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Redis is open source again

antirez.com

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Re: Redis is open source again

#571

Post by lblume »

fastball wrote: post #453
gkbrk wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I update my packages and suddenly an open-source software is replaced with a closed-source one, I would blame my distro. It's totally normal for distros to replace packages like this with the best replacement they have.

I think that is not normal at all, and absolutely should not be normalized. It is much worse for my package manager to install a totally different software, than for my package manager to install a new version of the software I asked for that now has a different license. Also as an aside, SSPL is not closed-source. If the distro wants to do something, they can throw a warning up saying "this package is now licensed w…

On Arch Linux, you are explicitly asked whether to replace a package with the (distro-)designated successor.

Re: Redis is open source again

#572

Post by antirez »

bradgessler wrote: post #485

I got a really stupid email from Redis®* a year ago that wanted me to put a disclaimer on the “first page” where Redis®* appeared on a website, as if it was a paper legal document. That was the very moment Redis®* died for me—I’ve never encountered a tech company that was so aloof about how tech works. Hopefully that damage is undone. — *Redis is a registered trademark of Redis Ltd. Any rights therein are reserved to…

You are right, and this attitude was reverted. You can't imagine what law departments can do even without explicit mandate, if not correctly moderated. Redis grew very fast in the middle of a CEO switch and I believe this created many issues like this one. Now, we should be past that. To provide an example in a very important field, client libraries, the decision was to help with the code sending PRs and don't interfer with things like trademarks.

Re: Redis is open source again

#573

Post by mola »

motorest wrote: post #513
BoorishBears wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's product had confusing naming and positioning, and lagged in compatibility which created a headache for Elastic. And they were using an open source piece of software, but scaling it with closed source secret sauce on top of that. The license was saying they'd have to open up their secret sauce or pay, and their response was to leave the table instead. OpenSearch still lacks tons of really basic functionality…

> 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…

Yes, anti trust rules should have stopped amazon. But they didn't, this directly hurts open source.

I don't think elastic would've tried the license change because of competition using the open source.

The problem is Amazon, not elastic that's trying to survive.

Re: Redis is open source again

#574

Post by patates »

txcwg002 wrote: post #78
benwilber0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your company invested hundreds of engineering hours switching from Redis to a clean fork of Redis?

I believe it. There are companies that invested hundreds of engineering hours to rename master to main.

One would find it hard to believe how often we hardcoded "master" to every corner of the software that ever touches any VCS.

Re: Redis is open source again

#575

Post by 7952 »

palata wrote: post #521
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…

> 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.

Do AWS really sell things at a loss?

Re: Redis is open source again

#576

Post by jamespo »

Snakes3727 wrote: post #540
c0l0 wrote: post #33

I contributed a minor (but imho still neat :p) improvement to Redis under its original license, and personally moved to using redict when the unexpected license change to SSPL was announced - and I was feeling betrayed as a contributor to a properly-FOSS-codebase. (Had they switched to AGPL right away, I'd have been perfectly fine with that change from a moral perspective, ftr.) I have a great deal of respect for ant…

I contributed heavily to a project during its early days and spent almost 2.5 years helping it grow. For awhile i was one of the most active contributors. Then there was talk of turning the project into an actual business, and myself and a few of the original contributers were offered extremely poor paying jobs. That no one took. Then they got a CEO, investors and we were basically forced out of the project unless we…

Come on, at least give us a hint what it is!

Re: Redis is open source again

#577

Post by growse »

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.

If you solely fund the development of the software, you own the feature backlog. If you can't use that as a competitive advantage, I don't really know what to tell you.

Re: Redis is open source again

#578

Post by Snakes3727 »

jjmarr wrote: post #551
Snakes3727 wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contributed heavily to a project during its early days and spent almost 2.5 years helping it grow. For awhile i was one of the most active contributors. Then there was talk of turning the project into an actual business, and myself and a few of the original contributers were offered extremely poor paying jobs. That no one took. Then they got a CEO, investors and we were basically forced out of the project unless we…

If you're the most active contributor, you could've just forked it yourself, launched it as a SaaS, and been the CEO.

I just wanted to make a tool to help developers. Then when the SaaS launched they instead focused on adding $$$ features instead of fixing bugs, and started heavily pushing their SaaS anytime you used the tool.

They ended up switching to a terrible model with a previous release where if you were a business or in anyway making money you now needed to pay for licenses and it was comically expensive.

The reality is I could have forked it but I don't have the time and patience to deal with everything that comes from a massive project.

Re: Redis is open source again

#579

Post by pydry »

kodablah wrote: post #364
jimbokun wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true, you can compete with the quality of the deployed service _separate_ from the development of the software. The quality of the service can include internal, at-scale optimizations that don't affect user-facing parity with the open-source software. Open source companies with SaaS offerings need to have plans to differentiate themselves on hosting quality, not features. Yes, you can do better at hosting your ow…

Yeah, no. Customers will prefer to use redis in their existing AWS/Microsoft stack rather than use your deployed version in a different data center with a few micro optimizations.

They will pay Microsoft and Amazon, not you, the author of the software to use your software.

Re: Redis is open source again

#580

Post by jamespo »

motorest wrote: post #565
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.

> 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.

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