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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#631

Post by immibis »

7952 wrote: post #575
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.

Do AWS really sell things at a loss?

No - that's why their pricing is so detailed and why their services have few limits you can't request them to increase.

They can afford to maintain a better branch of Elastic Search or Redis or so on, an drive those companies out of business by the virtue of efficient free market competition. At which point they'll make sure their branch is only useful on their servers, perhaps by adding dependencies on all their internal microservices - so technically they released the code but you can only run it if you're Amazon.

Re: Redis is open source again

#632

Post by jwitthuhn »

immibis wrote: post #91

Flagged for misleading headline. SSPL is open source. It's just not the open source you want. It meets all the criteria and the only difference from AGPL is how much source code you have to release and when - which is also the difference between GPL and AGPL. It has problems, but being closed source isn't one of them. The OSI will never certify it, of course, because that would go against the business interests of th…

The difference is that SSPL is a license that was written in bad faith with the explicit intent that people can't comply with the parts about running a hosted service.

https://www.mongodb.com/legal/licensing/server-side-public-l...

See section 13, "Offering the Program as a Service". To comply with that you need to release all software used "to make the Program or modified version available as a service" under the SSPL.

For something like redis this includes: redis itself, the os you are using to host redis, the drivers and firmware for the hardware you are using to host redis, and more. Also your whole deployment stack up to and including the mouse drivers you use to click on the "deploy" button.

It is an absurd condition that effectively makes section 13 say "you can't offer a hosted version" and the OSI and FSF are right to reject that fig leaf of "it is like the agpl, but more".

Re: Redis is open source again

#633

Post by immibis »

KingMob wrote: post #545
mulmen wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The majority of software was always proprietary. GNU was a revolutionary idea. Businesses giving away their product to gain favor is just the natural tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Re: Redis is open source again

#634

Post by immibis »

KingMob wrote: post #546
WD-42 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't suck it up, since they pay Grafana Labs for it.

Re: Redis is open source again

#635

Post by fc417fc802 »

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…

> But installing software I didn't ask for is bad, actually.

Except it's a fork, so it is what you asked for. The name changed, sure, and there's a different governance arrangement. But pretty much the entire point of using a distro is offloading decisions such as which developers and repositories to trust onto the maintainers.

If you want to make those decisions for yourself then you should obviously be cloning and building from source. I'm not just saying that - I myself do exactly that in cases where it matters to me.

If you don't care about license purity then perhaps don't use a distro that explicitly filters on that?

Re: Redis is open source again

#636

Post by fc417fc802 »

nozzlegear wrote: post #408
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well that's a reason not to use a distro right? If I type `sudo dnf install redis`, I want to install redis not valkey. Using a distro that handles things your way is your privilege. I assume most people who install packages care about the functionality they provide, not the brand name - so it seems like a fair default for distros that aim to appeal to broad user bases imo.

> Using a distro that handles things your way is your privilege. I assume most people who install packages care about the functionality they provide, not the brand name This is an amusing example of "the duality of man," having just finished reading a bunch of comments to the effect of "the user should have the ultimate say as to what apps they can install from the App Store" in the Apple thread.

But you do have the ultimate say in this case. You can reconfigure the mainstream package managers in all sorts of ways, set up your own repos, anything you'd like.

I use a distro because I don't have the time or energy to do all of that for myself. It's a purely voluntary arrangement unlike the iOS/Android duopoly that modern society is increasingly built on top of.

Re: Redis is open source again

#637

Post by vin047 »

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".

This is exactly what the AGPL was made to combat against. But open source devs still choose more permissive licenses first - presumably to attract corporate clients to use their product (and because devs are suckers to large corporate interests)

Re: Redis is open source again

#638

Post by rascul »

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…

> Also as an aside, SSPL is not closed-source.

It's also not a free and open source software license. This is disqualifies software using it from being in the main repos for various distros.

Seems like some sort of user prompting could be acceptable, though.

Re: Redis is open source again

#639

Post by rlpb »

amrocha wrote: post #481
rlpb wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Debian’s philosophy: https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines This predates the OSI definition. The philosophy is about what empowers the user. Business models (or their challenges) have nothing to do with it. It just so happens that empowering the user also empowers competitors.

You wouldn’t use the ten commandments as your only moral guide. The landscape has changed. Google, Amazon, and microsoft are actively trying to destroy open source business models. Don’t let the leopards eat your face because you were too attached to your ideology.

> Don’t let the leopards eat your face because you were too attached to your ideology.

You're conflating ideologies. User-focused ideology doesn't care about business models. Leopards aren't eating their faces. They're perfectly fine where they are.

Business model focused ideology might care, but the AGPL exists and meets Debian's requirements. Those who care can choose to use it, or not, as they wish.

Re: Redis is open source again

#640

Post by palata »

amrocha wrote: post #592
palata wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and AWS exploit open source work for profit, and don’t contribute back enough to ensure its support. This is what you should be really mad about. The internet giants are literally killing open source. They would have to publish their changes if those projects used copyleft licences. Copyleft licences don't force to "contribute back", but they force disclosing the changes, that the community can then benefit…

I like copyleft licenses! But they don’t solve the problem of cloud providers pulling the rug out from under companies based on open source companies.

Not sure I understand your message. If you have a copyleft licence without a CLA, then the copyright is distributed between all the contributors, which makes it almost impossible to change the licence. And because it is copyleft, it means that the sources need to be distributed to the users.

So TooBigTech can build a service upon a copyleft project, but they have to distribute their changes, which means that the community can benefit from them. One example I learned about here is Grafana: AWS did not want to use their AGPL version so apparently they pay Grafana to get a commercial licence. That's of course possible only because Grafana own the copyright of the whole codebase. It wouldn't be possible with Linux, for instance, where nobody has the power to give a commercial licence and therefore it is GPLv2 for everybody.

It doesn't prevent TooBigTech from competing by serving the open source project, but that is more of an antitrust issue, I think.

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