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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#671

Post by motorest »

palata wrote: post #557
larodi wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

I agree with the fact that LLMs are big open-source laundering machines, and that is a problem. I mostly see it as a problem for copyleft licences. Permissive don't protect the users in the first place, so...

> I agree with the fact that LLMs are big open-source laundering machines, and that is a problem.

Why do you believe this is a problem? I mean, to believe that you first need to believe that having access to the source code is somehow a problem.

> I mostly see it as a problem for copyleft licences.

Nonsense.

At most, the problem lies in people ignoring what rights a FLOSS license grants to end users, and then feigning surprise when end users use their software just as the FLOSS license intended.

Also a telltale sign is the fact that these blind criticisms single out very precise corporations. Apparently they have absolutely no issue if any other cloud provider sells managed services. They single out AWS but completely ignore the fact that the organization behind ValKey includes the likes of Google, Ericsson, and even Oracle of all things. Somehow only AWS is the problem.

Re: Redis is open source again

#672

Post by _msw_ »

palata wrote: post #649
vin047 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

This. They choose a permissive licence, proudly advertise it ("use us instead of our competitor because they are copyleft and we are not"), and then come whining when other competitors benefit from the very fact that they chose a permissive licence.

There are different FOSS communities that hold different values. I come from the copyleft camp because I want to advance Software Freedom objectives for end-users. Others are more interested in advancing software developer freedom, and they find the obligations that are designed to advance end-user rights are unduly burdensome to the software developer. Articles like the one on the FreeBSD website [1] explain why they take a different position

I choose to believe that both of these sub-communities of the larger FOSS community are principled in their beliefs. I don’t see whining from FreeBSD folks about competitors, or for-profit companies using all the permissions they give with their choice of license.

[1] https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/

Re: Redis is open source again

#673

Post by nirvdrum »

motorest wrote: post #584
jamespo wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They can release new versions with some other license if they get all contributors to agree.

Contributors must sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) before a contribution will be merged. The CLA signers gave Elastic the right to change licenses, among others, when they signed the agreement. Consequently, Elastic doesn't need to get individual sign-off from each contributor before changing the project license. The code wasn't based on copyleft license, so there's no compulsion to continue using the same licensing terms for all future distributions. That's a motivating factor for many CLAs. If you made a contribution prior to the introduction of the CLA then things get murkier.

Re: Redis is open source again

#674

Post by immibis »

detaro wrote: post #213
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to stop taking the OSI or FSF's positions on anything as particularly valuable. The OSI is captured entirely by corporate sponsors. Amazon was paying a full-time salary a year to the OSI when the SSPL issue happened, the OSI had no ability to take a moral pro-labor stance without crippling their own operations. They still do not meaningfully answer to individual users: The OSI recently refused to disclose who…

Many people came to the same conclusion about SSPL just by reading it when it was released, before any OSI position on it.

Who, that wasn't using motivated reasoning or repeating something they heard from OSI or Amazon?

Re: Redis is open source again

#675

Post by immibis »

palata wrote: post #531
theamk wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All companies should do this.. if anything so we know what not to use. Any sort of proprietary product (be it fully closed source, source-available, or "open source with limitations") is always a risk. You were happily using database X, but they got acquired by Broadcom and now their product costs 100x what it was before. What do you do now? That's why it is much safer to adopt open source - worst case is the company…

> worst case is the company goes under, but you still keep using last released version indefinitely, and hope new entity (maybe even hyperscaler!) forks the code But it's not always the worst case, is it? If the licence is permissive, an hyperscaler can just take is and make a proprietary product out of it. Hence copyleft licences without a CLA . Nobody could make Linux proprietary because the copyright is shared bet…

They're talking about worst for the customer. You're talking about worst for the supplier.

Re: Redis is open source again

#676

Post by mulmen »

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.

Selling software is a deadend. Nobody in their right mind will pay for it because the risks are too great. If you want to build a technology business sell services and support.

Re: Redis is open source again

#677

Post by pcthrowaway »

arghwhat wrote: post #239
pcthrowaway wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize the owners of the copyright can relicense it under any terms they want, even if it's a copyleft license like GPL, right?

Unless a CLA transfers copyright to the project owner, the copyright owners are every historical contributor to the project. Each contribution is owned by the contributor alone and they alone are able to grant rights to it. A CLA often tries to mitigate this by making contributors give the project owners special rights at the time of contribution. (Note that even if relicensed, this itself can never revoke licenses g…

Yes, a project can only be relicensed if a CLA assigning licensing rights (not ownership) is signed by all contributors, or if all code is owned by the entity relicensing it. Whether it's under a copyleft license, a permissive license, or even a proprietary license is irrelevant.

Re: Redis is open source again

#678

Post by bccdee »

growse wrote: post #650
pbronez wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who’s gonna sue an AI company asserting that all code they produce is GPL due to being trained on GPL code?

How is training a model on GPL code and then having it write code any different to having a human read GPL code and then write code? Unless there's a specific copyright claim over a specific piece of code that was copied and published, it's hard to see how the GPL has any relevance.

Because, unlike humans, LLMs reliably reproduce exact excerpts from their training data. It's very easy to get image generation models to spit out screenshots from movies.

Re: Redis is open source again

#679

Post by growse »

matt-p wrote: post #605
motorest wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So how should the maintainers eat? Or there should be none? Should they be Amazon employees?

Personally, as an un-paid OSS maintainer, I chose to go get a job. Other's might choose different paths.

Re: Redis is open source again

#680

Post by palata »

immibis wrote: post #675
palata wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> worst case is the company goes under, but you still keep using last released version indefinitely, and hope new entity (maybe even hyperscaler!) forks the code But it's not always the worst case, is it? If the licence is permissive, an hyperscaler can just take is and make a proprietary product out of it. Hence copyleft licences without a CLA . Nobody could make Linux proprietary because the copyright is shared bet…

They're talking about worst for the customer. You're talking about worst for the supplier.

I don't understand what you are saying. What has a "supplier" to do in this?

Copyleft is always the best for the customer. Copyleft says "the customer has rights". Permissive says "do whatever you want, as long as you keep my name somewhere in the attributions".

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