5 ms·

I like Andrew, but I think that this way of telling the story does not match the reality of the BSD license. With the BSD license, there are many potential fork

I like Andrew, but I think that this way of telling the story does not match the reality of the BSD license. With the BSD license, there are many potential forks of a project (with potentially different licenses) that compete at the same time in the "market" of the user base. Who puts the best developments, leads the race. When I stepped back from Redis, I formally left it in the hands of the Core Team the was constituted by Redis Inc. (the one that included three Redis Labs programmers, one from AWS, one from Alibaba), but this was a formal act from my side: with the BSD license any third party can fork, change name, continue the project with a different trajectory and with different goals. BSD code is a common good, and everybody can impress new directions, if willing to do so.

stavros 3y ago
This ignores the fact that the brand matters, though. If I fork postgres, nobody is going to just start using my fork over the official software, because the two aren't nearly the same. One has people behind it, the other doesn't. Yes, it may end up that Redict has the backing of the community, and Redis falls behind, but we shouldn't act like all the mindshare isn't currently with Redis (the brand).
- antirez 3y ago
  Branding is important but it's not Coca-Cola and we are not normal customers of something. I believe that in the end who wins is who provides technical excellence and a license that works for the use case. The reality is that most of the times nobody wants to put substantial work into OSS projects for free (I understand the reasons), and I don't agree with this post when Andy says that projects can be set in maintenance mode just doing minimal work to take them frozen, even when they are mature projects. Moreover the current situation with Redis is not closed-but-maintained VS forks-possibily-without-development-force, because the SSPL is a quite open license. To put our destiny in the hand of what OSI approves or not is crazy IMHO. Actually for OSS to be viable in the future, we likely need many other licenses based on copyleft, that allows new projects developers to say, OK, I can use an open license because I have some protection from megacorps. Don't get fooled by a minority of strong voices, if you check Hacker News comments about Redis licese change, you will see that at this point many, many folks get that. Stallman was now almost erased from collective memory but with GPL what happened was exactly what was happening now with SSPL. Initially copyleft was used, and later stronger copyleft was used in successive versions / modifications of the license, like AGPL. So this problem is not new and people a the core of the Free Software movement addressed them in a very similar way decades ago. But now suddenly if a small company goes along the same lines, that is a violation of everything, while big companies like Amazon posing a major threat to future of OSS is fine.
  - stavros 3y ago
    I agree with basically everything you say, and I agree that developers should be able to choose the SSPL, because usually the choice is between SSPL-and-maintained and open-but-languishing. I think many people's disagreement here is that Redis broke its promise to always remain BSD (https://redis.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/). I don't think you can say "yes but you can just fork it", because that ignores the reality that, sure, maybe eventually that fork will win, but right now the main fork (Redis) has a huge head start.
    - antirez 3y ago
      Con't comment on the fact that what was promised was not maintained, since I'm away for four years at this point. But I believe that in business sometimes, as the situation changes, or correction for monopoly positions are not likely to be taken by governments in the near future, changes are more or less forced. This is just speculation on my side as I was very little involved in the business side already when I was part of the company. Now zero involvement for four years. But the fact here is that many OSS projects needed to go towards this path one after the other. So I believe it is more useful to understand why they are willing to take this risk, what are the conditions that determine the bizarre fact that the main player in the development takes a marginal part of the cut.
      - stavros 3y ago
        > changes are more or less forced. I agree, that's why I don't ever want to say that something "will always be X". Otherwise people might be upset when I have to break the promise. I'm not saying this to you as the creator of Redis, by the way (you already said you've been away too long for that), just as one random HN commenter to another.
        antirez 3y ago
        Yep, these are problematic statements, since what they actually mean is "as long as I'm in charge" from the POV of project managers, CEOs, ... depending on the context. And even when people don't change conditions change. Indeed it is much better to say something like: we will take the BSD license as long as possible. And actually it must be observed that Redis was one of the latest to change the license.
AndyKelley 3y ago
Hi antirez. I like you too. I essentially agree with you, but I think you are underestimating the importance of network effects of users herding to one particular branch of the tree. My blog post is an appeal for users to choose one branch over another.

stavros 3y ago

This ignores the fact that the brand matters, though. If I fork postgres, nobody is going to just start using my fork over the official software, because the two aren't nearly the same. One has people behind it, the other doesn't. Yes, it may end up that Redict has the backing of the community, and Redis falls behind, but we shouldn't act like all the mindshare isn't currently with Redis (the brand).

antirez 3y ago
Branding is important but it's not Coca-Cola and we are not normal customers of something. I believe that in the end who wins is who provides technical excellence and a license that works for the use case. The reality is that most of the times nobody wants to put substantial work into OSS projects for free (I understand the reasons), and I don't agree with this post when Andy says that projects can be set in maintenance mode just doing minimal work to take them frozen, even when they are mature projects. Moreover the current situation with Redis is not closed-but-maintained VS forks-possibily-without-development-force, because the SSPL is a quite open license. To put our destiny in the hand of what OSI approves or not is crazy IMHO. Actually for OSS to be viable in the future, we likely need many other licenses based on copyleft, that allows new projects developers to say, OK, I can use an open license because I have some protection from megacorps. Don't get fooled by a minority of strong voices, if you check Hacker News comments about Redis licese change, you will see that at this point many, many folks get that. Stallman was now almost erased from collective memory but with GPL what happened was exactly what was happening now with SSPL. Initially copyleft was used, and later stronger copyleft was used in successive versions / modifications of the license, like AGPL. So this problem is not new and people a the core of the Free Software movement addressed them in a very similar way decades ago. But now suddenly if a small company goes along the same lines, that is a violation of everything, while big companies like Amazon posing a major threat to future of OSS is fine.
- stavros 3y ago
  I agree with basically everything you say, and I agree that developers should be able to choose the SSPL, because usually the choice is between SSPL-and-maintained and open-but-languishing. I think many people's disagreement here is that Redis broke its promise to always remain BSD (https://redis.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/). I don't think you can say "yes but you can just fork it", because that ignores the reality that, sure, maybe eventually that fork will win, but right now the main fork (Redis) has a huge head start.
  - antirez 3y ago
    Con't comment on the fact that what was promised was not maintained, since I'm away for four years at this point. But I believe that in business sometimes, as the situation changes, or correction for monopoly positions are not likely to be taken by governments in the near future, changes are more or less forced. This is just speculation on my side as I was very little involved in the business side already when I was part of the company. Now zero involvement for four years. But the fact here is that many OSS projects needed to go towards this path one after the other. So I believe it is more useful to understand why they are willing to take this risk, what are the conditions that determine the bizarre fact that the main player in the development takes a marginal part of the cut.
    - stavros 3y ago
      > changes are more or less forced. I agree, that's why I don't ever want to say that something "will always be X". Otherwise people might be upset when I have to break the promise. I'm not saying this to you as the creator of Redis, by the way (you already said you've been away too long for that), just as one random HN commenter to another.
      - antirez 3y ago
        Yep, these are problematic statements, since what they actually mean is "as long as I'm in charge" from the POV of project managers, CEOs, ... depending on the context. And even when people don't change conditions change. Indeed it is much better to say something like: we will take the BSD license as long as possible. And actually it must be observed that Redis was one of the latest to change the license.

AndyKelley 3y ago

Hi antirez. I like you too. I essentially agree with you, but I think you are underestimating the importance of network effects of users herding to one particular branch of the tree. My blog post is an appeal for users to choose one branch over another.