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Commons Clause

redislabs.com

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Re: Commons Clause

#291

Post by justinjlynn »

mattdeboard wrote: post #149
justinjlynn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely this kind of resale of enterprise proprietary software modules is already prohibited by their enterprise licensing scheme. If it's open source, this is precisely what open source is meant to do. It's supposed to be a means to an end to enable new functionality - the fact that it's being sold doesn't matter. The key is that we all gain that ability. If they want to compete in that space with their open source p…

This is absolutely not Redis rent-seeking. In fact, what the Commons Clause is designed to protect against, from my lay-reading of it, is in fact rent-seeking . As for the rest, the Redis Labs post addresses every point you make pretty definitively. I don't think many of the people who are bothered by this business decision read that post. And if they did, and they comprehended it all, but they still think Redis deci…

> But because a product team lazily putting together a product at AMZN or GOOG or whatever else and not even thinking to look at the Redis license sounds pretty realistic to me!

No.

Re: Commons Clause

#292

Post by Boulth »

krn wrote: post #267
sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

I think, BSD / MIT / Apache should be used for open source libraries , and MPL / GPL / AGPL for open source products . This way, a developer can build a new product using open source libraries without sharing its source code, but he cannot repackage an existing open source product without sharing its modifications.

Excellent suggestion, and with GPL for distributed products (installers, apks) and AGPL for cloud services.

Re: Commons Clause

#293

Post by kemitchell »

DannyBee wrote: post #217
kemitchell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The appeal to authority is to whatever authority OSI, Debian, or FSF may have, not to legal authority. Licensing lawyers often know those definitions, or at least know of them. But they're terms of branding, terms of politics, not legal terms of art, and not strong trade or service marks. Granted, I think it's safe to say Commons Clause wouldn't meet the old definitions you mentioned, or please the people who wrote t…

Meh. We've been through this phase before. Like anything, I do actually think it's reasonable to say "i understand the history of why things are the way they are now, but i want to see if they still should be that way"[1]. It may even be a reasonable time to see if that's the case given how much people have forgotten. It's been 20+ years since the last go around. However, i do think ATM we will arrive at the same out…

Thanks for your comment. I think we understand each other better.

I don't have great hope for Commons Clause, either, at least at the moment. But I've had a few think-throughs, and I've yet to hear from those whose views I really need to feel complete on it.

As for old, tired things, I imagine some still await their time, with a bit of adaptation. Changed circumstances and all that. But I will also hold your comment on "innovative things" in my pocket. Should the HN beast come lumbering after any more of my own little licensing experiments, I may need it!

Re: Commons Clause

#294

Post by sonarlunar »

gav wrote: post #223
MrBingley wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them. Already, this behavior has damaged…

> The issue is that large companies can free-load off open source projects and make millions while contributing nothing back to the developers. This is far from true in the case of Redis. Salvatore worked for VMware from 2010-2013 and Pivotal from 2013-2015. It was funded by these "large companies" that you speak of.

Redis was not funded by those companies. Salvatore was sponsored to work on his own project they had a business need for. All copyright and trademarks belonged and still belong to Salvatore, according to redis.io

To my understanding, this was a sponsorship, ie a support contract to debug and improve an open source product VMware and Pivotal (same people, different name) were using and depending upon for their products.

AWS, on the other hand... With Elasticsearch and Redis... ;-)

Re: Commons Clause

#295

Post by bigiain »

slavak wrote: post #221
wkoszek wrote: post #23

Weird. Company full of Open Source guys, but I think they didn't get the right advice on a business model. The reason why MIT/BSD/Apache licenses are there is that there's a group of people who want to let companies use their stuff. If you want people pay you, you just release commercial software, without showing the source. License is something that once put in, it's too late to change later, and not disrupt how you…

Sorry for spamming this all over the post, but I think it's important enough for everyone to see this: Redis itself IS NOT changing licenses, and if you only use the core Redis product you are unaffected. This license change only applies (or _will_ apply, I guess) to some source-available addon Redis modules. (I'm not sure if any existing open-source modules developed by Redis Labs will have their license changed, or…

Since you're spamming this everywhere, I'll repeat _my_ concerns.

1) Some of us no longer trust the company not to bait-and-switch again. 2) It's almost guaranteed that at least future useful developments will happen under the proprietary and consulting-encumbered license.

I'll admit the company has every right to execute on #2 - t is 100% without doubt going to have me reconsidering our use of redis here, and keeping a very close eye on what Amazon and Google (and others) do in response to this, as I decide what alternative to the consulting-encumbered software we might use going forward.

Re: Commons Clause

#296

Post by bigiain »

kjeetgill wrote: post #202
mmastrac wrote: post #7

This is the license below. I'm pretty sure this is going to be vague enough to cause problems with a ton of legal departments. They want to be the only ones hosting it and the the only ones you call in to help with it. I get where the Redis folks are coming from, but this is basically a nail in the product and guarantees a fork if they don't turn back. === 8 The Software is provided to you by the Licensor under the L…

Redis core plans to remain BSD. I honestly think this whole thread is missing this and it's incredibly crucial. From the article: > The Redis core is, and always will remain, an open source BSD license. Certain modules, however, are now licensed as “Apache 2.0 modified with Commons Clause.” These modules can be freely used in any application, but selling a product whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from…

It's a nail in the coffin for the trust in the company who everybody assumed in good faith would leave BSD licensed code under the BDS license.

Re: Commons Clause

#297

Post by reitanqild »

paulsutter wrote: post #239
sgentle wrote: post #208

> Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of hel…

I thought your comment was great, until I actually read the link. Once I read the link I’m happy to see this experimentation and evolution of licenses. As someone who builds services and develops open source code, this approach seems more appealing than GPL and seems to cover the concerns of the Redis project nicely. Time will tell how it actually works out, but I think it looks promising. > the License does not gran…

Partly agree.

The comment is still generally great, except that it portrays redis labs as whiners while it looks like redis labs has put in some real effort to coniue to be as open source as possible towards the rest of the world while still trying to get some funding from the people who can afford it.

Right now, whats not to like about this for everyone of us?

That said: the parts of redis that this applies to is not open source anymore (as they admit) and I am afraid that a lot of other companies will try to abuse this to confuse users of their software.

Re: Commons Clause

#298

Post by bigiain »

mark_element wrote: post #2

I don't like the naming. "Apache 2.0 with commons clause" is not the right way to describe this licensing paradigm. It is fundamentally no longer Apache 2.0. I appreciate the motivation, but think it would better serve everyone to just make a new "Redis License" that describes the terms.

I wonder if the Apache trademark allows them to call it that?

Calling your chicken "KFC with different herbs and spices!" would get you stamped down hard _very_ quickly...

Re: Commons Clause

#299

Post by justinjlynn »

justinjlynn wrote: post #111
dcow wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mention later on that redis core will always remain BSD. I share your sentiment, though it seems like this is an effort to not totally isolate the project. Their goal appears to be clamping down on straight up resale of integration components & modules.

If they're concerned about brand dilution via resale of "Redis"-as-a-Service RedisLabs could easily trademark the term Redis and prohibit its use in this way. This mechanism is much the same way Mozilla controls the Firefox trademarks. I do wish they hadn't made their Open Source licence a confusing mess and effectively proprietary for certain modules. That's their right, of course - as copyright holders. However, it…

Actually it seems that Redis Labs wouldn't be able to trademark "Redis" in this sense (at least without Antirez's permission) as they themselves are making money on a fork of Redis called "Redis^e" or something like that. Granted Antirez works for them now -- but this is downright confusing.

Re: Commons Clause

#300

Post by Boulth »

DannyBee wrote: post #215
pvg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing she's a well-known practitioner in this field. Why would one be involved in such a thing, given it's so problematic? The whole thing seems super-confusing and half-baked.

Yes, Heather is very well known and very smart. She's a hired gun (with no offense meant). She is neither good nor bad IMHO. Though depending on your viewpoint, she's lawful neutral, true neutral, or chaotic neutral :P. She has both defended accused open source license violators and helped open source foundations defend against baseless lawsuits. Given how long she has been doing this, I would simply not believe that…

> Given how long she has been doing this, I would simply not believe that she missed any of the issues I mentioned (the ambiguity, the AGPL/GPL/etc issues).

Agreed on that, based on just reading one of her books. I wonder why didn't they choose AGPL.

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