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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#541

Post by palata »

cdelsolar wrote: post #445
osigurdson wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it doesn’t mean you need to open source your commercial product if it uses Redis. AGPLV3 doesn’t work like that. You need to open source your changes to Redis if you make any, and if your product is distributed through a network.

> You need to open source your changes to Redis

I am pretty sure that AGPL makes you distribute your changes to your users, not to Redis.

Re: Redis is open source again

#542

Post by larodi »

growse wrote: post #525
palata wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whats the point of open source if you can't fork or sell hosted clusters? The problem here is that Amazon is in a position where they can fork and sell it for a loss in order to crush the competition. That would be the point of antitrust, I guess? I mean if regulations were actually enforced.

This is not a suddenly emerging "gotcha". This risk has always existed. It existed when they chose to open source it in the first place. Time and time again we see the lesson being learned the hard way that "if your business value is your codebase, it's hard to build a business whilst literally giving it away".

> "if your business value is your codebase, it's hard to build a business whilst literally giving it away".

perhaps then it comes as no surprise that some very outspoken open-source proponents do not open-source their core business components. I can understand they do it in order to exist as a company, as busineses, but I don't understand why they have to endure being shamed for staying closed-source, while all their stack is open. many such companies exist.

and let's add to this all the fact that everything released in 2025 as open-source gets slurped by LLMs for training. so, essentially, you feed bro's models breakfast with your open-source, like it or not. in the very near future we'll be able to perhaps prompt a 'retell' of Redis which is both the same software, but written so that it is not.

in essence there seems to be now little reason to open-source anything at all, and particularly if this is a core-business logic. open-source if you can outpace everybody else (with tech), or else you shouldn't care about the revenue.

Re: Redis is open source again

#543

Post by motorest »

palata wrote: post #522
motorest wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon's product had confusing naming and positioning, and lagged in compatibility which created a headache for Elastic. Irrelevant. Elastic decided to release software to the public with a license that granted everyone under the sun the right to use it how they saw fit. This included also selling services. That became a big part of their business model as it drove up it's adoption rates and popularity. If Elastic…

> You can't have it both ways. I believe that antitrust laws should prevent TooBigTech from being in that position in the first place. The problem is not the open source licence, but rather the fact that TooBigTech can screw the competition whenever they feel like it.

> I believe that antitrust laws should prevent TooBigTech from being in that position in the first place.

Irrelevant. If you grant a right to everyone under the sun, you do not get to retroactively pull those rights from someone you decided to target.

Re: Redis is open source again

#544

Post by motorest »

nirvdrum wrote: post #528
motorest wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon's product had confusing naming and positioning, and lagged in compatibility which created a headache for Elastic. Irrelevant. Elastic decided to release software to the public with a license that granted everyone under the sun the right to use it how they saw fit. This included also selling services. That became a big part of their business model as it drove up it's adoption rates and popularity. If Elastic…

> Elastic decided to release software to the public with a license that granted everyone under the sun the right to use it how they saw fit. This included also selling services. The original licensing decision was made well before the formation of Elastic the company. Maybe Shay didn't quite give it the full consideration. I don't know him super well, but like most developers starting open source projects, I don't th…

> The original licensing decision was made well before the formation of Elastic the company.

Yes. Those are the terms the software has been distributed with from the inception.

No corporation has the right to pull those rights from end-users, no matter how profitable your shakedown scheme would be.

Re: Redis is open source again

#545

Post by KingMob »

mulmen wrote: post #421
lolinder wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The solution is clear: start your new database with an "equitable source / source available" license from day one. Nobody will complain about a relicense since your license will handle the hyperscalers right off the bat. Yes, this would be the honest thing to do, but people don't do it because using a non-FOSS license loses you adoption. The step you're missing in your little timeline is that the only reason the pr…

What's missing is why open source won. It's impossible to be rug pulled. If the maintainers (this is a carefully chosen word) attempt a rug-pull you can just Elastic or Redis them. If the product is closed this is impossible and you're at the mercy of whoever you built on. Open Source is the ultimate right to repair. Everything is working as intended.

> Everything is working as intended.

If this true, than we need something else.

Otherwise, expect to see a hell of a lot less new FOSS in the next decade, which will be a pyrrhic victory.

If FOSS can't meet the demands of the time, it needs to be updated or replaced.

Re: Redis is open source again

#546

Post by KingMob »

WD-42 wrote: post #435
echelon wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This keeps happening: 1. People put a lot of work into building databases. The license choice is OSS / FOSS. 2. Some people in the community (original authors, community leads) make a company around the database and continue developing it for years on end. They sometimes raise venture capital to expand the business. 3. Amazon / Google / Microsoft offer managed versions of the database and make bank on it. Easily mill…

Or start with the AGPL from the start instead of a pushover license and sell alternative licenses to hyper scalers if they want it.

You know Amazon has a hosted Grafana service, right? The AGPL isn't a guaranteed obstacle to hyperscalers sucking up most of the value produced by maintainers.

Re: Redis is open source again

#547

Post by KingMob »

palata wrote: post #533
scargrillo wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This breakdown hits hard because it’s not just about business models — it’s about trust. Open source succeeded because it created shared public infrastructure. But hyperscalers turned it into extraction infrastructure: mine the code, skip the stewardship. The result? We’ve confused “open” with “free-for-the-powerful.” It’s time to stop pretending licenses are enough. This is about incentives, governance, and resilien…

Before moving from permissive licences to non-open-source licences (because they have exceptions for TooBigTech), an easy step would be to use copyleft licences, wouldn't it?

Not necessarily. Amazon sells a hosted Grafana service, which is AGPL.

Re: Redis is open source again

#548

Post by palata »

KingMob wrote: post #547
palata wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before moving from permissive licences to non-open-source licences (because they have exceptions for TooBigTech), an easy step would be to use copyleft licences, wouldn't it?

Not necessarily. Amazon sells a hosted Grafana service, which is AGPL.

That's wrong: they pay Grafana Labs to use it as proprietary, as noted in another comment:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/#CommAnchor1019710

> Grafana's a great example of this. AWS and Azure _could_ have sold the unmodified AGPL Grafana as a service or published their modified versions, but instead, they both struck proprietary licensing and co-marketing agreements with Grafana Labs.

Re: Redis is open source again

#549

Post by palata »

motorest wrote: post #543
palata wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have it both ways. I believe that antitrust laws should prevent TooBigTech from being in that position in the first place. The problem is not the open source licence, but rather the fact that TooBigTech can screw the competition whenever they feel like it.

> I believe that antitrust laws should prevent TooBigTech from being in that position in the first place. Irrelevant. If you grant a right to everyone under the sun, you do not get to retroactively pull those rights from someone you decided to target.

Of course it is relevant. TooBigTech is killing smaller companies just because it is too big.

When there are issues like this ("we made a successful product and someone forked it and it's killing us"), the "someone" is generally a BigTech, not 3 students in a garage. Then people complain about open source working/not working, and forget that the root problem is the monopoly that is screwing them.

Re: Redis is open source again

#550

Post by KingMob »

lolinder wrote: post #389
blibble wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the problem is the definition of Open Source is controlled by the Open Source Initiative, which has been captured by the hyperscalers which is sort of funny because the term "Open Source" was itself coined to make it possible for people to seek funding to build companies based on the (crazy?) idea of producing software, then giving away its source code 20 years later, the structure of the industry has now changed, an…

It's really not though. The OSI quickly loses credibility when they try to push a definition that the community doesn't like (see the Open Source AI kerfuffle). Both the OSI and the FSF are agreed that Source Available with bans on specific use cases is not FOSS. When you've got freaking Richard Stallman opposing you you really have to do better than just scream "corporate capture". Engage with his idea of Freedom, d…

I agree that the OSI and FSF are trapped with their most hardcore followers, and can't effectively change, assuming they even wanted to.

As for Stallman... his idea of freedom is very narrowly-scoped. In particular, it makes no distinction between hobbyists and megacorps, and is completely blind with respect to economics.

By lumping hobbyists with companies, it makes the category error of extending human rights to corporations. This of course, is nothing new in America, and hasn't been since the infamous 1886 Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad court case, that established corporate "personhood".

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