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Commons Clause

redislabs.com

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Re: Commons Clause

#421

Post by CJefferson »

another-cuppa wrote: post #274
tannhaeuser wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. There's the reflex (here and elsewhere) to dismiss reciprocal licenses such as GPL, AGPL as "uncool", pretentious, and show-stopping. Maybe it's time to reconsider in times of cloud oligopoles. Because why would you want your software become part of the lock-in strategy of a cloud provider.

It's really sad that the GPL has essentially "gone out of fashion". It's sad that developers would be driven merely by fashion rather than careful consideration. The fact that we have free software at all is largely thanks to the GNU and the GPL.

I was soured on the GPL by GPL v3. I don't want "or later", because that is giving control of my code to whoever ends up owning the FSF in the future. However, then you end up with a GPL v2 system, where some authors have passed away so relicensing is impossible, which you can't link to new versions of GNU libraries as they have gone v3 only. It's maddening.

Re: Commons Clause

#422

Post by nine_k »

Zarel wrote: post #411
nine_k wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPL is great for infrastructure things: it allows easy sharing, but requires reciprocity and prevents takeovers. GPL gave us Linux, a wildly successful OS kernel. Also, GPL is compatible with commercial dual-licensing, which may be important in some cases, such as use in governmental agencies. MIT/BSD is great for small, less important things, and allows for no-question-asked use of such software in basically any set…

> at best you can try and re-license it under GPL / LGPL if you want more control, and all contributors agree You actually don't need all contributors to agree, you only need one. The MIT and BSD licenses don't ban you from relicensing into more restrictive licenses (that's why they're popular with businesses, after all).

No, they require you to retain the copyright notice and the license text, and the license states otherwise: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/305/8261

Re: Commons Clause

#423

Post by sciurus »

Boulth wrote: post #300
DannyBee wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It looks like they were using AGPL before, but now they are switching to Commons Clause. See the history of the RedisSearch license, for example.

https://github.com/RedisLabsModules/RediSearch/commits/maste...

Re: Commons Clause

#424

Post by dragonwriter »

thayne wrote: post #191
vmbrasseur wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Kevin. VM Brasseur from https://opensource.org here. It's disappointing to see FOSSA, which claims it exists to assist companies with open source management, publish and encourage use of a clause that very clearly removes projects from the pool of open source alternatives. To do so by using the word "Commons" in the title adds insult to injury and borders on wilful deception, removing software from the commons as…

> whatever problem it is that the Commons Clause is intended to address I'm pretty sure that problem is that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others have hosted Redis solutions, and even if they do contribute some code, they are undoubtedly making significant profit off of Redis, of which RedisLabs sees little if any. And since these companies have an oligopoly on cloud hosting, it is very difficult for RedisLabs to co…

> I'm pretty sure that problem is that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others have hosted Redis solutions, and even if they do contribute some code, they are undoubtedly making significant profit off of Redis, of which RedisLabs sees little if any.

I think RedisLabs is going to be disappointed if they think making certain enterprise modules proprietary going forward is going to change that dynamic in a way which positively impacts their bottom line in the long term. While, sure, if everything remains he same except big cloud vendors pay some share of their revenue to RedisLabs for the use of those modules, that will be great for RedisLabs, I don't think that's the most likely outcome: forks (especially dangerous, a dominant single community fork with support from multiple cloud vendors and a broader community of contributors than the now-proprietary first-party version) from the last open version become a threat, as does lack of uptake of the affected modules and Redis in general by downstream developers, cloud providers, and end users, with people being driven to alternative solutions to the business problem.

Re: Commons Clause

#425

Post by johncolanduoni »

ubernostrum wrote: post #227
mikekchar wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just requires the service provider to also provide source code. The issue here is that RedisLabs wants to ensure that no service providers can use their modules and receive money. The AGPL specifically allows people to run the software for any purpose and also specifically disallows tacking on other clauses. (As does the GPL -- the only difference with the AGPL is that providing it over a network is considered…

In practical terms, AGPL would do it because far fewer people are willing to touch AGPL'd code. And the start of this specific comment chain wasn't about "make money", it was about ensuring cloud providers "give back" their improvements.

In the case of Redis and the handful of cloud providers, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t leave millions on the table just because they’re anxious about having to run it by legal.

Re: Commons Clause

#426

Post by dragonwriter »

nine_k wrote: post #399
dragonwriter wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular, I've always wondered why "GPL or ask me for permission" isn't being explored more. Because handling “ask me for permission” is expensive, even if you say no, and you can only do it if you sacrificing much of the main benefit to using open licensing, which getting free work from downstream, since people having to give code ownership to you makes them less likely to contribute back anything that you ca…

Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? Or do you posit that GPL (or another reciprocal license) prevents adoption of software where a MIT (or another permissive license) would lead to adoption of that same software?

> Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions?

I posit that people businesses share contributions because it brings them business value, and the business itself being able to use the code in proprietary derivatives often significantly enhances the business value from sharing contributions, which is why SQLite (available as public domain or permissive license) and PostgreSQL (permissive license) have significant upstream contributions from downstream proprietary users, and even Linux gets a fair amount from people whose main use motivating modifications is hosted use which does not require contributions (because it's GPL, not AGPL.)

I further posit that, OTOH, people who don't want to control downstream use are more likely to contribute if they can do so with a license that doesn't constrain downstream use.

But most critically I observe that a GPL-or-proprietary offer cannot use GPL-only contributions, it requires acquiring rights from downstream contributors to relicense code under a proprietary license. So even if people are contributing under the GPL, that isn't “giving back” to the vendor of software that is under a GPL-or-proprietary license scheme (where the value proposition is that the proprietary offers at least as much in all dimensions as the GPL version, and more in some), since by adopting that license scheme they have locked themselves out of use of community improvements that are offered only under the reciprocal provisions of the GPL, which can result in the proprietary version being supported by less aggregate development resources than a community, GPL-only fork.

Re: Commons Clause

#427

Post by yebyen »

nine_k wrote: post #401
yebyen wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mistaken. (Well, maybe not mistaken if I read exactly what you said literally, but people/companies most certainly do choose not to use GPL software if they're looking to build a system that they can exploit for profit-making purposes.) It takes a very forward-thinking person to understand that they have more to gain from the thousands of eyes and the support of the community, than from a paywall that gates ac…

Would we have Android today were it not for GPLv2 and Linux licensed under it? But indeed, GPL does limit the ways you can distribute software licensed under it. In particular, licensing something like a library, or another early-bound component under GPL forces the users to license their work under GPL, too. This is why LGPL exists.

Absolutely! Not saying that Apple model is right or wrong, but they certainly chose BSD consciously (whether or not it was because of the encumbrance of GPL, or any technical reasons).

It's simply wrong to say that nobody pays attention to this. It's a choice you make, and whether you view the consequences as "repercussions" or "features" depends entirely on your view and the actual outcomes of those choices.

Fwiw I understand that Darwin is also available as BSD, so it seems you can get some good actors that are willing to pay it forward without necessarily needing to add a license that goads them into it.

Re: Commons Clause

#428

Post by Xylakant »

thayne wrote: post #418
Xylakant wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know that Elastic has had similar issues They chose a much more straightforward solution: some addons are clearly marked as commercial. No weasel words. We can debate whether the featureset of the core product vs. addons is a good one, but at least the message is clear. With this situation that redis got themselves into, the situation is much less clear.

> No weasel words. What weasel words? They don't claim their license is FOSS. They do admit they are trying to make money. The wording of the license is a little vague, but I think the intent is pretty clear.

They call it “common” and “open source plus extra strings.” The extra license on the face mentions that consulting and support is no longer a viable business. I have no problem with the fact that redis labs decided to make some extended features commercial. They’re entitled to do that and I wish them well, they deserve to earn money from their hard work. I have major issues with the way they’re communicating that decision.

Re: Commons Clause

#429

Post by hashrate »

sonarlunar wrote: post #377
hashrate wrote: post #276

> if what you sell is basically the functionality of the module [...] Commons Clause does not allow it. Great ! Now the entire industry is accepting the "freemium" model where the core features are free , but not the modules around it. This is a push to milk companies with paid licences on Free Software. This is insane that this is becoming the norm in the industry. Every single day open source is getting less and le…

It's one vendor contributing some modules which now they have a different license. I don't see how this impacts any other Redis module on github out there. Either those modules are that good and the vendor decides that cloud providers must pay and not get money from the vendor's work, or those modules are not really that used so who cares. I have used RedisJSON module which is nice and I assume changes license now. A…

> I couldn't care less

Let's say you are PHP consultant , you set up a Redis + EC2 instances.

You enable a redis enterprise module in that instance.

Well technically speaking you are breaching the license of RedisLabs. You are not allowed to do so without their consent because those modules aren't "bsd" or "mit" they are "Commons Clause".

In short , if you are doing something with the RedisLabs modules ( consulting / hosting / training / support ) you owe $$$ to RedisLabs.

Re: Commons Clause

#430

Post by kazinator »

dragonwriter wrote: post #426
nine_k wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? Or do you posit that GPL (or another reciprocal license) prevents adoption of software where a MIT (or another permissive license) would lead to adoption of that same software?

> Do you posit that people are more inclined to share contributions to a codebase that does not ask them to share such contributions? I posit that people businesses share contributions because it brings them business value, and the business itself being able to use the code in proprietary derivatives often significantly enhances the business value from sharing contributions, which is why SQLite (available as public d…

> I observe that a GPL-or-proprietary offer cannot use GPL-only contributions.

That's no worse than the GNU project, which obtains copyright assignments from contributors.

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