26 ms·

Commons Clause

• drenvuk 8y ago
  If someone could explain, what is the difference between what redis is doing and what nginx does with nginx+plus? I feel like most people use nginx still.
  • omeid2 8y ago
    Nginx's license as far as I know does not forbid commercial use of Nginx, nor forbids making money from consulting and support work for Nginx.
  • dec0dedab0de 8y ago
    Nginx doesn't call it open source
• ricardobeat 8y ago
  Oh noes. This opens a terrible precedent for Redis core. As acknowledged in the announcement, adding restrictions is against the spirit of open-source. No exceptions.
• firebacon 8y ago
  Wow, so many negative comments here. I for one applaud the move -- a license like this has been needed for a long time. Slightly (un)related, but I don't understand why in a forum full of software developers it is the consensus that all infrastructure software must be free (as in beer)? What are you guys planning to live off once that dream has finally been realised?
  • cookiecaper 8y ago
    I agree that we need a good open-source license that limits the ability to resell. The paid support model only goes so far. If a clause like this is actually successful, we may start seeing companies that sell software (rather than support) looking to avail themselves of the benefits of open-source, which would really be a boon for everyone. Someday, I'd like to see a mandatory source deposit to get copyright protection.
    • mrob 8y ago
      Like it or not, "open source software" already has a well established meaning. If your license includes restrictions on use then you need to call it by an accepted name for that kind of license, e.g. "source available" or "shared source". Anything else is simply deception.
      • cookiecaper 8y ago
        No, you only "need" to do this if you're interested in furthering the claims of license zealots, who are more interested in furthering their personal political goals than they are in allowing computer users to get access to the source code that produced a binary blob. Making "open-source" synonymous with "freeware" is a massive poison pill that has hurt the industry substantially.
  • marcinzm 8y ago
    My reading of the comments is not that it must be free but that it must be well designed (legally) and without BS. Saying it OSS + Something when that Something makes the whole thing not OSS is disingenuous and somewhat fishy at a minimum. It's marketing BS designed to make the whole thing seem better than it is. Engineers tend to dislike marketing BS. If it's no longer OSS then that's fine but be fully honest about it. When that Something is furthermore legally ambiguous and with many open questions that also a valid complaint. Lawyers are expensive and Engineers overall dislike dealing with them. A license that requires and invites lawyers is naturally not going to go over well.
  • komali2 8y ago
    Consulting around open source software seems to my industry-new experience how people tend to make a living around open source software. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how the core Linux folks make money? Or the organization running node?
    • humbleMouse 8y ago
      Try anyone who works at a big company saving money by replacing vendor tools with custom open source solutions. There are a million ways to monetize open source, even as an individual.
  • mikekchar 8y ago
    First question: Why has it been needed a long time? On you latter question: They don't feel that all infrastructure software must be free (as in beer). You are simply conflating the free (as in speech) with the free (as in beer) implicitly with no justification. If you are going to make money from a software development project, you need a business plan. You need a way to make money. It is absolutely true that I won't pay money for software that does not have a free software license. I've lived in that world before as a programmer. It sucks! Does that mean that I won't pay money for free software? No, it really doesn't. In fact many of the companies I have worked for in the past have spent a lot of money for free software. One company I worked for spent about $5 million dollars a year for GCC and associated tool chains (and that was in the 90's!) But the problem is that a lot of companies frankly have extremely poor business plans. Something on the order of: Write software ??? Profit Now, like I said, you can write proprietary software all you want. I won't buy it. I don't want it. It doesn't give me the ability to use it in the way that I require. What's actually slightly surprising to an old guy like me is that all of my colleagues agree with that stance. Don't want it. Not at any price. Not even free (as in beer). What that means is that "Write software --> ??? --> Profit" is just not a viable business plan. I have absolutely no problem with this. In fact, I'm happy about this. If you want to make money, you have to offer a service other than copying bits. You can charge me for writing the software. You can charge me for a service associated with the software. You can make money in other ways and enter into a kind of consortium for constructing the software so that all parties have reduced cost. I've personally even paid money for free (as in freedom) software simply because it was worth the money to make sure the authors were able to live (Note: this is not a viable business plan, but sometimes it still happens). BTW, currently the company that pays me makes money by selling Golf holidays (and spa holidays, and lately horse racing, and bicycling holidays). Most programmers work for companies like that.
  • striking 8y ago
    >What are you guys planning to live off once that dream has finally been realised? The cool app I made with the infrastructure?
  • tschellenbach 8y ago
    Yes it's crazy, most of the people commenting here don't contribute to open source and get paid a comfy salary because someone higher up actually charges for the things they work on. I don't know why there is such a stigma around monetizing the things you work on. These types of comments ignore the reality that you need to monetize somehow. Almost every large open source project has a monetization model.
    • krschultz 8y ago
      Almost 100% of my open source contributions have been done on company time. The company makes money in some other way and we use an open source project so working on the project is not competing with the main business. That's how a ton of open source software gets written and it's why the Apache license is so popular. The hard path has been to found a company with the business model of money directly off an open source project. That's doesn't seem to work out in most cases, and the gates the companies put up to charge money piss everyone off.
• mindcrime 8y ago
  This is pretty stupid. If you want to license your software under a proprietary license, just license it under a proprietary license. Or if you want to be "Shared Source"[1] use one of the old MS licenses for that. But don't try to put lipstick on a pig and add a veneer of "openness" by shipping something under an Open Source license + terms that make it very explicitly not Open Source. As much as I like Redis, and even though Core is still under a plain old OSS license, these shenanigans would make me very suspicious of RedisLabs and reluctant to ever do business with them, or use Redis at all. :-( [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source
  • cookiecaper 8y ago
    Zealots have stolen every commonly used term for open-source software. There's no reason we need to respect the artifice constructed post-facto by groups like the OSI. "Open-source" can and should be used in its common sense. Raymond et al missed a big opportunity to create a more commercial-friendly open-source license by deciding to organize around a philosophy so similar to the one promoted by the FSF. The insistence that code is not open if the authors try to retain the rights that make it profitable may have cost us access to decades of source code. Things should in fact be exactly the opposite: in order to maintain the exclusive right to resell, software authors should be required to register the source code with the Copyright Office.
    • mindcrime 8y ago
      There's no reason we need to respect the artifice constructed post-facto by groups like the OSI. "Open-source" can and should be used in its common sense. The OSI definition is the "common sense" of Open Source and has been for at least 20 years.
      • cookiecaper 8y ago
        No, the number of sanctimonious lectures that occur every day about how someone is using the term "open-source" incorrectly clearly indicates that the OSI's definition is not common sense. The plain meaning of "open-source" is just what it says: the source code is open, i.e., not closed, i.e., accessible to users. Let the OSI and other zealots harp all they want, this type of subversive hijacking is not cool.
• XiZhao 8y ago
  Hi folks. Kevin from http://fossa.io http://fossa.io here. I worked on bringing the Commons Clause to life (https://commonsclause.com/ https://commonsclause.com/) and led many of the project efforts here. Happy to answer questions here (or on Twitter @kevinverse). I wanted to write a blog post to set some context because the real story is a lot less salacious then "Redis just went proprietary", but here's a quick summary: 1/ No, Redis isn't proprietary. It's only some enterprise modules. The Commons Clause is mostly used to temporarily transition enterprise offering counterparts of OSS projects to source-available. 2/ OSS projects are mainly funded by some proprietary offering or service on top of it. Anything to help the ability to monetize this layer is really good, as the fate of the project is directly tied to this revenue stream. A quick reminder, companies like Redis sink 10s of millions into RnD and are usually contributing over 99% of the code to these repos. 3/ OSS-savvy companies aren't dumb. They understand the optics of any licensing announcement and carefully consider what it will mean. Before we react, we should push ourselves to understand what systems are forcing deeply passionate OSS devs to consider more proprietary options.
  • mindcrime 8y ago
    I worked on bringing the Commons Clause to life Why would you intentionally give birth to such an abomination? This adds no value to the world whatsoever and is just going to confuse people and harm the overall Open Source ecosystem. I'd encourage you to retract this whole idea, stuff it in a hole, "salt and burn it" and try to pretend this whole thing never happened. If you care about putting pressure on Cloud providers vis-a-vis use of F/OSS, there is always the tried and true "AGPL or commercial license" combination. Why not just use that?
    • XiZhao 8y ago
      As addressed in the FAQ, AGPL doesn't satisfy many requirements -- one of which is that it's often too restrictive in the wrong ways. If not the Commons Clause, a very viable "v2" is just to draft a more cohesive source-available license, or in the worst case move the project to closed source.
      • 8y ago
• geofft 8y ago
  > but all other users will be unaffected by this change. This is untrue for the simple reason that you will be unable to apt-get install this software directly from Linux distros with a policy of including only FOSS. Or, more generally - the value of FOSS is in the opportunities for public collaboration and redistribution. If you think you're doing the vast majority of the development work anyway and you want people to get packages from you anyway, great, there's no need for an open-source license at all: just provide source, allow people to make private modifications, and allow people to send fixes back to you. If you value the open source ecosystem, though, cutting yourself off from it is a bad plan.
  • dcow 8y ago
    They mention later on that redis core will always remain BSD. I share your sentiment, though it seems like this is an effort to not totally isolate the project. Their goal appears to be clamping down on straight up resale of integration components & modules.
    • justinjlynn 8y ago
      If they're concerned about brand dilution via resale of "Redis"-as-a-Service RedisLabs could easily trademark the term Redis and prohibit its use in this way. This mechanism is much the same way Mozilla controls the Firefox trademarks. I do wish they hadn't made their Open Source licence a confusing mess and effectively proprietary for certain modules. That's their right, of course - as copyright holders. However, it's really unhelpful for the rest of the community. We're going to spend a lot of time trying to clarify for people who don't understand the implications of these toxic licence provisions why they make such components unacceptable.
      • cobookman 8y ago
        AWS elasticache Gcp memorystore Neither use redis name brand, but both offer a managed redis
        • 8y ago
• bodas 8y ago
  What a lesson in unintended consequences. The license is vague enough that Amazon & co can just lawyer up and ignore it. What are they going to do, sue Amazon? Good luck. On the other hand, it will definitely scare away users of their software who will be concerned that their CRUD app derives "substantial" value from it and is thus infringing.
  • mrep 8y ago
    Big companies do not like vague licenses. I work at a big tech company and I was specifically told to not use any software under the WTFPL license (Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License) [0] because it is not explicit. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
    • paulddraper 8y ago
      On the contrary, it is very explicit ;)
    • greglindahl 8y ago
      WTFPL is acceptable to IBM, though. I bet that this new license isn't. It's radioactive.
  • thrillgore 8y ago
    This was my takeaway. Amazon is basically squeaky clean as long as they avoid modules but everyone else just using a module on a redis install for a k/v database? You're now subject to additional license fees. It's not as sexy as redis but Memcache has none of these license issues and would be sufficiently usable for k/v data where I work. It's not vaugely licensed either. Congrats Redis Labs, you played yourself.
• tschellenbach 8y ago
  This seems aimed at cloud hosting provider that currently get the tech for free. Makes sense in a way.
  • mbrumlow 8y ago
    Yeah, but its not like they are "getting it for free". It is a ecosystem, and cloud providers have provided many nice things back to the ecosystems. Including jobs to many prominent OSS developers. Not to mention cloud providers do the most important sort of work on any project. That is running it reporting bugs and often submitting patches to those bugs. Larger cloud providers even hire people for the sole purpose to work on said OSS projects simply to improve them.
    • zepolen 8y ago
      I get what you're saying but Redis found popularity way before clouds started offering it. Clouds later further contribute (and profit) to the ecosystem, but make no mistake they didn't help create or spend any resources for that ecosystem. Redis is probably the number one kv store atm, not sure what the number two is, and for sure no clouds are offering it right now; but if this licensing thing goes sour with the community - you can be sure that a) a fork will happen or the number two will gain popularity b) that replacement once enough customers ask for it will get added to the clouds c) the clouds again - with no initial investment will derive value Basically the moral of the story is, be a cloud provider.
      • mbrumlow 8y ago
        I disagreed, partly on the what makes the "ecosystem". While Redis has its own micro ecosystem it is NOT the entire ecosystem. While there may not have been direct exchanges on the level you described Redis did benefit from having the larger ecosystem to work within. Does the fox owe the worm for the fish it had for dinner because the fish had the worm for lunch? Basically you can't isolate yourself from the entire ecosystem and cry foal. When you fail to see the benefit.
• humbleMouse 8y ago
  This is a shame to apache's good name. Apache should never be mentioned in the name of a software version that isn't true opensource... If you want to leverage apache and charge for it go ahead. Be a redhat or confluent, go nuts. Don't do this kind of bs.
• derefr 8y ago
  There's a lot of fuss in these here comments about the future of Redis itself. From the post (emphasis mine): > Consequently, we decided to add Commons Clause to certain components of open source Redis. Cloud providers will no longer be able to use these components as part of their Redis-as-a-Service offerings, but all other users will be unaffected by this change. > The Redis core is, and always will remain, an open source BSD license. Certain modules, however, are now licensed as “Apache 2.0 modified with Commons Clause.” Isn't this, then, just another open-core play? The Redis you know and love, if you're most people (Redis core) isn't being relicensed. The Redis features ("certain modules") that these SaaS providers created themselves to provide on their platforms as value-adds, are being relicensed to be less BSD-y and more Microsoft shared-source-y ("open to contribution, pay to use", which is... wacky.) Fundamentally, those modules were these companies' property to do with as they wished. Likely, they had few-if-any outside FOSS contributors (which is how they could get away with something like this in the first place.) They aren't some cultural touchstone of the community. They're proprietary vendor add-ons that happened to be FOSS-licensed up until now. If these companies had started with these modules being entirely closed-source (like with, say, Nginx's "Nginx Plus" modules), nobody would be batting an eyelash right now.
• guilingmaster 8y ago
  Check this, interesting. https://pastebin.com/NGUVe7zi https://pastebin.com/NGUVe7zi
• f78343heria 8y ago
  This is what you get when shameless companies like Amazon make money from open source software but seldom contribute back.
• colinbartlett 8y ago
  If this clause comes to Redis Core, will it mean Heroku and others cannot offer me the simple hosted Redis they do today? Thesd cloud providers are exactly what makes Redis attractive to me, dramatically reducing the cost of spinning up new infrastructure for projects.
  • borland 8y ago
    If you read the article, it implies that people like Heroku and others offering hosted Redis is EXACTLY the kind of thing they are trying to prevent with this clause. To quote: "today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Cloud providers contribute very little (if anything) to those open source projects. Instead, they use their monopolistic nature to derive hundreds of millions dollars in revenues from them. Already, this behavior has damaged open source communities and put some of the companies that support them out of business."
    • mindcrime 8y ago
      If you read the article, it implies that people like Heroku and others offering hosted Redis is EXACTLY the kind of thing they are trying to prevent with this clause. The thing is, the AGPL already existed for dealing with the whole "cloud vendors turning things effectively proprietary" issue.
      • detaro 8y ago
        But the issue doesn't seem to be "cloud vendors turn things effectively proprietary", but rather "cloud vendors offer the same services we want to offer, so we don't get the income that's paying for our development work". A cloud vendor can just run AGPL software and offer it as a service if they share their modifications (if any). They can't do this with software under this new license.
        • mindcrime 8y ago
• kazinator 8y ago
  The "do not redis dis" warning label. Software with this clause is not usable in the real world. The clause's strictest interpretation prohibits all business use. Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. So for instance, if I run, say, a travel agency or a bakery on software with this moronic clause, that's a product or service whose value derives substantially from the functionality of the software. There seems to be no difference between this and "free for non-commercial use and redistribution".
• mark_element 8y ago
  I don't like the naming. "Apache 2.0 with commons clause" is not the right way to describe this licensing paradigm. It is fundamentally no longer Apache 2.0. I appreciate the motivation, but think it would better serve everyone to just make a new "Redis License" that describes the terms.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • incompatible 8y ago
    The name is kind of implying that it's somehow related to Creative Commons. I assume the latter organization actually has nothing to do with it?
    • paulddraper 8y ago
      Yeah... I'm interested to know why they picked they been.
  • bigiain 8y ago
    I wonder if the Apache trademark allows them to call it that? Calling your chicken "KFC with different herbs and spices!" would get you stamped down hard _very_ quickly...
• phpnode 8y ago
  Yikes, the wording around consulting seems especially worrisome - are they effectively prohibiting third parties from providing redis technical support? This move will likely kill the project as it is today.
  • sciurus 8y ago
    I don't understand how a copyright license can restrict consulting. If Redis Labs distributes redis to Alice, and Alice hires Bob for redis consulting, neither Alice or Bob are distributing Redis so the license terms are irrelevant to them.
    • zaroth 8y ago
      I second this. How could a software license prevent me from learning about how a piece of software works and selling my own knowledge and experience to a third party. IANAL but I couldn’t possibly need a license to install/redistribute Redis to talk to someone about how Redis works.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • bobsky 8y ago
    This is limitation around selling software/product not consulting, per bottom of post: "...if your product is an application that uses such a module to perform select functions, you can use it freely and there are no restrictions on selling your product. However, if what you sell is basically the functionality of the module packaged as a cloud service or on-prem software, Commons Clause does not allow it."
    • JonathonW 8y ago
      Consulting is explicitly called out as prohibited in their "Commons Clause": > For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. (Emphasis mine)
• zrail 8y ago
  I wonder what this means for Sidekiq.
• willlll 8y ago
  Redis is no longer free and open source software with this move. It is now proprietary software.
  • koolba 8y ago
    While the tone of the entire post is unsettling, it does say that the core server is still BSD licensed.
    • marcinzm 8y ago
      For how long is the question to me, per the blog post: >Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed. Doesn't seem like having Redis core contain enough useful functionality and staying BSD lines up with their vision.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed. Do you want forks? Because this is how you get forks.
      • catwell 8y ago
        They don't get to choose. They don't own the copyright on Redis, Salvatore does. He is their employee now but if they try to pull something like this I suspect he won't be for long.
        • marcinzm 8y ago
          Based on this interview from 2016 Salvatore agrees with the issues of BSD and cloud vendors so he may be a lot more amenable to a license change than you suspect: https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/19/redis-creator/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/06/19/redis-creator/ >But now, for the first time, GPL could be interesting again because of the cloud vendors. Because with BSD, cloud vendors are able to extract a lot of value from an open-source project, to the point of making it very hard for the project’s initial creators to make a business out of it. Let’s call it the “AWS problem.” The AWS problem, technically, could be enough in some way to create problems for the whole open-source ecosystem. Now people know that if they start an open-source project and put a lot of effort into it, they could be marginalized by AWS. That could mean that GPL would return again as the primary license for open-source software in the future.
• mmastrac 8y ago
  This is the license below. I'm pretty sure this is going to be vague enough to cause problems with a ton of legal departments. They want to be the only ones hosting it and the the only ones you call in to help with it. I get where the Redis folks are coming from, but this is basically a nail in the product and guarantees a fork if they don't turn back. === 8< === The Software is provided to you by the Licensor under the License, as defined below, subject to the following condition. Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. Any license notice or attribution required by the License must also include this Commons Cause License Condition notice.
  • omeid2 8y ago
    Not to mention the problem with people who want to provide support and consulting for Redis. No longer legal going forward. A fork is bound to happen if Redis doesn't reconsider this move.
    • amckinlay 8y ago
      I think that licensing restriction only applies if you provide the source to the client.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    It's both vague and combined with an open license which it may expressly contradict. Lazy proprietary software vendors need to write their own proprietary license and not just throw a proprietary modification on top of an FOSS license. You are causing confusion, and if you are trying to maintain some kind of positive vibes from the dev community by keeping an open license underneath the proprietary wrapper, I don't think that's going to work.
  • 8y ago
• jonny_eh 8y ago
  So if you're a cloud provider that provides generic cloud VMs, with a button to "Install Redis onto VM", is that allowed? What if it's one of hundreds of similar buttons to install various software onto the VM? What if there's no button, but a user can run `apt-get install redis`? Is that in violation?
  • Ycros 8y ago
    I think it's ambiguous enough that this in itself will drive people away.
  • kingbirdy 8y ago
    My interpretation is you can't charge extra for clicking that button (not a lawyer)
  • googlryas 8y ago
    That is allowed and fine. What you can't do is, if you are Amazon, release "AWS Sdejt" which is simply a managed wrapper around Redis.
    • krschultz 8y ago
      Why is that allowed and fine? I read this clause to explicitly prohibit that behavior.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • lozenge 8y ago
      Can you explain how you interpreted the license to say that's fine? Isn't the value of the service "substantially" its ability to run redis? And isn't the package manager a form of distributing redis? (Referring to the shared source modules, not the BSD licensed part)
      • bigiain 8y ago
        This is the problem (at least for me) - the wording is vague and open to interpretation, which means if it ever needs to be clarified, it'll need expensive lawyers to get that done. A reasonable man would say "Of course the value of, say, Digital Ocean's service is not "substantially its ability to run redis" - even though any linux vm customer can run their OS choice's version of 'apt-get install redis'". But we do not live in a world were a "reasonable man's interpretation" is an acceptable risk-mitigation for a business. I'm pretty sure there'll be other people who, like me, are considering how best to risk manage the use of redis going forward...
• pdeva1 8y ago
  To be fair, Redis itself still remains BSD licensed. The other modules for Redis developed by RedisLabs [1] are under the new Commons Clause license. The big 3 cloud providers provide Redis as a cache service and don't use these modules anyway, so their offerings will remain unaffected. [1] https://redislabs.com/community/oss-projects/ https://redislabs.com/community/oss-projects/
  • freedomben 8y ago
    If this doesn't affect the big 3 cloud providers, then why are they doing it? From reading the post, I got the impression they were specifically trying to stop the big cloud providers...
    • ryanworl 8y ago
      Redis Modules are more and more becoming an important part of the Redis ecosystem. I would imagine many features are going to be added as modules rather than as new commands in core Redis. Not being able to offer these while RedisLabs can is what I think they're going for here.
      • rch 8y ago
        It looks like you could still develop and ship your own modules, even for profit, along with core redis.
        • paranoidrobot 8y ago
          This seems much like the "You have access to the source, so you can go fix any issues you find" answer to any complaints about OSS. Developing modules for any third party software means not only do you have to have the skills and resources available to implement it, you then have to maintain it on an ongoing basis. That's potentially a huge task for small operations.
    • wkoszek 8y ago
      That's the thing--it's just a copyright headache. If Amazon wants, they'll use Redis anyway.
• kingbirdy 8y ago
  Practically, since the core still doesn't have this clause, I imagine cloud providers will still offer hosted Redis, but will develop their own modules to install or allow people to install them themselves, since they can't offer the ones developed by RedisLabs on their own
• wkoszek 8y ago
  Weird. Company full of Open Source guys, but I think they didn't get the right advice on a business model. The reason why MIT/BSD/Apache licenses are there is that there's a group of people who want to let companies use their stuff. If you want people pay you, you just release commercial software, without showing the source. License is something that once put in, it's too late to change later, and not disrupt how your technology is used in the field. e.g.: I was contributing to FreeBSD because I wanted to contribute to BSD licensed-software, with a hope people from FANG would use it, and maybe hire me later. If FreeBSD made a chance to the license, it'd no longer be FreeBSD. It'd be FreeCommonsClause--different project. I wouldn't like to contribute to this. As a CEO fo a software company, if I were to go and analyze what this license change means to my business, and probably get uncertain answer, I'd rather fork Redis from before the license change, and run on the copy. Why? Because the fee for a US software engineer is $X, for a over-sees is $0.3X or $0.5X. Fee for a US copyright lawyer with expertise in software is 10$X. Pay that much money for no value-added to my business makes no sense to me.
  • slavak 8y ago
    Sorry for spamming this all over the post, but I think it's important enough for everyone to see this: Redis itself IS NOT changing licenses, and if you only use the core Redis product you are unaffected. This license change only applies (or _will_ apply, I guess) to some source-available addon Redis modules. (I'm not sure if any existing open-source modules developed by Redis Labs will have their license changed, or if this will only apply to modules published after the announcement.) Full disclosure: Am a Redis Labs employee, although not here in any official capacity.
    • bigiain 8y ago
      Since you're spamming this everywhere, I'll repeat _my_ concerns. 1) Some of us no longer trust the company not to bait-and-switch again. 2) It's almost guaranteed that at least future useful developments will happen under the proprietary and consulting-encumbered license. I'll admit the company has every right to execute on #2 - t is 100% without doubt going to have me reconsidering our use of redis here, and keeping a very close eye on what Amazon and Google (and others) do in response to this, as I decide what alternative to the consulting-encumbered software we might use going forward.
• h4b4n3r0 8y ago
  Sounds like MBAs and lawyers are swooping in. Abandon ship.
  • star-techate 8y ago
    Aye, sounds like it's a good time to develop another memcached replacement. Tip: if your memcached replacement doesn't trivially allow the rooting of its server, and if you don't also defiantly leave the exploit in while explaining that "you must be --- this tall --- to use redis without it behaving like a malware installation", and that any dirty normies deserve that fate, then you're already better than redis! :)
    • h4b4n3r0 8y ago
      Ain’t nothing wrong with memcached itself.
  • wkoszek 8y ago
    It'd be much better if they asked people who understand business of open source on how to drive more $. For example: it could as well be: "If you're any of: FB, APPL, MS, .... and you use this software in your cloud, you owe us $2M/yr" It'd be much easier to analyze the impact.
    • anothergoogler 8y ago
      I don't think Morgan Stanley is about to sell Redis hosting, but what do I know.
    • yread 8y ago
      that would be discrimination and that's would also make it a non open source license 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
      • Nemo_bis 8y ago
• hlieberman 8y ago
  For the record, this license is obviously incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines; I suspect it is non-free enough to not even be shipped by Red Hat and the other semi-commercial *nix's.
  • nijave 8y ago
    Curious about vendors like Red Hat as well. Seems like their umbrella support would conflict. Also curious about companies that might want to bundle Redis in their product
    • lwf 8y ago
      It'd need to be clearly marked — the promise we make in Debian ``main`` is quite strong: if you install it, you can use it for any purpose, modify it, share the changes with your neighbour, etc. And (although not explicitly codified, we touch on it in "must not contaminate"), you can install Debian on a system, install any package in ``main``, then clone the resulting disk and redistribute it as an image. This precludes having things like ``zfs`` in ``main``, as (last time I reviewed it), it was pretty clear that the resulting combined work was probably not redistributable. (N.B.: I'm on the team that maintains ftp-master.debian.org, and reviews all new software for DFSG-freeness, amongst other qualities)
    • sonarlunar 8y ago
      I don't think the Redis Labs modules were distributed via Linux package managers, no? I was under the impression you had to download them from github or something and install yourself. Redis, which is the whole confusion, has NOT had a license change so Debian and Redhat will continue to have its package as normal. So there's nothing to talk about regarding Debian or Redhat etc and it's all a confusion about Redis open source and specific Redis modules from Redis Labs that were not distributed via Debian or Redhat anyways.
• amelius 8y ago
  Any software with a restrictive license of any kind will eventually be replaced by software with a more liberal license.
  • _sh 8y ago
    ...like all Linux installs will eventually be replaced by BSD? I don't think the big, complex picture of technology licensing can be reduced as flippantly as that.
    • cestith 8y ago
      BSD is more liberal in what it allows other developers to do. GPL is more liberal in what it guarantees the end users of the software, which is the point of the GPL. Either is more liberal than purpose-limiting licenses.
  • toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Who would waste thousands of man hours to write a Redis replacement for free, only to have it taken by large tech companies to rake in revenue through managed offerings?
    • star-techate 8y ago
      It's an in-memory key-value store. Its primary function is to let transient processes not have to hit the disk to update state. Go ahead and write one this weekend, in that shiny new language that you're interested in, and then finish it up by adjusting the redis bindings of a popular CMS to work with your daemon as well.
      • toomuchtodo 8y ago
        If it's so easy, I'm sure we'll see replacements of equal quality. The initial Redis release was in 2009. I would think it's unlikely you're going to reach the same feature and stability parity orders of magnitude faster that Redis did.
• pmilot 8y ago
  Doesn't this Commons Clause goes specifically against one of the core principles of Free Software? The whole idea is that a Free Software license should not restrict what you can do with said software. Even the most restrictive FS licenses like GPL will not prevent me from selling consulting services around the product licensed under it. If you combine this clause with a Free Software license, it sounds to me like it is no longer FS. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • kazinator 8y ago
    > Even the most restrictive FS licenses like GPL will not prevent me from selling consulting services around the product licensed under it. At least this doesn't prevent buying those services. If I obtain the program from some party A, then A redistributed it to me. Then if I contract B to work on/with the software, B is not bound by the contract because they did not redistribute it to me. However, though I can pay B, neither of us can sell the enhancements though, if enhancements were made. Moreover, I can't use the software to run any kind of business, because that's might be a product or service that arguably derives substantial value from the software.
  • kungfooguru 8y ago
    Yup, it (whatever pieces are now under this new clause, it isn't clear, may just be some modules) is no longer free software.
• deleted 8y ago
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• kodablah 8y ago
  > However, today’s cloud providers have repeatedly violated this ethos by taking advantage of successful open source projects and repackaging them into competitive, proprietary service offerings. Well, if that's the way you see it, then sure, go ahead and limit the software's use. But there are a lot of people, like myself on my OSS stuff, that do not feel like they're being taken advantage of when their software is used this way, otherwise I wouldn't put it out there. Granted I also disagree in many cases with copy left licenses. I don't want to engage in that debate here, but suffice to say some people want to control what you do once they transfer stuff to you and some don't. You see it a lot in non software these days too. We need a new term called "restrictionless software" or something similar so those of us with small companies don't need lawyers to share and share alike when each version of this type of clause comes out. In the meantime, building a company out of charitable software work is probably hard, so I'm sure others' revenues off your stuff feels wrong. And it's hard to maintain a sense of freedom but still add pay-for features, so I sympathize with companies going this route.
  • exikyut 8y ago
    Looking at Redis [Labs], their livelihood is based solely on consulting and revenue generated from deploying Redis. Cloud providers are clearly netting multiple millions and not passing that upstream in the form of consulting, project donations, etc. This is one workaround. It works.
    • kodablah 8y ago
      > This is one workaround. It works. A bit early to tell I'd say. Always hard to know who doesn't use something because of these things. But I think everyone can agree that this wouldn't have worked from the start; needed to build up a dependence on the software and interfaces before springing this. Feels a bit bait-and-switch every time someone's software gets commercially popular so they feel the need to change tack. Almost makes me wish it didn't become popular and widely distributed so the developers don't get this urge to do the switch. Then again, I'm always happy to see people get rich when they work hard on stuff.
    • pritambaral 8y ago
• deleted 8y ago
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• throwaway13337 8y ago
  The problem this license is trying to solve is a reasonable one: that cloud providers package up open source products as their own service and capture the majority of the value without adding much themselves. This license might not be the best way around it but the issue should be addressed.
  • mythz 8y ago
    Agreed, most of the Revenue from OSS is from hosting it, not developing it. As a result the biggest cloud vendors make most of the profit from OSS that others have developed and spend resources on maintaining. Not sure what the solution is either, but the major cloud companies are becoming an oligopoly who rake in most of profits in OSS giving them a competitive advantage which they can use to out resource, out market and out compete against alternative Indie OSS efforts. Whilst the desired effect would be that the Cloud companies would pay Redis Labs a cut of their profits they make on Redis, IMO they're already big enough that they can invest more development hours in developing a superior competing replacement which they can use as a competitive differentiator vs other Redis hosts. But hopefully they'll consider profit sharing instead of developing a proprietary cloud-only fork.
  • markbnj 8y ago
    You know this kind of goes right to the heart of the issue. The cloud providers are packaging up open source software into higher level services that have value... just like FB and twitter and everyone else that provides a service that we couldn't have dreamed up 30 years ago. Back in the 80's when I started in this business there were paywalls around every algorithmic implementation of an idea, and before too long there were patents standing on those paywalls defending them. The very idea of open source (to which I was a late convert, so treat me like a reformed smoker here) is the opposite. It unleashed a torrent of innovation _because_ it treated specific algorithmic implementations of ideas as a common resource. To make money you had to come up with something bigger, something more significant to the world than a new key/value store. It's hard to make money off of infrastructure software because the very philosophical foundation of the open source idea is that infrastructure software should be free, so greater ideas can more easily take flight.
• cjbprime 8y ago
  Aw, man. We yelled at the Redis dev so often for poorly reimplementing distributed consensus algorithms that he switched to poorly reimplementing software licenses instead.
• itwasntandy 8y ago
  Weird thing is it just a few months ago that AWS contributed what I would consider a pretty significant feature to Redis - encryption in transit: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/open-sourcing-encryption-in-transit-redis/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/open-sourcing-encryp... While it’s not merged yet, antirez at the time seemed pretty onboard with the approach. ( first Point in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943289 ). The delay in merging seems understandable based on the comments and discussion on the PR. So leaves me wondering what’s changed. Obviously antirez != redislabs and their focus is on the OSS side of redis, but the announcement seems to suggest that none of the cloud providers contribute back which isn’t the case?
• tonetheman 8y ago
  I too like most commenters here think this is odd or weird and feels not open source. Someone will just fork redis and remove the common clause is my guess as to what should happen? weird
• endlessvoid94 8y ago
  Trying to understand the motivation here. In principle, what's the difference between my company taking advantage of open source software (cost savings, huge advantage because I don't have to build everything in-house) and a company that offers a hosted version of said software? In both cases, I am benefitting economically and not contributing upstream.
  • abrookewood 8y ago
    The difference is the second company is earning money directly off the labour of open source software ... that and the fact that the second company is worth billions. None of this would have happened if AWS etc had of supported the open source contributors and projects that they were relying upon in some meaningful way. I actually support this move and wish RedisLabs the best of luck.
    • endlessvoid94 8y ago
      What if the first company is also worth billions and hasn't contributed anything upstream? How is that any different?
      • abrookewood 8y ago
        The revenue component is still different. In the first case, they are saving the cost of purchasing equivalent software. In the second, they are earning money. It's a subtle but important difference.
        • endlessvoid94 8y ago
          I'd actually argue the company that doesn't have to purchase / build it themselves is reaping more benefit, since for many startups, this distinction can be existential.
  • troydavis 8y ago
    The difference is that Redis Labs competes with one type and doesn’t compete with the other. That’s the only difference. I’d love to hear Salvatore Sanfilippo’s take…
• andrepd 8y ago
  >Today, most cloud providers offer Redis as a managed service over their infrastructure and enjoy huge income from software that was not developed by them. Redis’ permissive BSD open source license allows them to do so legally, but this must be changed. Then it seems the solution is simple: use GPL rather than BSD. In other words, say "Do you want to use this free software for your benefit? Fine, but in turn give back your improvements to the community for our benefit.". Without this safeguard, progress and shared good is not achieved.
  • johncolanduoni 8y ago
    Do the cloud providers make significant in-house modifications to Redis?
    • andrepd 8y ago
      Big or small, they would have to duly disclose and release what they built from that tool.
      • mikekchar 8y ago
        No they don't. Under Apache 2.0 they only have to provide source code changes if they distribute the software. If they are providing it as a service with modifications, they are allowed to do that without redistribution. However, I don't think anyone has suggested that they are doing that -- only that they are offering a service for money that uses Redis (and the affected modules).
      • noncoml 8y ago
        You are thinking AGPL maybe?
  • abrookewood 8y ago
    I don't see how the GPL helps. AWS etc make money by providing Redis as a service, which the GPL allows. If most of the work they have done is to support Redis, rather than changing code in Redis, nothing changes.
• no_wizard 8y ago
  So I just want to ask about clairification. I am leaning toward liking this as it solves sole practical concerns for these types of businesses and projects but one small thing I’m struggling to understand is how it affects trainings and or consulting where you derive your income teaching people or integrating people with these systems The language around that was very legalese if anyone has opinions
  • slavak 8y ago
    IANAL, but my understanding is that as long as you only provide the knowledge but not the actual software you're fine. e.g.: conducting paid training sessions, even ones where the attendants are required to download the software from the official site and install it on their machines for practical exercises, should be okay. If someone wants to pay you to install licensed software on their production machines and configure it... Eh, probably not. Also to reiterate that Redis itself is still BSD, so if you're not using add-on modules licensed with this clause you're unaffected. Full disclosure: Am a Redis Labs employee, although not here in any official capacity.
• fyfy18 8y ago
  Are the four popovers I had to click through to get to the article really necesary? - Notice about updated privacy policy - GDPR opt-out (where the ‘No’ button is hidden on the next screen) - Chat system - Banner ad for an event
• deleted 8y ago
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• sandGorgon 8y ago
  Question : isn't the prohibition of consulting, too close to definition of non-compete that it is effectively nullified in states like California ? Yes, I know this is just for one particular software - but this could have been made for an "algorithm" as well, which has already been tested in courts.
• waterpower 8y ago
  I look forward to telling my consluting clients that it's illegal for me to take a Redis gig, but I can help them migrate to another key-value store.
• sgentle 8y ago
  > Help! Companies are exploiting my open source software for profit! Uh, you told them they could. > Yeah, but they're doing it without contributing back! They're just taking what I wrote and building it into a proprietary product! You told them they could. > But how is it fair that they can make so much money off my code and I never see a cent? You. Told. Them. They. Could. Time and again I see the same sense of helpless outrage from OSS devs. You owe it to yourself to understand the consequences of the license you choose, now and in the future. All the proselytising about permissive vs reciprocal licenses has only masked the important personal choices involved. Choices that you need to make honestly and carefully, or end up burned by your own expectations. Are you willing to release your code, both in the sense of putting it out into the world and emancipating it from your ownership? Do you accept that your code could be renamed, rebranded, repackaged, rented, traded or sold? Would you be happy if your code made someone else rich, famous or successful while you saw no benefit at all? If so, your code is a gift given unconditionally, and you should choose a permissive license. If not, the answer isn't to release it under an MIT license and then complain about it, but to pick a license that matches your intent. The GPL exists for a reason. The MPL exists for a reason. Not because the people who use reciprocal licenses hate freedom, but because their idea of freedom is based on sharing rather than giving. A gift expects nothing in return. Sharing expects that you share as well. Any choice is a fine choice as long as it aligns with your goals. What I don't get is trying to have both and then being upset when you're rebuffed by reality. Picking a permissive license is being the chill surfer dude who lives in a van and just, like, takes life as it comes, man. Lots of people like the idea of that dude, very few people want to actually be that dude. Don't pick the BSD license because of its cool I-don't-care image. Pick it because you actually don't care, or be forced to admit publicly and embarrassingly later that you actually did all along and it was all a show. And for the love of god, don't pick a permissive license, slap a preface on top that says "but not really tho", and act like you've found some amazing lifehack. You're just lying to yourself and everyone else; wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices.
  • zapita 8y ago
    > wearing open source's uniform without making open source's sacrifices. That’s an oddly... militaristic way of putting it. Are you sure you haven’t been watching too much Game of Thrones? Your version of open-source sounds like the Night’s Watch!
• Cursuviam 8y ago
  Just dual license with AGPL, instead of this proprietary crap.
  • carlsborg 8y ago
    Agree, the Affero GPL works for the cloud scenario: "It provides the same restrictions and freedoms as the GPLv3 but with an additional clause which makes it so that source code must be distributed along with web publication."
• skrebbel 8y ago
  This limits not just huge cloud providers bit also little startups. In fact, Redis Labs would've probably never been founded if Redis had come with this clause from the beginning.
  • XiZhao 8y ago
    That's true, but Redis is not closed source. This only applies to a few enterprise modules.
• vesak 8y ago
  If you don't want others to exploit your code without contributing back, don't use BSD/MIT/Apache; use (A)GPL. Otherwise, you're just asking everyone to think you're a cool and mellow cat for releasing full-libre, man. But don't take my stash, dude. Not to mention crowdsourcing bug fixes.
• hashrate 8y ago
  > if what you sell is basically the functionality of the module [...] Commons Clause does not allow it. Great ! Now the entire industry is accepting the "freemium" model where the core features are free , but not the modules around it. This is a push to milk companies with paid licences on Free Software. This is insane that this is becoming the norm in the industry. Every single day open source is getting less and less open. This type of constraints are insane and are similar to the one forced by Oracle.
  • sonarlunar 8y ago
    It's one vendor contributing some modules which now they have a different license. I don't see how this impacts any other Redis module on github out there. Either those modules are that good and the vendor decides that cloud providers must pay and not get money from the vendor's work, or those modules are not really that used so who cares. I have used RedisJSON module which is nice and I assume changes license now. Am I a service provider? Do I care about one module changing license so AWS and other clouds cannot use for their own service? I couldn't care less and it does not impact Redis open source project at all IMHO
    • hashrate 8y ago
      > I couldn't care less Let's say you are PHP consultant , you set up a Redis + EC2 instances. You enable a redis enterprise module in that instance. Well technically speaking you are breaching the license of RedisLabs. You are not allowed to do so without their consent because those modules aren't "bsd" or "mit" they are "Commons Clause". In short , if you are doing something with the RedisLabs modules ( consulting / hosting / training / support ) you owe $$$ to RedisLabs.
      • sonarlunar 8y ago
        It's unenforceable. European Union cannot claim VAT from smaller - yet big enough - foreign companies and is only targeting the very big ones to collect it from. I used to play an online game and, if you changed your country to a non EU one, no VAT was paid. And that was a big company that should have been enforcing EU VAT for me. Would Redis Labs go after Joe and his brother? Even if the license said so? They're after the big abusers, not the community. If I'm not mistaken antirez said so too, that it does not affect you and me. That's the reasonable thing anyway. AWS is the big abuser. Check MongoDB or Xen or Elastic cases. People (ex employees typically) are starting to talk how AWS is abusing their open source work. I think that's the whole juice of the story, that AWS is abusing successful open source projects. At least that's what I read behind the words.
• jwildeboer 8y ago
  TL;DR redis is no longer open source. I wonder why that’s not the title of this post.
  • reidrac 8y ago
    Perhaps you should read it, your TL;DR is incorrect. What the post says is that Redis add-ons won't be open source, but the core will be (which is Redis). Basically this is a Open Core business model and they could have been clearer in their announcement because looks like a lot of people don't quite read announcements.
• cybervegan 8y ago
  I don't think this is going to work out the way redis wants it to. Most likely, this will cause a fork of whatever "modules" they have applied the new "Commons Clause" to and everyone will continue on pretty much as before. It will also most likely alienate existing community members and dissuade people from contributing back - they may even lose important contributors over this.
• fabianhjr 8y ago
  The P2P Foundation has some discussion on the topic: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Copyfair http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Copyfair
• icc97 8y ago
  I think it's worth mentioning WordPress who have managed to successfully maintain an open source version whilst building their own cloud offering to profit from. Many other cloud services provide WordPress as a service, but WordPress are still able to maintain multiple streams of revenue through 'official' WordPress hosting.
  • porker 8y ago
    That's a bit harder for Redis though, because to keep latency down you want it running in your cloud, not somewhere 10's of ms away. Sure Redis could run clusters in every cloud provider's DCs, but then they're paying for the cloud like anyone else and costs increase.
• antirez 8y ago
  I clarified that the Redis core (https://github.com/antirez/redis https://github.com/antirez/redis) remains BSD, and what I think about the license switch Redis Labs is operating on certain Redis Modules. https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330 https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032180321834467330 and the considerations thread: https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176 https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1032192721308594176
  • erikrothoff 8y ago
    Sorry to hijack this thread, but am I understanding correctly that Disque will be AGPL? Does that mean that building a SaaS using Disque would require me to open source the code that uses Disque? Is that the reasoning why you are choosing AGPL? Thanks for your awesome work btw.
    • antirez 8y ago
      Hello, yes indeed Disque will be AGPL and all the changes operated in order to create an SaaS related to Disque will have to be open sourced as well. The reason of the license switch is that I do no longer consider acceptable for cloud providers to take the value generated elsewhere and monetize without providing anything back. I was a big BSD supporter but it no longer works in the cloud era for system software IMHO.
      • erikrothoff 8y ago
        Our use-case would be installing Redis with Disque on our servers (VPS) to run it for our own infrastructure. Job queues n such. Not sell it to other users as ”hosted disque” etc. Is that a use case you are against too?
        • deleted 8y ago
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        • deleted 8y ago
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• xtf 8y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ I am pretty happy with GPL, MIT/BSD, Apache because I have learned it. Another nice way is Creative Commons, especially because they are modular and are mostly translated and therefor applicable in most other laws. Edit: also you can - always write your own, but people like to read the acronyms and know what they are confronted with - go the Carmack way, last gen open source.
• thijsvandien 8y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but this is a reminder why it's good to only add a new dependency to your project when the benefit is more than incremental. Any and all of them are a potential liability. Did you really need Redis or would it have worked fine keeping everything in Postgres (assuming that the latter is something you couldn't do without anyway)? Did you really need Docker or would a static binary have gotten you 80% of the way? These are important questions to ask, regardless of any particular technology. I do not have an opinion on the future of Redis, but I do on choosing a stack. Related: http://boringtechnology.club http://boringtechnology.club
• buybackoff 8y ago
  I'm not a lawyer but the first reaction to this was if it is enforceable at all? There is a [rich choice] (https://tldrlegal.com/ https://tldrlegal.com/) of licenses backed by court history and many years of practical usage. For my OSS project I spent some time to pick a right license and changed it couple of times (LGPL -> GPL -> MPL 2.0). My final choice was mainly due to the blog post by author of ZeroMQ Peter Hintjens ["How to Make Money from Open Source"] (http://hintjens.com/blog:27 http://hintjens.com/blog:27) , where he described a story of "Patrick" who "told big companies that they could" rip him off and they did - in the spirit of the top comment here. I have faced a troll on GitHub who opened an issue on almost every project related to data analytics and asked authors to change any reciprocal license to MIT/BSD/Apache. I've never seen him contributing anything substantial back. This was a refreshing reminder that as soon as I publish my code as MIT et al. all valuable parts from it will be ripped apart immediately and I'll unlikely see any contributions back. Yet I wanted to share my code and see contributions back. In the [issue thread](https://github.com/Spreads/Spreads/issues/6 https://github.com/Spreads/Spreads/issues/6) Peter Hintjens joined and commented that "MPLv2 gives us [ZeromMQ] the same benefits with less angst for corporate users" vs (L/A)GPL. Many licenses are carefully crafted by lawyers and any change to it makes software not an open source anymore. It feels to me that OSS with a proper license is very close to a legal entity a la trust, and maintainers are just trustees. So if I want to remain any control I would rather choose uncool APGL.
• jononor 8y ago
  The primary target here seems to be cloud hosting companies that provide Redis-as-a-Service. But the seemingly wide definition of Sell, including how consulting/support services are mention makes me confused. Can I as a software developer working as a consultant, still create an app for customers which uses Redis with modules under Commons Clause? ...the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software... One of the nice things about MIT/BSD/Apache over GPL/LPGL was the ability to use a software without needing to involve lawyers. This might just have gone out the window...
  • oliwarner 8y ago
    Yeah it's awful. But in answer to your question: Maybe. It looks a lot more forgiving if you flip it over from "what do they say I can do?" to "what could I get away with?". They'd have to find you first. Then prove you were paid. Then they'd have to prove that use-case was substantially dependent on their software. Unless your employer went to Redis an announces all this, their ability to go after consulting/freelance developers is very limited. I think this is, as others have said, a cash-grab at the cloud market who advertise these sorts of services publicly. They're easy targets.
    • aequitas 8y ago
      "what could I get away with" Seems like an awful thing to build your business around.
  • peterlk 8y ago
    > a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software This phrase is where the legal battles will be fought
• gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
  In other news I suspect someone will soon be forking Redis and development of an open source/free software fork will continue...
  • zwily 8y ago
    The license for Redis itself has not changed and will not change, I doubt there's a need to fork it.
    • deleted 8y ago
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    • Nemo_bis 8y ago
      There was such a need for ownCloud, where the company and main maintainers pushed developers to not develop things in core which would compete with their proprietary extensions. https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/nextcloud/ https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/nextcloud/
• Communitivity 8y ago
  I would think a lawyer could poke enough holes through a Commons Clause license for it to resemble swiss cheese afterwards. I am not a lawyer, but software you get is under one license or another. Some are dual licensed, but you choose which license you are operating under when you publish your derivative work. Base on what I read it's either Apache License or Commons Clause, not both. And if it's Commons Clause then it seems misrepresentation to say 'license: Apache License', as the example gave. I think GPL has gone out of fashion, in some circles, because of fear. I work in a shop where GPL is outright forbidden, except where absolutely necessary, because of horror stories senior management has heard that exaggerate the risk of using GPL software, and because of real experiences. I know of one such experience myself, according to my friend, his team was forced to rewrite an entire software package to use the Postgres JDBC driver and Postgres-specific migration scripts, because they were told MySQL driver use an redistribution did not require them to open source their code, and then they were told something different by a second member of the MySQL team. Shortly after that a memo was sent to all teams at that research lab, ordering no further use of GPL software except where no other option exists (and with lots of legal documentation in that case). If you can deal with a service model for your business, then open source your software with BSD or other permissive license and sell consulting services. If you want a product model, then the one I see repeatedly work well is an open source core with enterprise commercial add-ons. Mentioning consulting in the license further muddies the water. I know I was thinking of using Redis for a new project with a client, and now I won't. I won't be using Redis again until this license gets changed, and I encourage everyone else to do the same. In today's security environment, and with software quality issues being what they are, I think having all your software be closed source, or restrictive non-free open source, is going the way of the dinosaur. This Commons Clause seems to me to be a open source license, but seems restrictive and a step backward. The wording coul be taken to be deceptive. And calling it 'Commons' anything is adding insult to injury.
• chippy 8y ago
  The naming of this is wrong and should be changed quickly and I'll explain why. Commons Clause (abbreviated to CC) conflicts with Creative Commons (also CC). Creative Commons also has the word Commons which refers to a more established and well known thing. Commons Clause goes against the principles of the actual commons. it has nothing to do with a commons, or what is widely understood as "the commons". Call it something better - call it a proprietary clause instead. Maybe it's aim is to stop the "tragedy of the commons"?
• logophobia 8y ago
  Gotta say, stuff like this is getting a bit more common. Last month while I was evaluating choices for an application gateway I saw that: * Ngnix has an enterprise version * Kong has an enterprise version * HAProxy has an enterprise version Now redis as well, even if the commons license isn't quite as bad, it's a step back. It's understandable, but all a bit disappointing.
• esterly 8y ago
  The license commit is very clear redis core is unchanged BSD 3 https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/COPYING https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/unstable/COPYING
• jeffhorton 8y ago
  Maybe it's just time to crank up the revenue to make this worthwhile. https://redislabs.com/press/redis-labs-secures-44-million-funding-led-goldman-sachs-private-capital-investing-strengthen-database-leadership/ https://redislabs.com/press/redis-labs-secures-44-million-fu...
• aries185 8y ago
  For clarification, here's the official response from the Redis Labs's website: "the license for open source Redis was never changed. It is BSD and will always remain BSD." Only Redis add-on modules developed by Redis Labs have changed from AGPL to Apache v2.0 modified with Commons Clause. https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd