community?
According to the linked article, Amazon has contributed 5% of the contributions to Redis, while Redis, the company, has contributed 20%.
Why don’t we try to fix the “cannot be used for bezos yacht”-licenses instead of shunning the numerous companies of especially databases who want to do good in a meaningful way? Source available is good, better than proprietary which is what we get with aws, but still not enough. People are legitimately afraid of rug pulls, like sneaking in essential features into paid offerings. I think a lot of the skepticism comes…
Do we need to "FIX" opensource? I am being serious here. It seems like people aren't getting it. Open Source is about openess and the ability to modify. Yes, people can lose money to cloud provider hosting but why does an Open Source project need to make a lot of money? I say alot because its not like they can't still make money. They can still consult, they can still offer support or hosting but because theyre not m…
Are there even any non-VC-backed companies with those issues? Whenever this drama and forking happens, it seems to be venture capital.