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Well, except for the fact that "redis" the organization didn't create redis and isn't even the main developer of redis. The origin of Redis the company is liter
by dkuntz2 3y ago
Well, except for the fact that "redis" the organization didn't create redis and isn't even the main developer of redis. The origin of Redis the company is literally as a hosting provider for the open source redis that they didn't create.
- objektif 3y agoThis is what I am confused about so what right do they have to enforce AWS from selling Redis when they do not own it?
- mythz 3y agoThe licensing change only applies to their future versions which they own all contributions of which AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore.
- happymellon 3y ago> AWS won't be allowed to leech off anymore. Doesn't AWS employ Madelyn Olson? I mean, AWS have paid for Redis development. Not exactly a leech.
- mythz 3y agoYep still the biggest leachers. Token hires and flowery PR campaigns doesn't entitle them to most of the profits of other vendors products or absolve them of their predatory behavior. But they wont be able to leech Redis's future contributions. Knowing AWS they'll most likely create a fork to continue raking in most of the profits in the short-term.
- happymellon 3y agoErr, after this license change Redis Inc will be the biggest leechers considering they didn't contribute the majority of the code. > Yep still the biggest leachers Redis was literally licensed for people to do whatever they want. That's not leeching.
- mythz 3y agoRedis Labs was a long time sponsor for the full-time development of Redis then later compensated the creator of Redis for their rights to Redis Technology and branding who was ended up retiring from technology to write Sci-Fi books. By contrast AWS takes most of the profits whilst contributing relatively nothing back, making them the biggest leacher and the primary motivation for the relicensing to prevent mega corps with unfettered access to their future contributions that AWS repackages to compete against them. So whilst their previous license allowed AWS to leech off them, it's now been relicensed to prevent them from profiting off their future investments without compensating anything back.
- jakupovic 3y agoDuring an all-hands around 2008 I asked AWS leadership whether AWS was going to open source their technologies the answer was we're thinking about it. 16 years later it has not happened, nor it will given the record ;(
- objektif 3y agoHow does one buy rights to an open source technology?
- tracker1 3y agoYou buy the trademark/name from the original author. I'm the case of GPL or other assigned work licenses, you sell the baseline copyright and they can change it.
- deanCommie 3y ago> By contrast AWS takes most of the profits whilst contributing relatively nothing back You do understand that AWS profits not off redis but by offering redis as a managed hosting provider. Microsoft and Google do to, it's just that they're not as popular as AWS. They're not re-skinning or re-selling Redis, they're selling a separate product - the managed operations for operating and scaling Redis. You may not appreciate this (most on HN never do - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224) But the value is evident to thousands of customers.
- nindalf 3y agoAWS, along with Google and others have created a fork already. It’s very rude of you to call someone a token hire when they’re high up in the contributors list (#7 all time). Denigrating their work for no reason other than to “win” an internet argument. We’ll see what happens though. If redis Inc (that never created redis) wins over AWS, GCP and others (who also never created redis). Both contributed to its maintenance, as GitHub clearly shows. We’ll see which fork wins out.
- mythz 3y ago> It’s very rude of you to call someone a token hire when they’re high up in the contributors list (#7 all time). I've called AWS's hiring of a single developer a token hire that they then go on to write flowery PR posts about to camouflage their predatory relationship with OSS vendors. For concrete numbers they contributed 165/12111 commits for a total of a 1.36% of the commits. Whilst that qualifies as a valuable contribution to any project, it's also dwarfed by the 350M investment in Redis Labs and doesn't absolve AWS from being a called a "leacher" by helping themselves to the majority of the profits whilst contributing relatively nothing back.
- nindalf 3y ago> dwarfed by the 350M investment in Redis Labs It’s funny that you would use commits to quantify investment from AWS, but you’d use $ to buy shares in future profits to quantify investment from redis labs. Why not use the same yardstick for both? Either way, it doesn’t matter. Not one bit. Everyone who put in effort into redis did it knowing the license. There’s nothing wrong in relicensing future commits. There’s nothing wrong with forking. There’s nothing wrong in using whichever fork works better for you. You’re insisting up and down that AWS and others were leeching because they didn’t own the copyright to redis. I’ve never heard this interpretation of OSS before, but sure maybe you’re right. But we’ll see which fork comes out on top a year from now.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago> camouflage their predatory relationship with OSS vendors If you don't want others to monetize your work, don't license it under a license permitting them exactly that.
- lukaszwojtow 3y agoYes, they paid. And they can use the code they paid for. But it doesn't give them right to leech of any future code written by someone else IN THE FUTURE.
- happymellon 3y agoAnd considering Redis Inc hasn't contributed the majority of the code, they won't be able to leech off other people's code because why on earth would anyone contribute to this trainwreck! It's lose/lose!
- jamespo 3y agoNot for redis the company if they follow mongodb’s trajectory
- chii 3y agoCalling it leech isn't right, because what makes aws any different from another user? Just because they're selling the hosting, doesnt make it any different to a regular user. Code contributions from amazon would've been leeched by other parties using redis as well - something which amazon is accepting (and probably encouraging).
- vasco 3y agoAWS leeches as much as Garantia Data no?
- mirekrusin 3y agoIf you own copyrights you’re not the leech.
- Thorrez 3y agoWho owns the copyrights? According to the article, since 7.0.0, 24.8% of commits are from Tencent, 19.5% from Redis, 6.7% from Alibaba, 5.2% from Huawei, 5.2% from Amazon.
- firstSpeaker 3y agoI wonder if there is a qualitative analysis of the commits. Aka, it changed a line of comment vs it introduced a new feature or refactored and increased long term viability, etc.
- mirekrusin 3y agoI think you're right. Some projects require signing copyright transfer before making commits (legal document claiming that you are a) copyright holder and b) you transfer those rights to them ie CLA [0]) so single entity holds whole copyrights. They usually have a GHA that checks it when proposing PRs. It doesn't look like redis has any of this. So they run RedisLabs purely on trademark + admin rights on GH on redis/redis. If that's the case then they also cannot legally change licence of code that's already there because they're not sole copyright holders of that code. ps. as a side note that's why ie. SQLite doesn't allow external contributions at all, even though their code is Public Domain – because they can legally claim full copyright/authorship. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_License_Agreement
- vasco 3y agoIf you own the copyrights you had money to spend at some point. Other than that unless you are one of the contributors you are leeching, just different flavors of leeching.
- nebulous1 3y agoFrom what I understand they acquired the rights to redis from antirez sometime after employing him. I assume he received money for this.
- tapoxi 3y agoTrademark, and it's licensed under BSD. Basically Redis Inc is the one making the fork, which retains the Redis name since they purchased it from antirez.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoNot only that, AWS has been offering redis-as-a-service longer than the "Redis" organization has been.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoBut if the shoe were on the other foot, AWS wouldn’t hesitate to rip the carpet from under anyone.
- chii 3y agoIt doesnt matter if they would've or not. Presumed innocent until proven guilty (via action). Using this as an argument doesn't work to justify redis inc's actions.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoI think your use of innocence is referring to your perceived ethical and moral compass, so while you have a theoretical point about guilty and innocent, your argument isn’t based on legality of actions which ultimately is all that matters. But if you think AWS would have any shred of ethics when it comes to a topic like this, you’re much more optimistic than I am.
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI believe that Redis has an agreement of sorts with Salvatore Sanfilippo / Antirez, the creator of Redis.
- radicalbyte 3y agoAmazon / Google / Microsoft made a massive mistake by not hiring Antirez, it's chump change for them to throw him $1-2M a year at him so he can work on Redis for them full time.
- mariusor 3y agoHas anyone asked Filippo if he still wants to work on Redis "for them" though? The fact that he stepped down suggests he doesn't.
- radicalbyte 3y agoHe sold the trademark to some random company. Amazon / Google / Microsoft could have thrown him $30M for that and put Redis in an OSS Foundation. Again, it's chump change, these companies drop that kinda money all the time in aquihires..
- chipdart 3y ago> He sold the trademark to some random company. Amazon / Google / Microsoft could have thrown him $30M for that and put Redis in an OSS Foundation. It sounds like a very bad deal for the likes of Amazon et al. The likes of Amazon offer Redis alongside memcache just because cloud adopters might want to use a memory cache service,but there is no value in buying trademarks for it. I mean, just take a quick look how Amazon offers managed RDBMS, and how the specific DB is just an afterthought behind a compatible interface. People seem to think that just because some company has cash that they should mindlessly spend it on things that add absolutely no value.
- emmp 3y agoHe worked there for 5 years. It probably didn't feel "random" for him.