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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#561

Post by adrr »

mkhalil wrote: post #472
rank0 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the point of open source if you can't fork or sell hosted clusters? Also from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch_(software) : > On September 16, 2024, the Linux Foundation and Amazon Web Services announced the creation of the OpenSearch Software Foundation.[15][16] Ownership of OpenSearch software was transferred from Amazon to OpenSearch Software Foundation, which is organized as an open technical projec…

Most (all? ) open source licenses allow you to sell hosted clusters. They offered a hosted solution well before they changed its license. You can also fork it; but depending on the license, you might need to open-source any fork. : I don't know of any open source license ones that don't allow someone to sell hosted cluster. Even AGPL, which is copyleft, allows it; so long as the hosted version is either: the same as…

It’s a copyright license not a EULA. Grants rights for copying and can’t put restrictions on the using part.

Re: Redis is open source again

#562

Post by palata »

pabs3 wrote: post #560
palata wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means that they have to share their changes to Grafana, doesn't it?

The LWN thread says that they don't, but have separate proprietary licensing and co-marketing agreements with Grafana Labs. https://lwn.net/Articles/1019686/#CommAnchor1019710

Thanks that interesting!

And in this case it means that it's not AGPL, but proprietary. Which kind of proves my point: they are apparently paying Grafana Labs to avoid the constraints of AGPL. If Grafana was permissive, they would surely not pay.

Re: Redis is open source again

#563

Post by growse »

palata wrote: post #552
growse wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> This risk has always existed. Doesn't mean it was not a problem.

The solution to the old problem of "what if someone uses my code to compete with me" is "don't open source your code".

This isn't complicated. It's trade secrets 101.

I'm being disingenuous though. Of course the bait-and-switch merchants know this, they're just banking on getting enough product momentum off the free labour of others before they cash in. That's the plan all along.

Re: Redis is open source again

#564

Post by growse »

palata wrote: post #549
motorest wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Large companies using their scales to compete is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

AWS only gets to compete using their source code because they opened it in the first place. The competition was explicitly invited.

Re: Redis is open source again

#565

Post by motorest »

palata wrote: post #549
motorest wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Of course it is relevant.

No, it is irrelevant. Try to think about it for a second. You release a project under a license that grants everyone the right to use it as they see fit, including building a business on it. Everyone starts using the project as they see fit.

Do you believe you now have the right to retroactively pull the license on a whim?

No, you do not.

Re: Redis is open source again

#566

Post by growse »

palata wrote: post #523
ikiris wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think is anti-competitive about offering an open source product as a service?

Being in a position where you can copy anything and crush competition is a problem. In terms of antitrust, I believe that if you could prove that Amazon forked and offered the service with the intent to crush the competition, it would be downright illegal. A current case is Meta: back then, Zuckerberg was happily writing (internally) that Facebook needed to buy WhatsApp and Instagram and Snapchat to prevent them from…

They can't "copy anything".

They can only copy what they're explicitly legally allowed to.

Elastic explicitly allowed AWS to copy and use their source code, then whined about it.

Re: Redis is open source again

#567

Post by throwaway66112 »

cess11 wrote: post #524
neonsunset wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT is one of the least restrictive licenses. If you think otherwise, I suggest checking if there's any aluminium foil on your head.

Free software is licensed in a way that protects your freedom. MIT license does not. Are you actually unaware of this? If so, why? Is it age or have you been sheltered somehow?

Free software is software that you are free to use or modify however you want.

Re: Redis is open source again

#568

Post by motorest »

growse wrote: post #564
palata wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Large companies using their scales to compete is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. AWS only gets to compete using their source code because they opened it in the first place. The competition was explicitly invited.

> Large companies using their scales to compete is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.

It's more fundamental that that. It's this idea that a corporation can arbitrarily change licensing terms already granted to end-users to extort them.

This is not limited to any managed service provided by a random cloud provider. The core reasoning is a corporation identifying end-users who are profiting from a service that directly or indirectly involves a project they release to the public under a FLOSS license. They see people getting paid, and retroactively change terms to coerce them into paying them. The same argument they throw at AWS providing a managed service also applies to any company using their project. How does this make any sense?

Re: Redis is open source again

#569

Post by noirscape »

lolinder wrote: post #392
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…

> 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…

I don't think the license pick is because of adoption - outside of a few specific cases, the license usually isn't the blocker to getting your tools/projects more widely adopted.

I've written code in the past that I put under GPL that today, I'd probably use a different license for (BSD 3-clause has my preference these days, although I'd just prefer a generic non-commercial license instead). I don't really bother relicensing cuz... it just doesn't matter in the end, these projects are super niche anyway. I picked the GPL since "everyone uses it".

There's always this backlash to demonize anyone daring to move away from the GPL when the simple fact is... maybe some products just don't work in the modern market with the GPL. The hyperscaler thing is a pretty massive issue and the fact that GPL proponents can only give platitudes of "it's working as intended"/"fuck your greed" instead of y'know, accepting that maybe the GPL doesn't work in these environments is... not great.

That isn't a defense of the SSPL or anything like that (it's quite the bad license), but there's a reason that these entities keep writing new licenses instead of going "all rights reserved, we publish source as a courtesy, you can't use it for anything" (even if they effectively close all contributions, they still want to try a permissive license.

Basically the thought that goes into picking the license often isn't nearly as complicated as you may think. It can literally just be "if everyone is doing it, maybe what they're doing is right". Not so much "the GPL gets you more contributors".

Re: Redis is open source again

#570

Post by growse »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #519
tyg13 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they try to sell their software, by your own admission, you won't consume it. That's the point. The fantasy is the idea that some of these open-source products would even work as a closed-source proprietary business model.

Then don't try to sell it. Or make something else that people can't live without and are willing to pay for and can't just pay themselves to write an equivalent instead of paying rent to you forever, whatever, what's it to me or anyone else? Do whatever you want but it's no one else's problem if you can't figure out what. Ya got no argument here.

I disagree with you on a lot, but you're bang on the money here.

If you want a business, build a business. One key aspect of building a business is understanding what your IP and trade secrets are, how they affect your bottom line, and then controlling them appropriately.

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