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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#581

Post by jamespo »

motorest wrote: post #544
nirvdrum wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well they obviously do have the rights, are you saying they broke the law?

Re: Redis is open source again

#582

Post by motorest »

mola wrote: post #573
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…

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.

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

What absurd, twisted logic. No, it does not affect open source. What are you talking about?

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

No, the problem is Elastic trying to coerce end-users to pay them for using FLOSS projects. It makes absolutely no difference if AWS provides a managed service or if I run Elasticsearch in a AWS EC2 instance I pay for.

Re: Redis is open source again

#583

Post by impoppy »

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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Re: Redis is open source again

#584

Post by motorest »

jamespo wrote: post #581
motorest wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well they obviously do have the rights, are you saying they broke the law?

> Well they obviously do have the rights, are you saying they broke the law?

No, they do not. They can release new versions with some other license if they get all contributors to agree. They absolutely cannot pull the FLOSS licenses from existing releases.

Re: Redis is open source again

#586

Post by motorest »

jamespo wrote: post #580
motorest wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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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Re: Redis is open source again

#587

Post by danielovichdk »

Some of these open source licenses are somewhat flawed when it comes to building a business on things that are "free".

Wouldn't it be possible to add a clause to some of these licenses that if you are using open source software and generate a certain amount of revenue from it, something has to be given back to the project.

I totally understand that the software is meant to be free but isn't there a balance here, where at some point it must be enforced that some the money it generates in a business, must flow back to its contributors/project ?

I have worked plenty of places where Redis was a thing that served at least some backbone for success for a business. Those places could pay a fee for generating revenue based on free software ?

Does it make sense ?

Re: Redis is open source again

#588

Post by ignaloidas »

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…

Companies that build themselves on selling open source software put themselves in the position where anyone else can copy them and compete with them on price, and price alone. This is clearly the disadvantage of open source. It brings plenty of advantages, which is why people do it - but you can't have only the advantages and no disadvantages of open source.

Open sourcing your product is a risky investment, and as with all risky investments, it might pay out, or it might not.

Re: Redis is open source again

#589

Post by Spivak »

danielovichdk wrote: post #587

Some of these open source licenses are somewhat flawed when it comes to building a business on things that are "free". Wouldn't it be possible to add a clause to some of these licenses that if you are using open source software and generate a certain amount of revenue from it, something has to be given back to the project. I totally understand that the software is meant to be free but isn't there a balance here, wher…

Yes, and it's called proprietary software which is free for non-commercial use and companies under a certain size. Docker Desktop uses this license.

Re: Redis is open source again

#590

Post by motorest »

impoppy wrote: post #583
motorest wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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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