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Redis is open source again

antirez.com

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Re: Redis is open source again

#311

Post by primitivesuave »

simonw wrote: post #193

Lots of cynical takes in this thread - and I get it, there isn't a guarantee they won't relicense again in the future (they have a CLA that would let them) and people feel betrayed by the last license change. I think we should celebrate this anyway. It's a smart decision, it's what the community wanted to happen and it would be great if other companies with janky licenses could see "Redis relicensed to open source an…

I also appreciate this perspective because you never know what's going on in the board room. I have seen some morally upstanding leaders make questionable decisions that were totally out of character for them, all for the sake of appeasing a narrow-minded investor.

Re: Redis is open source again

#312

Post by sophacles »

tough wrote: post #169
KolmogorovComp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing open source and open to contribution. Is SQLite not open-source?

Does SQLite try to embrace, extend, and extinguish their competitors?

Does Microsoft do this in 2025?

Like seriously - I haven't heard of them doing it in quite a long time. I know they were atrocious in the 90s and 00s, I'm not disputing that at all. Are there any examples of them continuing this behavior in the last decade though?

Further, a huge percentage of the people making those decisions back then are no longer with the company, different people are in charge, etc. The industry has changed it's relationship with open source - company board rooms aren't scared of the consequences of loading open source onto a server, the legality and liabilities have been hashed out, and MS isn't really even capable of pulling those fear levers anymore. MS itself has repositioned in the industry - their dreams of total computing dominance have been shattered: there's no chance of a windows derivative owning the server market any more, there's no money in browsers or consumer OSes (heck even MS's domination in gaming is showing cracks due the the efforts of valve). Point being - would it even make strategic sense for them to try to EEE anything anymore?

Note: I have almost no ties to MS. I haven't used an MS os or desktop software since before covid (in any capacity, even moving the mouse on a computer running windows). I don't use any of their SaaS products personally or professionally. There are integrations between the products I help build and azure, however those are not a major source of revenue for my employer and I do very little work that even touches that stuff. Point being - I'm pretty non-MS in my life and don't have any sort of loyalty or incentive to defend them. I do abhor their EEE actions back in the 90s and 00s when they were doing them, and those still make me angry... but that's not a reason to assume that different people at a company are going to act the same as the old-school ones.

Re: Redis is open source again

#313

Post by skrebbel »

reconditerose wrote: post #278
skrebbel wrote: post #257

I wonder whether they did deals with AWS and Google behinds the scenes. Something like "you poured money into Valkey, how about you give that kind of money to us instead and we'll switch to AGPL and you can stop confusing two customers with two practically identical but differently priced options". Could that ever work? (I have no idea)

Google is well known for having banned AGPL ( https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty... ).

Oh nice! Smart move then. Makes me wonder why they went with SSPL in the first place.

Re: Redis is open source again

#314

Post by sneak »

jraph wrote: post #261
sneak wrote: post #168

This is disappointing. The AGPL is a nonfree (and nonsensical) license. The fact that the FSF wants a EULA but can’t have a EULA without violating Freedom 0 doesn’t make the AGPL suddenly logically sound. marcan has written about it in more detail than I care to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30044019 Stop using the AGPL. It violates the basic principles of free software. The ability to run a SaaS company with…

You can run a SaaS company with AGPL-licensed software, no problem. What do you think is nonfree about AGPL?

Not a differentiated one.

The AGPL, in its quest to be a EULA, violates free software Freedom 0 ("The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose").

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

The AGPL literally demands specific functionality be present in the software that cannot be removed without breaking the license. The anticapitalist FSF zealots got so in love with the idea of closing what they call "the ASP loophole" that they wrote themselves a EULA.

Re: Redis is open source again

#315

Post by osigurdson »

I think a project has to be Linux or Postgres big to really operate as open source. Why? Because cloud providers can easily sell your product and contribute nothing back. So, for anything Personally, I think it is better just to call a spade a spade and release things with commercial licenses. Let all companies with $1T category.

The above is a bit of a strawman but what we really want is for valuable projects to continue to exist.

Re: Redis is open source again

#316

Post by jimbokun »

lolinder wrote: post #297
antirez wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said exactly that's a win of the community. But money are needed to pay the folks that work at open source software, and the companies that went for the SSPL were trying to protect their business (and, as a side effect, wanted or not, the ability to pay for such work). I believe the software world failed to protect open source software in the cloud era, but in general the environment that we collectively created ma…

I don't buy that justification. These two companies (and the others like them) set up a model for funding their business knowing full well that they would have to compete with others who were able to provide the same service they were. That's always been baked into FOSS—you can't plan around a monopoly when you're releasing your code for free, that's part of the trade-off you make. When AWS and Co did provide hosting…

There is no possible way to compete against someone else who doesn't need to fund the development of the software but can still take in all the revenues and profits from deploying it as a service.

Re: Redis is open source again

#317

Post by thewebguyd »

dharmab wrote: post #220
Alupis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has a habit of "fake" open source. Particularly on Github. By "fake", I mean Microsoft largely treats their Open Source codebases like they are closed-source, in-house proprietary codebases that they happen to let members of the public look at. They'll accept a PR once in a while, but mostly it appears Issues and PR's are used as a free alternative to UserVoice. Every decision is made behind closed doors (p…

I make an open source, MIT licensed piece of software. I don't accept unsolicited contributions, but I document that people are free to fork the code and provide instructions on how to develop, test and build on your machine. Am I "fake open source"?

IMO, no. The open source definition says nothing about requiring outside contributions, and IMO the spirit of it in the beginning was never about that.

It was about being able to have access to, fork/modify, and redistribute the software. That's the important thing - that the software I use can be modified by me, and if I wish to do so, the license allows me to then redistribute those changes vs. proprietary software, which cannot be modified nor redistributed.

I'm not sure why the zeitgeist went from the above and turned into "all open source must be community software and engage with users and accept contributions" because that was never what it was about. It was a benefit of some projects, sure, but at the end of the day the important thing isn't whether or not the project accepts contributions but whether I have the power and license to modify something to my liking, fork it if I wash, and/or redistribute my changes.

Re: Redis is open source again

#318

Post by skrebbel »

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" (ok, fair), which means you must OSL-license your changes too (ok, fair too).

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.

Re: Redis is open source again

#319

Post by lolinder »

jimbokun wrote: post #316
lolinder wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy that justification. These two companies (and the others like them) set up a model for funding their business knowing full well that they would have to compete with others who were able to provide the same service they were. That's always been baked into FOSS—you can't plan around a monopoly when you're releasing your code for free, that's part of the trade-off you make. When AWS and Co did provide hosting…

There is no possible way to compete against someone else who doesn't need to fund the development of the software but can still take in all the revenues and profits from deploying it as a service.

But that has always been true, from the beginning. It's baked in to the FOSS model and always has been.

If the companies had made a bad call in structuring their business and owned up to it I think we'd be having a very different conversation than we are. We're here because they failed to own up to it and instead tried to get people to raise pitchforks against AWS. Never mind that their intended model was the obviously doomed model of reselling AWS's hosting with a commission on top, and never mind that it was the trade-off they chose when they chose to release their software as FOSS and get the boost in adoption that comes with.

I do fully agree with antirez above that we need a new plan for funding FOSS. But I think that's a poor justification for the rug pulling and vilifying that the existing companies did.

Re: Redis is open source again

#320

Post by osigurdson »

revskill wrote: post #233
antirez wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyway: thanks for having contributed to Redis :)

Not quite. Company can easily change license at any time. No string attached.

I believe AGPL + time + contributors makes that very difficult. It also means that if you have a commercial product that uses Redis you need to open source your stuff though, so not net better imu. Please correct me if I am wrong.
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