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Revenue through hosting continues to be the big driver for all of these projects, which is what is motivating the license changes. The trend indicates that onl

Revenue through hosting continues to be the big driver for all of these projects, which is what is motivating the license changes. The trend indicates that only open source libraries work for companies that own projects. If it's a program (e.g. server software like a database) then it's either source available or under a foundation. It's tough and I don't know what the answer is here. I'd love to see a model that causes the pendulum to swing back the other way with open source permissive licenses for complex programs, but I don't see a viable way yet. Maybe trademark enforcement and open source code only with licensed builds? Either way, I'm sure we'll continue to see the rise and fall (or license change) of popular open source software for years to come. There's too much benefit for developers and companies to start out open source. And there's too much pressure later on to change it. At the very least, I'll give Redis credit for giving far more value to the world than they've captured. By an absolutely massive margin. It'll be interesting to see how long a fork takes to land and if it'll be successful. And it'll be interesting to look at Redis (the company)'s revenue growth curve in 5 years.

_msw_ 3y ago
Personally, I don't find foundations to be a magic solution for this problem. There are many examples where a single company has decided to basically "fork" their way out of foundation housing and the community is left with the same outcome.
justinclift 3y ago
> open source permissive licenses for complex programs Like the AGPL3? https://spdx.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0-or-later.html https://spdx.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0-or-later.html
- pauldix 3y ago
  Copyleft isn't permissive. It's a viral license that sets restrictions on derivative works, forks and contribution.
  - dartos 3y ago
    Permissive meaning “freedom” (the eff definition) in this case.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    And thank deity for it! Holy cow am I so glad for every line of that viral leftist restrictive code!
  - Andrex 3y ago
    The more GPL code there is in the world, the better off everyone (consumers and business owners both) are.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    What virus ever gave you the option of "oh in that case, no thanks, I'll do it some other way" ?
klabb3 3y ago
> Revenue through hosting continues to be the big driver for all of these projects, which is what is motivating the license changes. Yeah, isn’t this just massive cloud providers eating the lunch of Redis etc? I don’t know enough about the licensing but I highly empathize with these small-mid sized companies building foundational tech that is commoditized and upcharged by an oligopolistic cloud behemoths. Surprised it's taken this long. Question: what other alternatives than license changes are there, assuming we want a healthy ecosystem of both businesses and open source?
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  TimescaleDB has an open core style license that seems to prevent the cloud services from repackaging their DB. It's not technically fully open source, but it's pretty close to it. Actually, I just took another look and they now market their "open core" as the apache edition (or perhaps have diverged from the "community edition" now)
michaelmrose 3y ago
> open source code only with licensed builds That isn't open source.
- joshuaissac 3y ago
  > That isn't open source. It is open source if the source code is available under an open source licence. For example, OpenJDK is licensed under the GPL and Oracle provides licensed builds, but that does not make OpenJDK not open source.
pjmlp 3y ago
It would also help that many developers would acknowledge that we are no different from other professionals, expecting to be paid for our own work, while not wanting to give a dime for the work tools doesn't scale. Those producing work tools also have bills to pay. In a way, developers themselves are to blame for the failure of the FOSS dream. Slowly we are back to the public domain/shareware days.
- LightFog 3y ago
  Developers are entirely to blame - the fraction of developers meaningfully contributing to FOSS or advocating for supporting it is tiny. Just ‘import foo’ and holy smokes - free shit, yes please!
- jarpineh 3y ago
  I can't see how you can shoulder the blame of (possible) failure of FOSS dream on developers. Devs (usually) don't control budgets and can't really ask for money to pay for freely licensed code. If blame is to be given then I'd point to money handlers for not acknowledging this situation. Then there's the question of what I should be paying anyway. Who among all those non-free developers are paying in turn to all the professionals whose code they build on? Are proprietary developers somehow exempt from paying themselves? If and when I choose to pay I like to think all that contributed are getting the benefit. There's a long line of professionals behind every code that should have been paid. Certain percentage might have tried to get paid. And even some who in fact did get paid.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Easy, there is no need to try to use every tool under the Sun. Do as we did before the GNU days, analyse what really matters for a specific project development, pay for those tools, and keep using them until they aren't suitable any longer.
    - jarpineh 3y ago
      Ha. I'm not sure your remark really responds to my concerns. I do use very small set from all the things. And do pay (small amount, I admit) money to some of them. If I choose to pay for a tool and the tool maker doesn't pay for their tools, then how much better off we are? I can't really see this next iteration of non-GNU ecosystem faring that much better if only few benefit. And for that matter, I did pay money for non-free tools. And bought Linux on those CDs distributors used to sell. Then the free-er ones somehow got better, so that revenue stream had nowhere to go. As I said, there's no easy way to pay for free stuff.

_msw_ 3y ago

Personally, I don't find foundations to be a magic solution for this problem. There are many examples where a single company has decided to basically "fork" their way out of foundation housing and the community is left with the same outcome.

justinclift 3y ago

> open source permissive licenses for complex programs Like the AGPL3? https://spdx.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0-or-later.html https://spdx.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0-or-later.html

pauldix 3y ago
Copyleft isn't permissive. It's a viral license that sets restrictions on derivative works, forks and contribution.
- dartos 3y ago
  Permissive meaning “freedom” (the eff definition) in this case.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  And thank deity for it! Holy cow am I so glad for every line of that viral leftist restrictive code!
- Andrex 3y ago
  The more GPL code there is in the world, the better off everyone (consumers and business owners both) are.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  What virus ever gave you the option of "oh in that case, no thanks, I'll do it some other way" ?

klabb3 3y ago

> Revenue through hosting continues to be the big driver for all of these projects, which is what is motivating the license changes. Yeah, isn’t this just massive cloud providers eating the lunch of Redis etc? I don’t know enough about the licensing but I highly empathize with these small-mid sized companies building foundational tech that is commoditized and upcharged by an oligopolistic cloud behemoths. Surprised it's taken this long. Question: what other alternatives than license changes are there, assuming we want a healthy ecosystem of both businesses and open source?

pcthrowaway 3y ago
TimescaleDB has an open core style license that seems to prevent the cloud services from repackaging their DB. It's not technically fully open source, but it's pretty close to it. Actually, I just took another look and they now market their "open core" as the apache edition (or perhaps have diverged from the "community edition" now)

michaelmrose 3y ago

> open source code only with licensed builds That isn't open source.

joshuaissac 3y ago
> That isn't open source. It is open source if the source code is available under an open source licence. For example, OpenJDK is licensed under the GPL and Oracle provides licensed builds, but that does not make OpenJDK not open source.

pjmlp 3y ago

It would also help that many developers would acknowledge that we are no different from other professionals, expecting to be paid for our own work, while not wanting to give a dime for the work tools doesn't scale. Those producing work tools also have bills to pay. In a way, developers themselves are to blame for the failure of the FOSS dream. Slowly we are back to the public domain/shareware days.

LightFog 3y ago
Developers are entirely to blame - the fraction of developers meaningfully contributing to FOSS or advocating for supporting it is tiny. Just ‘import foo’ and holy smokes - free shit, yes please!
jarpineh 3y ago
I can't see how you can shoulder the blame of (possible) failure of FOSS dream on developers. Devs (usually) don't control budgets and can't really ask for money to pay for freely licensed code. If blame is to be given then I'd point to money handlers for not acknowledging this situation. Then there's the question of what I should be paying anyway. Who among all those non-free developers are paying in turn to all the professionals whose code they build on? Are proprietary developers somehow exempt from paying themselves? If and when I choose to pay I like to think all that contributed are getting the benefit. There's a long line of professionals behind every code that should have been paid. Certain percentage might have tried to get paid. And even some who in fact did get paid.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Easy, there is no need to try to use every tool under the Sun. Do as we did before the GNU days, analyse what really matters for a specific project development, pay for those tools, and keep using them until they aren't suitable any longer.
  - jarpineh 3y ago
    Ha. I'm not sure your remark really responds to my concerns. I do use very small set from all the things. And do pay (small amount, I admit) money to some of them. If I choose to pay for a tool and the tool maker doesn't pay for their tools, then how much better off we are? I can't really see this next iteration of non-GNU ecosystem faring that much better if only few benefit. And for that matter, I did pay money for non-free tools. And bought Linux on those CDs distributors used to sell. Then the free-er ones somehow got better, so that revenue stream had nowhere to go. As I said, there's no easy way to pay for free stuff.