7 ms·

Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab

94 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Gys 3y ago
I found this an interesting comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39860078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39860078
ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago
They should have used the GPL, but that's the problem with the weak licences. Weak licences rely on trust for no reason.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  GPL with CLA still allows such stunts.
  - ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago
    They should not use CLA then.
- xoa 3y ago
  This has nothing to do with the license in question per se, and the GPL wouldn't help at all. It has to do with who owns the copyright. The copyright owner can re-license going forward to whatever they want, whenever they want. If you're really concerned about a license change then you need to be wary of projects with sole-ownership, either via CLA or not accepting contributions (it's the project of one person/company that they're putting out as open source for whatever reason, and very much not a community project). I actually think the descriptive language commonly used here is a little distorting in that regard. A copyright owner does not, and cannot, "take something closed source", it's more that they're forking the project under a new license (which granted is a specific kind of fork only they can do, everyone else has to fork under the same license). Every single bit of code up until that moment remains under the open source license, so if there is interest customers or whomever else can take that and continue the same open source project going forward, and even surpass the original holder's new proprietary effort. As a practical matter that's rare because there has to be serious interest, but it does happen. OpenZFS for example is a wonderful project that has long since eclipsed the Oracle fork of Sun's code. In turn I also think it is often a little more complex then (from the opinion): >"switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions" Let's be serious: rarely are these projects getting more then a token percentage of code from contributors, let alone anything else (though Redis definitely is). It's frequently 90%+ a single-company effort, and indeed this is nearly a truism. Because if the company is only a small component of the effort vs the community it is extremely likely any attempt to do a proprietary fork will fail and the open one comprising the majority of effort will dominate, and by definition there is major interest. This doesn't make it non-irritating, but it's still a net positive, a lot of useful code was contributed open and is a much easier springboard. And it's a much MUCH better situation then the even more common proprietary-all-along-software changing terms which happens all the friggin' time, like going subscription-only. If nothing else you get a much better off ramp. Companies forking from open source to proprietary with their projects can suck, for sure. But I think in the last year it has started to also get a little overhyped. I'd still rather have years of open source first. And again, everyone can always evaluate who owns the copyrights. Diversity is important for longevity ANYWAY too. Like, if all the effort is happening by a few devs or a single company, what happens if they get hit by a bus? Go bankrupt? Simply get old and tired of it? At some point the community has to step up, or not.
  - ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago
    The GPL does not allow derivative works to be relicensed under a more permissive license. If redis were GPL'd then the developer/owner would not have been able to fork the project and do anything moving forward. The project would be stuck as a GPL project because that is the point of the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html . Maybe I am mistaken? If there is some version of licensing that exists that does not allow the developer of the software to fork the software with a new license, then what I'm saying is that is what should be used.
    - xoa 3y ago
      With all respect you are, indeed, completely mistaken. The license is absolutely and 100% irrelevant, wouldn't matter if it was AGPLv3 or full proprietary or BSD or anything else. Like all copyright licenses, the GPL is a creature of copyright law. Copyright governs derivative works by other people. But the owner of the copyright can derive whatever they want from their own IP. A copyright holder choosing to license their IP under the GPL in no way precludes them from switching to licensing under something else, or indeed to licensing under any number of other licenses (including proprietary) at the exact same time ("dual licensing" is indeed one of the various attempted open source business models) to different people. Again, they can't do so retroactively, so if they begin by offering software under open source license A and later switch to License B, all the code under A up until the moment of switching to B continues to be licensed under A. So someone can take that as a starting point for a different fork under open source license A, or another one that is compatible. But they won't have a right to any new code done under B if it's incompatible.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Or “weak” licenses are used by people that don’t care about the things that the license allows for. Or better yet, actively want that degree of permissiveness. All this license hubbub is often just people not actually thinking thriving which license they want to use. “MIT sounds like a pretty good university”.
vladms 3y ago
I find the title and general feeling around this issue a bit exaggerated. SSPL license is indeed more restrictive but as far as I understand still allows internal usage of the software (without providing it externally "as a paid service"). I generally don't think everybody needs to push any point to the extreme (in this case, software licensing). For some a more restrictive license might be required (SSPL) while others can live with more open (BSD). In the end, I would claim it is not "software vendors" that should drive most development, but rather "hackers" (passionate people that could potentially earn their living in different ways). Expecting "companies" to be the drivers of open source seems a bit idealistic today.
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  I agree. People seem to be angry that the project which received contributions under BSD changed to the project licensed under SSPL, but this is explicitly what you are doing when you contribute to BSD projects and all contributors should have known so. If you don't like it never contribute to BSD projects, or projects requiring CLA. Contribute to GPL projects without CLA.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    There's a misunderstanding. The main pain point in source available licenses is the conversion of the repository to "for your eyes only", i.e. not being able to take your old contribution (and its newer iterations) and apply it elsewhere. Using it internally is not problem. Most developers and companies think about usage, but this is not the main point. In short: - BSD is about developer freedom. - GPL is about user freedom. - Source available is about setting company free while cuffing the user and blocking the developers. People thought that BSD has the same freedom as GPL when it comes to derivations and openness guarantees, but get visibly upset when they discover that it isn't. Many people told it over the years. BSD allows tons of shenanigans like this, but developers didn't want to listen, because BSD was more convenient for them on many fronts (i.e. Just grab and go and forget).
LtWorf 3y ago
I think the valuations for software are just insane. What does it mean that redis is valued at 2 billion $? It means that the investors would pay this much. But why? How long would it take for redis to bill 2 billion $ to customers? It will probably never happen. So I think they are overvalued.
- pjerem 3y ago
  Redis is everywhere and a lot of corporations aren’t going to change their short term roadmap to migrate to a fork. That could be a huge money shot for Redis. But it’s probably only a one-shot, not a viable business model. Sure the company is going to tank sooner than later, but if founders jumps from the ship at the right time, they may be rich for multiple generations.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    How much does the company earn from it being everywhere? I can tell you my projects amount to millions of downloads, but this doesn't translate into money. The second you ask for money people move to something else.
zb3 3y ago
Redis did not dump open source, the source code will still be available.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  SSPL is not open source, it's source available. Different kettle-o-fish.
  - zb3 3y ago
    So now we're redefining what "open source" means? Does AGPL fit your definition of "open source"?
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      We are not redefining what it means; that the source is available does not make it Open Source. It's pretty clear, but Google is the SSPL open source and you'll find pages and pages of EFF/FOSS etc articles and explanations why it cannot be open source because section 13. It's AGPL (which is Open Source) with that section added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License From another comment: https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l...
    - tedivm 3y ago
      You're the one trying to redefine open source to something it never meant.
      - zb3 3y ago
        No, I just stick to the meaning of words. "Open source" was always "source is available" + conditions and there were always some people who didn't like them. The opposite is of "open source" is "closed source"
        gkbrk 3y ago
JonChesterfield 3y ago
Seems a reasonable place to ask. The Linux kernel is a solid contender for the most valuable software project. The amount of repeat work avoided by building on that is infeasible to estimate. It doesn't appear to be at risk of being suddenly proprietary. What do we think is the primary reason why it is immune to this failure mode? My guess leans towards there being a large enough number of corporate interests in play that none can seize control from the others, but that seems likely to be an oversimplification. Why is Linux not vulnerable in the same way Redis has proven to be, and is that a model that can be copied by other software projects to avoid this failure mode?
- Ekaros 3y ago
  It is one of the big enough projects that companies actually pay for their own devs to develop it. And they lose little by providing those changes to others. I think reality is that you need that sort of scale for it to work.
  - sanxiyn 3y ago
    > And they lose little by providing those changes to others. I am unsure about this. Some Linux patches can be of high value, say better TCP congestion control. By releasing such patches, others can get them for free while it took you significant effort. In practice, due to Linux's lack of internal stable API and fast pace of changes, Linux makes it painful to keep private patches, so there is incentive to contribute upstream. Differently engineered software project can make it easy to keep private patches. In other words, Linux uses technical methods to compel contribution instead of legal methods.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      > Some Linux patches can be of high value, say better TCP congestion control. Every significant piece of code can be high value. But keeping it in the open brings more value to the world at large. Open source projects do not force you to contribute. You can keep your improvements to yourself if you're so inclined, and patch your copy or products (if the license allows). I believe the value lies in the developer itself. Not in the code. It's just an instance of development, and if the developer is that brilliant, they can always develop things of same high quality. IOW. Keeping things to oneself is not meaningful.
ergonaught 3y ago
This is almost never about "cash grabs". If we can't collectively keep some baseline measure of sanity and rationality then I guess it was all pointless anyway. > A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then — and only then — switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions This is a wildly delusional take.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Problem is that these companies that do this were never actually making money. They might had revenue, but that is not same as making profit. The model was fundamentally broken in most cases. You can not expect to give out something for free and the product being free being one of the reasons for picking it up and then at same time make huge amount of money.
knallfrosch 3y ago
It will stay free and you can read the source code and change it. BUT: Amazon, Google and Microsoft (et al) will have to pay if they offer Redis as part of their cloud. Seems fair and any article not giving a voice to those being reported on is trash. Here you go, though: Under the new license, CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDERS hosting Redis offerings will no longer be permitted to use the source code of Redis free of charge. https://redis.com/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-licensing/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-li...
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  100% this. I see neither legal nor moral problems.
- that_lurker 3y ago
  It will still cause financial problems for the user that currently use redis offered by those clous companies as they will 100% increase the prices to cope with the changes and at the same time make more money.
  - bilbo0s 3y ago
    Then don't use redis. Lots of other cloud products you can use. There's no problem with the outlined approach.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      To add to this. If you don't want to pay a premium, there are other projects you can support. This is the same reason Postgres and Redis became extremely popular in the 2010s was because companies didn't want to pay a premium to Oracle or IBM for their DBMSes. There are other options that exist today as well. Non-paying or non-contributing users are not entitled to first class support from contributors. Similarly, contributors and projects are not entitled to users.
    - jrochkind1 3y ago
      Indeed, I will probably have the choice of a fork made from open source redis, and I will choose to take it. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...
seydor 3y ago
I think it's because Millenials are starting to think of their retirement. A life of traveling in a rented house with rented income and not a care in the world can't last forever.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  The people living in a rented house aren’t the one making these decisions.
- acdha 3y ago
  I doubt any of the people making these decisions are housing insecure. What’s really changing is that the culture around open source had a lot of inertia from the era where most people ran it on their own servers and maintainers could make money selling support or consulting around that, but now a ton of usage has shifted to cloud providers who are not obligated to share changes with the community or compensate the original developers. People have been talking about that for ages but it was easy to ignore the issue when VC money was flying around to give companies valuations far greater than their revenues would support. What we’re seeing now has been developing for a long time and it’s going to come to a head nor that the finance people are expecting hard revenue.
pizza234 3y ago
Inflammatory and factually false article, should be flagged: > For those of you who aren't open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis' code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  How is that inaccurate? Windows has at a few points in time become 'source available' but nobody (+dog) thinks they can take that code and use it for anything. People can do whatever they want with the BSD released code but, going forwards, they can't use any newly licenced proprietary code. I'm no legal expert but this seems to include all the code that was previously released as BSD if one were to reference the new and improved 'source available' release. It stands to reason that all the future releases are now off limits even though they contain identical code from the BSD releases.
  - bjornsing 3y ago
    Off limits for open source puritans perhaps. Everybody else will just keep using it exactly like before, for free (as in beer).
    - UncleEntity 3y ago
      ...but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.
      - bjornsing 3y ago
        What does ”export” or ”touch” even mean in this context?
  - pizza234 3y ago
    In best case, the terms "export, borrow from, or touch it" don't make any sense. In worst case (which I believe it is) they're rethorical terms that translate to development/licensing concepts; in this case, they're false: - "export/borrow" can refer to the act of distributing; SSPL allows developers to redistribute and use; what SSPL prevents is for cloud companies to use it as backend for their services - "touch" means to modify the code; this is absolutely possible, as it is for GPL There are a few articles around that explain the motivation behind SSPL. It isn't far from AGPL in intent, but it's just too fuzzy to be accepted as FOSS.
explorigin 3y ago
FTA: There is a threefold reason these companies did this. First, all of them, at one point or another, mistook "open source" as a business model. It wasn't then, it isn't now, and it never will be. This is a hit piece on Redis.
margorczynski 3y ago
We're seeing now constant attacks on companies and developers that want some way to protect what they create from megacorps that use their creations without giving anything back and essentially cutting them off from any way of making money while working on the software they've poured their time and heart into. Oh no! GigaTechCorp X will have a drop of income from 50 billion to only 49 because they need to buy the commercial licenses and actually pay for what they use! The horror! Most probably these troll articles and "opinion pieces" will only increase as the moochers will see they cannot take advantage out off people's good will anymore. The original GPL was created long before "the Cloud" and SaaS was a thing to consider and these are simply attempts to make them comply with the original idea. In general if you're making money with OSS you should pay for it in some way or contribute, enough with the leeching.
- hbogert 3y ago
  Okay, will they pay the contributors then?
lemax 3y ago
How are the OSS contributors, who initially provided IP under the premise of it being open source dealt with in these cases? If I were a major contributor to a package like Elastic or Redis and it was moving to a more commercial model, what stops me from suing Redis or Elastic and going after a share in the profits? I guess the standard approach here is to release a new version with the new licensing model, and take all of the open source contributions and package them into a new commercial product. And anyone, perhaps even a contributor could do this, but the company is best positioned to do so and extract value from a bunch of free work that was contributed under an entirely different premise. Maybe there's room for a new OSS licensing model that prevents this from ever happening.
- icegreentea2 3y ago
  If you signed a CLA to contribute, you've granted Redis a broad license to do whatever they want with your contribution. If you contributed to a BSD licensed project, then you contributed to a project who's licensing terms says "do whatever you want, just retain the copyright notice, and this license is not an endorsement". You basically have no grounds for suing, especially since the re-licensing is not retroactive. The exact contributions that you provided as still available in the exact form and license that you contributed them to. You need to be much more specific about what you want to prevent.
- margorczynski 3y ago
  I think you must transfer copyright for the code to the organization - thus they can change it at will. For example in Linux that is impossible as everyone keeps the copyright claim to the code they contribute.
Spivak 3y ago
I'm surprised so many people in this thread are abandoning the core of what it means to be open source, it's literally the first tenant. Anyone, even your worst enemy or competitor can use the software for any purpose at all. As much as the years where dev spaces were really pro copyleft were kind of insufferable at least the community actually cared about the mission and vision of open source. It doesn't make any sense at all that Google/AWS "has to pay their fair share," their usage is no different than any other company's getting value and making money from a piece of software. Redis just sees dollar signs because they have deep pockets, it's shameful. It's sketchier than Oracle licensing. Just the same as OpenTofu and OpenSearch, I'll be switching us over to Valkey. I'll be supporting the big bad cloud providers who are actually embodying the spirit of OSS.
- bjornsing 3y ago
  Factually correct. But clearly a road to serfdom for anyone that writes software.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    But why? Isn't a bunch of companies who depend on a piece of software internally and make money using it having a vested interest in its improvement and it remaining free basically the ideal case for OSS? OSS falls down when you want to make money on the software itself, or in Redis's case when you want to make money on hosting but you're bad at hosting.
    - bjornsing 3y ago
      > OSS falls down when you want to make money on the software itself… Yes, exactly. As a OSS puritan you can’t participate in the economy on equal terms. Instead you’re relegated to one of many “serf” roles, e.g. being employed by some bigtech company to continue working on it.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        I suppose that's fair but to me that's just how OSS happens, you're working somewhere and you realize that there's a need not being filled -- and Redis was one of those. You work on it until it serves your needs and then say, "hey I bet other people would find this useful." To me the giving it away part is the whole ethos, I'm not some FOSS zealot that believes every piece of software should be GPL or whatever. If you want to make a play at making selling software your business then I think proprietary licensing makes the most sense. And I also think it's a dick move to give a piece of software to the community, collect contributions and integrations from people helping a community effort, and then take it back. It's especially a dick move when it's been OSS for 15 years and Redis Labs isn't even the company that made it.
yesimahuman 3y ago
So what’s better, startups can have a chance at building a truly differentiated cloud service and actually generate revenue to continue to invest in their OSS, or aws/azure just gobble up all the cloud revenue to be had because enterprises will just default to them as it’s easier and they already have contracts in place? That doesn’t seem like a very good future for startups or OSS either.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

94 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Gys 3y ago

I found this an interesting comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39860078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39860078

ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago

They should have used the GPL, but that's the problem with the weak licences. Weak licences rely on trust for no reason.

pgeorgi 3y ago
GPL with CLA still allows such stunts.
- ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago
  They should not use CLA then.
xoa 3y ago
This has nothing to do with the license in question per se, and the GPL wouldn't help at all. It has to do with who owns the copyright. The copyright owner can re-license going forward to whatever they want, whenever they want. If you're really concerned about a license change then you need to be wary of projects with sole-ownership, either via CLA or not accepting contributions (it's the project of one person/company that they're putting out as open source for whatever reason, and very much not a community project). I actually think the descriptive language commonly used here is a little distorting in that regard. A copyright owner does not, and cannot, "take something closed source", it's more that they're forking the project under a new license (which granted is a specific kind of fork only they can do, everyone else has to fork under the same license). Every single bit of code up until that moment remains under the open source license, so if there is interest customers or whomever else can take that and continue the same open source project going forward, and even surpass the original holder's new proprietary effort. As a practical matter that's rare because there has to be serious interest, but it does happen. OpenZFS for example is a wonderful project that has long since eclipsed the Oracle fork of Sun's code. In turn I also think it is often a little more complex then (from the opinion): >"switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions" Let's be serious: rarely are these projects getting more then a token percentage of code from contributors, let alone anything else (though Redis definitely is). It's frequently 90%+ a single-company effort, and indeed this is nearly a truism. Because if the company is only a small component of the effort vs the community it is extremely likely any attempt to do a proprietary fork will fail and the open one comprising the majority of effort will dominate, and by definition there is major interest. This doesn't make it non-irritating, but it's still a net positive, a lot of useful code was contributed open and is a much easier springboard. And it's a much MUCH better situation then the even more common proprietary-all-along-software changing terms which happens all the friggin' time, like going subscription-only. If nothing else you get a much better off ramp. Companies forking from open source to proprietary with their projects can suck, for sure. But I think in the last year it has started to also get a little overhyped. I'd still rather have years of open source first. And again, everyone can always evaluate who owns the copyrights. Diversity is important for longevity ANYWAY too. Like, if all the effort is happening by a few devs or a single company, what happens if they get hit by a bus? Go bankrupt? Simply get old and tired of it? At some point the community has to step up, or not.
- ijxjdffnkkpp 3y ago
  The GPL does not allow derivative works to be relicensed under a more permissive license. If redis were GPL'd then the developer/owner would not have been able to fork the project and do anything moving forward. The project would be stuck as a GPL project because that is the point of the GPL. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html . Maybe I am mistaken? If there is some version of licensing that exists that does not allow the developer of the software to fork the software with a new license, then what I'm saying is that is what should be used.
  - xoa 3y ago
    With all respect you are, indeed, completely mistaken. The license is absolutely and 100% irrelevant, wouldn't matter if it was AGPLv3 or full proprietary or BSD or anything else. Like all copyright licenses, the GPL is a creature of copyright law. Copyright governs derivative works by other people. But the owner of the copyright can derive whatever they want from their own IP. A copyright holder choosing to license their IP under the GPL in no way precludes them from switching to licensing under something else, or indeed to licensing under any number of other licenses (including proprietary) at the exact same time ("dual licensing" is indeed one of the various attempted open source business models) to different people. Again, they can't do so retroactively, so if they begin by offering software under open source license A and later switch to License B, all the code under A up until the moment of switching to B continues to be licensed under A. So someone can take that as a starting point for a different fork under open source license A, or another one that is compatible. But they won't have a right to any new code done under B if it's incompatible.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Or “weak” licenses are used by people that don’t care about the things that the license allows for. Or better yet, actively want that degree of permissiveness. All this license hubbub is often just people not actually thinking thriving which license they want to use. “MIT sounds like a pretty good university”.

vladms 3y ago

I find the title and general feeling around this issue a bit exaggerated. SSPL license is indeed more restrictive but as far as I understand still allows internal usage of the software (without providing it externally "as a paid service"). I generally don't think everybody needs to push any point to the extreme (in this case, software licensing). For some a more restrictive license might be required (SSPL) while others can live with more open (BSD). In the end, I would claim it is not "software vendors" that should drive most development, but rather "hackers" (passionate people that could potentially earn their living in different ways). Expecting "companies" to be the drivers of open source seems a bit idealistic today.

sanxiyn 3y ago
I agree. People seem to be angry that the project which received contributions under BSD changed to the project licensed under SSPL, but this is explicitly what you are doing when you contribute to BSD projects and all contributors should have known so. If you don't like it never contribute to BSD projects, or projects requiring CLA. Contribute to GPL projects without CLA.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  There's a misunderstanding. The main pain point in source available licenses is the conversion of the repository to "for your eyes only", i.e. not being able to take your old contribution (and its newer iterations) and apply it elsewhere. Using it internally is not problem. Most developers and companies think about usage, but this is not the main point. In short: - BSD is about developer freedom. - GPL is about user freedom. - Source available is about setting company free while cuffing the user and blocking the developers. People thought that BSD has the same freedom as GPL when it comes to derivations and openness guarantees, but get visibly upset when they discover that it isn't. Many people told it over the years. BSD allows tons of shenanigans like this, but developers didn't want to listen, because BSD was more convenient for them on many fronts (i.e. Just grab and go and forget).

LtWorf 3y ago

I think the valuations for software are just insane. What does it mean that redis is valued at 2 billion $? It means that the investors would pay this much. But why? How long would it take for redis to bill 2 billion $ to customers? It will probably never happen. So I think they are overvalued.

pjerem 3y ago
Redis is everywhere and a lot of corporations aren’t going to change their short term roadmap to migrate to a fork. That could be a huge money shot for Redis. But it’s probably only a one-shot, not a viable business model. Sure the company is going to tank sooner than later, but if founders jumps from the ship at the right time, they may be rich for multiple generations.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  How much does the company earn from it being everywhere? I can tell you my projects amount to millions of downloads, but this doesn't translate into money. The second you ask for money people move to something else.

zb3 3y ago

Redis did not dump open source, the source code will still be available.

anonzzzies 3y ago
SSPL is not open source, it's source available. Different kettle-o-fish.
- zb3 3y ago
  So now we're redefining what "open source" means? Does AGPL fit your definition of "open source"?
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    We are not redefining what it means; that the source is available does not make it Open Source. It's pretty clear, but Google is the SSPL open source and you'll find pages and pages of EFF/FOSS etc articles and explanations why it cannot be open source because section 13. It's AGPL (which is Open Source) with that section added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License From another comment: https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l...
  - tedivm 3y ago
    You're the one trying to redefine open source to something it never meant.
    - zb3 3y ago
      No, I just stick to the meaning of words. "Open source" was always "source is available" + conditions and there were always some people who didn't like them. The opposite is of "open source" is "closed source"
      - gkbrk 3y ago

JonChesterfield 3y ago

Seems a reasonable place to ask. The Linux kernel is a solid contender for the most valuable software project. The amount of repeat work avoided by building on that is infeasible to estimate. It doesn't appear to be at risk of being suddenly proprietary. What do we think is the primary reason why it is immune to this failure mode? My guess leans towards there being a large enough number of corporate interests in play that none can seize control from the others, but that seems likely to be an oversimplification. Why is Linux not vulnerable in the same way Redis has proven to be, and is that a model that can be copied by other software projects to avoid this failure mode?

Ekaros 3y ago
It is one of the big enough projects that companies actually pay for their own devs to develop it. And they lose little by providing those changes to others. I think reality is that you need that sort of scale for it to work.
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  > And they lose little by providing those changes to others. I am unsure about this. Some Linux patches can be of high value, say better TCP congestion control. By releasing such patches, others can get them for free while it took you significant effort. In practice, due to Linux's lack of internal stable API and fast pace of changes, Linux makes it painful to keep private patches, so there is incentive to contribute upstream. Differently engineered software project can make it easy to keep private patches. In other words, Linux uses technical methods to compel contribution instead of legal methods.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    > Some Linux patches can be of high value, say better TCP congestion control. Every significant piece of code can be high value. But keeping it in the open brings more value to the world at large. Open source projects do not force you to contribute. You can keep your improvements to yourself if you're so inclined, and patch your copy or products (if the license allows). I believe the value lies in the developer itself. Not in the code. It's just an instance of development, and if the developer is that brilliant, they can always develop things of same high quality. IOW. Keeping things to oneself is not meaningful.

ergonaught 3y ago

This is almost never about "cash grabs". If we can't collectively keep some baseline measure of sanity and rationality then I guess it was all pointless anyway. > A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then — and only then — switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions This is a wildly delusional take.

Ekaros 3y ago
Problem is that these companies that do this were never actually making money. They might had revenue, but that is not same as making profit. The model was fundamentally broken in most cases. You can not expect to give out something for free and the product being free being one of the reasons for picking it up and then at same time make huge amount of money.

knallfrosch 3y ago

It will stay free and you can read the source code and change it. BUT: Amazon, Google and Microsoft (et al) will have to pay if they offer Redis as part of their cloud. Seems fair and any article not giving a voice to those being reported on is trash. Here you go, though: Under the new license, CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDERS hosting Redis offerings will no longer be permitted to use the source code of Redis free of charge. https://redis.com/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-licensing/ https://redis.com/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-li...

sanxiyn 3y ago
100% this. I see neither legal nor moral problems.
that_lurker 3y ago
It will still cause financial problems for the user that currently use redis offered by those clous companies as they will 100% increase the prices to cope with the changes and at the same time make more money.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  Then don't use redis. Lots of other cloud products you can use. There's no problem with the outlined approach.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    To add to this. If you don't want to pay a premium, there are other projects you can support. This is the same reason Postgres and Redis became extremely popular in the 2010s was because companies didn't want to pay a premium to Oracle or IBM for their DBMSes. There are other options that exist today as well. Non-paying or non-contributing users are not entitled to first class support from contributors. Similarly, contributors and projects are not entitled to users.
  - jrochkind1 3y ago
    Indeed, I will probably have the choice of a fork made from open source redis, and I will choose to take it. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...

seydor 3y ago

I think it's because Millenials are starting to think of their retirement. A life of traveling in a rented house with rented income and not a care in the world can't last forever.

aaomidi 3y ago
The people living in a rented house aren’t the one making these decisions.
acdha 3y ago
I doubt any of the people making these decisions are housing insecure. What’s really changing is that the culture around open source had a lot of inertia from the era where most people ran it on their own servers and maintainers could make money selling support or consulting around that, but now a ton of usage has shifted to cloud providers who are not obligated to share changes with the community or compensate the original developers. People have been talking about that for ages but it was easy to ignore the issue when VC money was flying around to give companies valuations far greater than their revenues would support. What we’re seeing now has been developing for a long time and it’s going to come to a head nor that the finance people are expecting hard revenue.

pizza234 3y ago

Inflammatory and factually false article, should be flagged: > For those of you who aren't open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis' code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.

UncleEntity 3y ago
How is that inaccurate? Windows has at a few points in time become 'source available' but nobody (+dog) thinks they can take that code and use it for anything. People can do whatever they want with the BSD released code but, going forwards, they can't use any newly licenced proprietary code. I'm no legal expert but this seems to include all the code that was previously released as BSD if one were to reference the new and improved 'source available' release. It stands to reason that all the future releases are now off limits even though they contain identical code from the BSD releases.
- bjornsing 3y ago
  Off limits for open source puritans perhaps. Everybody else will just keep using it exactly like before, for free (as in beer).
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    ...but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.
    - bjornsing 3y ago
      What does ”export” or ”touch” even mean in this context?
- pizza234 3y ago
  In best case, the terms "export, borrow from, or touch it" don't make any sense. In worst case (which I believe it is) they're rethorical terms that translate to development/licensing concepts; in this case, they're false: - "export/borrow" can refer to the act of distributing; SSPL allows developers to redistribute and use; what SSPL prevents is for cloud companies to use it as backend for their services - "touch" means to modify the code; this is absolutely possible, as it is for GPL There are a few articles around that explain the motivation behind SSPL. It isn't far from AGPL in intent, but it's just too fuzzy to be accepted as FOSS.

explorigin 3y ago

FTA: There is a threefold reason these companies did this. First, all of them, at one point or another, mistook "open source" as a business model. It wasn't then, it isn't now, and it never will be. This is a hit piece on Redis.

margorczynski 3y ago

We're seeing now constant attacks on companies and developers that want some way to protect what they create from megacorps that use their creations without giving anything back and essentially cutting them off from any way of making money while working on the software they've poured their time and heart into. Oh no! GigaTechCorp X will have a drop of income from 50 billion to only 49 because they need to buy the commercial licenses and actually pay for what they use! The horror! Most probably these troll articles and "opinion pieces" will only increase as the moochers will see they cannot take advantage out off people's good will anymore. The original GPL was created long before "the Cloud" and SaaS was a thing to consider and these are simply attempts to make them comply with the original idea. In general if you're making money with OSS you should pay for it in some way or contribute, enough with the leeching.

hbogert 3y ago
Okay, will they pay the contributors then?

lemax 3y ago

How are the OSS contributors, who initially provided IP under the premise of it being open source dealt with in these cases? If I were a major contributor to a package like Elastic or Redis and it was moving to a more commercial model, what stops me from suing Redis or Elastic and going after a share in the profits? I guess the standard approach here is to release a new version with the new licensing model, and take all of the open source contributions and package them into a new commercial product. And anyone, perhaps even a contributor could do this, but the company is best positioned to do so and extract value from a bunch of free work that was contributed under an entirely different premise. Maybe there's room for a new OSS licensing model that prevents this from ever happening.

icegreentea2 3y ago
If you signed a CLA to contribute, you've granted Redis a broad license to do whatever they want with your contribution. If you contributed to a BSD licensed project, then you contributed to a project who's licensing terms says "do whatever you want, just retain the copyright notice, and this license is not an endorsement". You basically have no grounds for suing, especially since the re-licensing is not retroactive. The exact contributions that you provided as still available in the exact form and license that you contributed them to. You need to be much more specific about what you want to prevent.
margorczynski 3y ago
I think you must transfer copyright for the code to the organization - thus they can change it at will. For example in Linux that is impossible as everyone keeps the copyright claim to the code they contribute.

Spivak 3y ago

I'm surprised so many people in this thread are abandoning the core of what it means to be open source, it's literally the first tenant. Anyone, even your worst enemy or competitor can use the software for any purpose at all. As much as the years where dev spaces were really pro copyleft were kind of insufferable at least the community actually cared about the mission and vision of open source. It doesn't make any sense at all that Google/AWS "has to pay their fair share," their usage is no different than any other company's getting value and making money from a piece of software. Redis just sees dollar signs because they have deep pockets, it's shameful. It's sketchier than Oracle licensing. Just the same as OpenTofu and OpenSearch, I'll be switching us over to Valkey. I'll be supporting the big bad cloud providers who are actually embodying the spirit of OSS.

bjornsing 3y ago
Factually correct. But clearly a road to serfdom for anyone that writes software.
- Spivak 3y ago
  But why? Isn't a bunch of companies who depend on a piece of software internally and make money using it having a vested interest in its improvement and it remaining free basically the ideal case for OSS? OSS falls down when you want to make money on the software itself, or in Redis's case when you want to make money on hosting but you're bad at hosting.
  - bjornsing 3y ago
    > OSS falls down when you want to make money on the software itself… Yes, exactly. As a OSS puritan you can’t participate in the economy on equal terms. Instead you’re relegated to one of many “serf” roles, e.g. being employed by some bigtech company to continue working on it.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I suppose that's fair but to me that's just how OSS happens, you're working somewhere and you realize that there's a need not being filled -- and Redis was one of those. You work on it until it serves your needs and then say, "hey I bet other people would find this useful." To me the giving it away part is the whole ethos, I'm not some FOSS zealot that believes every piece of software should be GPL or whatever. If you want to make a play at making selling software your business then I think proprietary licensing makes the most sense. And I also think it's a dick move to give a piece of software to the community, collect contributions and integrations from people helping a community effort, and then take it back. It's especially a dick move when it's been OSS for 15 years and Redis Labs isn't even the company that made it.

yesimahuman 3y ago

So what’s better, startups can have a chance at building a truly differentiated cloud service and actually generate revenue to continue to invest in their OSS, or aws/azure just gobble up all the cloud revenue to be had because enterprises will just default to them as it’s easier and they already have contracts in place? That doesn’t seem like a very good future for startups or OSS either.

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