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Redis is open source again

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Re: Redis is open source again

#781

Post by palata »

eek2121 wrote: post #759
miki123211 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sufficiently capable LLM might be good enough to do cleanroom design on its own, with little to no human assistance. That would destroy the entire idea of copyright as it exists for software. You need one agent that can write a complete specification of any piece of software, either just by using it and inferring how it works, or by reverse engineering if not prohibited by the license. You then have a lawyer in the…

Except that LLMs themselves are close to being killed off for the lack of clean room implementations themselves, at least here in the U.S.

One can hope, but I don't think it will happen.

Re: Redis is open source again

#782

Post by JackSlateur »

dharmab wrote: post #227
cortesoft wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We kept using redis, the license change never affected us. We had no reason to switch.

From the blog post it seems like existing users kept using Redis but new users adopted alternatives instead.

In my current compagny (multibillions dollars kind of), most if not all redis has been replaced by valkey

Redis is a threat to the compagny and the licence change was taken very seriously, as all legal-related threat.

Re: Redis is open source again

#783

Post by palata »

zwaps wrote: post #775
palata wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comm…

Copyleft are sadly unclear legally which is why essentially no company uses copyleft licenses even if they should. I mean the intend of apgl is exactly right, but in practice it means you can never ever use it in a company even if you really do not even want to change it or sell it or host it in isolation in any way. That is really frustrating. Most internal licensing tools i have seen just literally blacklist any di…

> Copyleft are sadly unclear legally

Do you really mean copyleft, or do you mean the GPL family?

What about MPL and EUPL? I have heard the legal issues with GPL, never for MPL and EUPL.

Re: Redis is open source again

#784

Post by immibis »

cortesoft wrote: post #469
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.

It's not just the brand name, it's also the binary name. All the support code I have expects the binary to be named 'redis' Also, what happens if functionality drifts?

So the redis package renames it to redis. No big deal.

You're thinking of it as if upstream is primary. Actually, when you use a distribution package, the distribution has the final say over the contents of the package.

Re: Redis is open source again

#785

Post by HackerThemAll »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #172
xiwenc wrote: post #9

A bit more info from CEO: https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ Sounds like SSPL did not yield the desired outcome. Glad AGPL is an option now.

It did yield the desired outcome: Google and AWS are no longer using it.

How did you come to that conclusion? GCP is still offering Memorystore for Redis, Valkey and Memcached. https://cloud.google.com/memorystore

Re: Redis is open source again

#786

Post by codeguro »

jan_g wrote: post #355
umajho wrote: post #218

MinIO also switched to AGPLv3 a while back, and they stated that “the AGPL license requires that all software connecting with MinIO be 100% open source for you/your users not to be in violation of the license.”[^1] Since Redis and MinIO are somewhat similar, (Both can be used to store and retrieve data. Redis uses a custom protocol, and MinIO uses an S3-compatible API.) Should I assume that this statement also applie…

Yeah, min.io really soured AGPL license, for me at least. Because of their stance I've switched away from min.io in our company and avoid everything AGPL like a plague. Having read the license many times and also all discussions around it, I understand that it should be fine to use an AGPL project in a commercial enterprise (without modifications, internally in backend network). However, if authors themselves of such…

> I understand that it should be fine to use an AGPL project in a commercial enterprise (without modifications, internally in backend network).

Making changes is fine too, so long as those changes are also distributed. "The source come with the binaries" is the general rule. You don't even have to open your whole stack (that is FUD), only the parts under the AGPL that you changed and only when you distribute it. Companies can and always have used these projects internally without risk.

Re: Redis is open source again

#787

Post by codeguro »

mmaunder wrote: post #49

Here's the play: Open source with AGPL, then offer an enterprise license. You get two wins. The OSS community applauds your adoption of an agressive OSS license. Enterprise customers can't use software under AGPL because it risks infecting their IP, so they're forced to buy an enterprise license.

> Enterprise customers can't use software under AGPL because it risks infecting their IP, so they're forced to buy an enterprise license.

This is a lie. It's FUD. And it should be disregarded with extreme prejudice. Stop it.

First and foremost, AGPL'd software must remain free. They could use it in their stack. The rule is they must point to the sources of the AGPL'd software. If they make a change to the AGPL'd software and users interact with that (even over a network) then they must disclose the changes to the AGPL'd software. That's it. They don't have to open their whole stack. That's SSPL, so stop spreading this FUD.

Second, it's not their IP. They didn't write the AGPL'd software. They must abide by its terms.

Third, even if they chose (emphasize on "chose" and not "forced") to use AGPL'd software, they could simply disclose the changes they made to it. There is little to no excuse not to. The fact is that if the software meets their needs, they have little reason not to. The AGPL exists to protect Software Freedom so if they find that objectionable it can only be concluded that they intend to harm Free Software.

Re: Redis is open source again

#788

Post by codeguro »

okanat wrote: post #191
mperham wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enterprise customers can't use software under AGPL because it risks infecting their IP Yeah, this is BS. If you simply use AGPL software, it doesn't "infect" anything. If you *change* the AGPL software, you have to release the changes. It forces the big clouds to open source their Redis improvements.

For the type of software that Redis is intended for, integration over network is a must. Hence "just using it" isn't a viable option. AGPL isn't LGPL, it infects anything that uses it over a network. If Redis was AGPL when it was released, nobody would touch it. Most of the readers of HN make their living from closed source software. You know well enough that non-hostile open source is just a market entry strategy an…

> AGPL isn't LGPL, it infects anything that uses it over a network.

Stop lying. This is FUD. It must be disregarded with extreme prejudice. The AGPL must remain free, and anyone interacting with it over the network must receive the opportunity to obtain the original or modified versions of the AGPL'd software and that's it. Nobody said anything about opening up the entire network stack. That is SSPL territory.

Re: Redis is open source again

#789

Post by codeguro »

yesterdayjones wrote: post #690

AGPL: Uselessly open-source. Anyone who wants to make money with it, even if it's just one of many components in your tech stack, would have to open-source everything. This drives people to adopt the paid versions of the same software over the open-source version, and that's no doubt the point. Adopting the AGPL is a cold, calculated move.

> would have to open-source everything

Stop lying. This is FUD. It must be disregarded with extreme prejudice. It is completely, factually, unequivocally, incorrect.

You can connect to Redis using their first-party, MIT-licensed client library. You can write proprietary software using that library with no requirement whatsoever to release your software under any particular license (although of course you still have to comply with the MIT license's attribution requirements). Heck, you can even serve this software to your users. The only condition being that you you distribute the original source or your modified changes of the AGPL'd part of the software in your stack to your users under the terms of the AGPL license. Nobody said you have to open up your whole stack. That's SSPL territory.

Re: Redis is open source again

#790

Post by codeguro »

detaro wrote: post #625
jraph wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are not allowed to modify an AGPL program without adding a mandatory feature to provide the currently-running source code to a remote network user of the software That's not true. You only need to provide the modified source code somewhere. You might want to read it again :-) It seems like you have a wrong idea of what the AGPL does. edit: I see an immediate downvote. If whoever did this thinks I'm wrong, pleas…

The problematic clause is this one: > if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source The application does not have to directly provide its own exact source code, but it must advertise where to find it. And it's quite unclear what exac…

A special endpoint e.g. /about or /license that lists the terms of the AGPL and a link to the source code would suffice. That's not difficult or unreasonable at all.
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