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Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

redict.io

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Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#41

Post by Macha »

bheadmaster wrote: post #35
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, so anyone can just start a company with the name of an open source project and try to monetise it? Like someone could start e.g. "Rust Labs" and sell a commercial version of Rust? I don't know much about the genesis of Redis or Redis Labs, who key people and dates are, etc. I guess this obfuscation is part of the problem.

Not really. As mentioned in the article, Redis has a Contributor License Agreement [0] that you have to sign if you contribute to Redis codebase, which basically gives the company behind it ownership behind everyone's contributions: You grant to Redis and to the recipients of the software distributed by Redis a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, p…

The CLA is sort of a red herring in the case of permissively licensed software though. It becomes relevant for the SSPL case, where Redis don't want to be bound by the same rules as others.

Like since Rust is MIT licensed, you could make a closed source fork of Rust. The trademark guidelines would prevent you calling it Rust or anything too close, but you could describe it as Rust(TM) compatible and any of the other legally permitted uses of other people's trademarks.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#42

Post by frant-hartm »

drewdevault wrote: post #21
zwaps wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tip: Commercial and non-commercial users of Redict are not required to publish or otherwise “open source” the source code of Redict, including any private modifications they make to the source code" And very next section: "If you compile Redict’s source code into an executable form and distribute this executable form to others you are required to include a copy of the Redict source code and any modifications to it l…

Note the careful use of private modifications as not requiring disclosure of the source code. You only have to include source in the very specific situation of building Redict and providing it in compiled form to customers directly. Like, if you give someone the ELF file. If you run it on their behalf as a cloud service or something you have no obligation to provide source, which is the most common commercial use-cas…

> legal department works for you, not the other way around.

Not sure what planet you live on. Unless you are one of the execs, Legal (and other compliance departments like HR) work pretty much against you. They exist to protect the company and the exec team.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#44

Post by Macha »

zwaps wrote: post #16
drewdevault wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LGPL is a pretty weak copyleft license and was chosen specifically because it is amenable to almost all present-day commercial use-cases for Redis. You don't have to publish your changes to Redict in most situations, commercial or not. Check out the FAQ here: https://redict.io/docs/license/

"Tip: Commercial and non-commercial users of Redict are not required to publish or otherwise “open source” the source code of Redict, including any private modifications they make to the source code" And very next section: "If you compile Redict’s source code into an executable form and distribute this executable form to others you are required to include a copy of the Redict source code and any modifications to it l…

> In other words, it doesn't even matter what the current intention of using this license is regarding commercial use (but not distribution?)... I would not recommend to use this commercially for multiple reasons including risk, career but also the fights to be had with legal compliance.

In a non-technical firm with no relevant expertise outside the software devs, maybe. But in every software company I've worked for, legal has been more concerned with the AGPL, or Oracle's proprietary licenses, than LGPL which has always been explicitly approved.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#45

Post by bunnyfoofoo »

sanxiyn wrote: post #23
drewdevault wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substantial portions of Redis were written by AWS and Google. People are upset because Redis is a collaborative project with many people working on it and Redis Ltd wants the sole right to commercialize the work of an entire community. LWN has a good overview: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/8bc9d155d4e2afb3/ Redis Ltd is only responsible for about 20% of the work.

AWS and Google contributed those under BSD license , being fully informed that Redis Ltd can commercialize like this. It makes perfect sense for AWS and Google to fork immediately after the switch, but for contributions before the switch, there is no basis for AWS and Google to complain Redis Ltd, either legally or morally.

Legally, they can't complain, but morally it is icky. Redis is a leech.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#46

Post by drewdevault »

frant-hartm wrote: post #42
drewdevault wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the careful use of private modifications as not requiring disclosure of the source code. You only have to include source in the very specific situation of building Redict and providing it in compiled form to customers directly. Like, if you give someone the ELF file. If you run it on their behalf as a cloud service or something you have no obligation to provide source, which is the most common commercial use-cas…

> legal department works for you, not the other way around. Not sure what planet you live on. Unless you are one of the execs, Legal (and other compliance departments like HR) work pretty much against you. They exist to protect the company and the exec team.

They exist to serve the bottom line, and if the bottom line is best served by evaluating and approving the LGPL license (a trivial task, as it is broadly understood and the compliance requirements are negligible for most users), then that's what they will do. And in any case, no one is categorically opposed to the LGPL. Unless you think that no one is using Linux in industry, given that it uses a stronger license (GPL), which is patently absurd.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#47

Post by drewdevault »

gadders wrote: post #24
drewdevault wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substantial portions of Redis were written by AWS and Google. People are upset because Redis is a collaborative project with many people working on it and Redis Ltd wants the sole right to commercialize the work of an entire community. LWN has a good overview: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/8bc9d155d4e2afb3/ Redis Ltd is only responsible for about 20% of the work.

>>Substantial portions of Redis were written by AWS and Google Employees on their own time, or paid to do it? So I'm clear though - if I wrote a SAAS product tomorrow that under the covers used Redis, I'm OK, but if I spun up a bunch of servers and offered managed Redis as a product, I would need to pay?

>So I'm clear though - if I wrote a SAAS product tomorrow that under the covers used Redis, I'm OK, but if I spun up a bunch of servers and offered managed Redis as a product, I would need to pay?

That's the pitch of the license, essentially, but in practice the SSPL is an utter nightmare to comply with (to the point of being deliberate) and it mainly exists to put a veneer of open source on a proprietary product. In actual practice you really just cannot offer Redis as a service unless you are Redis Ltd, which is the actual point of the license in the end.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#48

Post by 8organicbits »

Being copyleft, Redict can merge any contributions to Valkey. However, Valkey cannot merge any of the Redict commits (unless the contributor actively dual licenses them).

Being non-open source Redis can merge any contributions made to Valkey but not from Redict. So if you don't want your code to end up in Redis, contribute to Redict.

Interestingly, there have only been two commits from a single developer to the Redis repo in the last two weeks since the license change. A huge decrease.

Re: Redict 7.3.0, a copyleft fork of Redis, is now available

#49

Post by prmoustache »

gadders wrote: post #26
prmoustache wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are upset because Redis is not open source anymore. That is all.

Is this like a Richard Stallman ideological thing? (EDIT: Genuine question - I'm trying to understand if this is a license purity issue or something else).

What is commonly known as open source nowadays is a license that follows the definition adopted by the Open Source Initiative. SSPL is considered as not approved because it encumber unrelated programs to the one licensed by the SSPL:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230411163802/https://lists.ope...

So it is a combination of idealogical issue as well as being an annoyance to people who adopted it because it was released under the BSD in the first place.

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