7 ms·

Most commercial projects can safely use any of the Redis forks, whether Redis itself, Redict or Valkey. For Redict, you have to provide the source code of Redic

by tormeh 3y ago

Most commercial projects can safely use any of the Redis forks, whether Redis itself, Redict or Valkey. For Redict, you have to provide the source code of Redict - and Redict only! - in the case that you distribute it to customers. Redis has harsher terms, but only if you provide Redis-as-a-service. If you aren't a cloud provider and you don't modify the code of your chosen Redis variant, this is all a big nothingburger and neither of the licenses impose any important restrictions on you. We desperately need all open questions regarding AGPL and SSPL to be clarified in court so this fearmongering can stop. It's really really bad for open source.

Macha 3y ago
> If you aren't a cloud provider and you don't modify the code of your chosen Redis variant, Or get hosted redis services from someone other than Redis Labs. That isn't fearmongering about the SSPL, it is literally the point of the SSPL.
- tormeh 3y ago
  Sure, but that's left for the hosted service providers to figure out. No one can sue you for using AWSs offering.
verdverm 3y ago
Open source seems to be doing fine without the clarity. Even fields that have nothing to do with software are adopting the mindset. The movement only gains in steam
- yunohn 3y ago
  Most popular OSS projects use Apache and MIT in my experience, precisely because GPLs are problematic for commercial usage and contributions from employed people.
  - drewdevault 3y ago
    This is a common misconception and source of fear/uncertainty/doubt regarding copyleft licenses. It's true that, the stronger the copyleft license, the more obligations it imposes on companies, and the AGPL is perhaps the most onerous of all and thus the least attractive to businesses. But, copyleft exists on a spectrum, and there are thousands of big-ticket FOSS projects that tens of thousands of businesses depend on and make use of that have a copyleft license. Linux itself is GPL, and pretty much everyone depends on it. The license for Redict is one of the weaker copyleft licenses and should not pose any onerous compliance obligations on the most common commercial use-cases for Redict.
  - xorcist 3y ago
    That has been a popular opinion since FreeBSD was a complete operating system and Linux and bunch of disparate tarballs. Yet here we are. There have been other examples where copyleft products have competed with more permissively licensed products as commercial products. The results are overwhelmingly in favor of the former. Empirically, cooperation works much better on a level playing field where your company's work won't be included in a competitors closed fork.
  - hobs 3y ago
    Don't know why this is downvoted, I have endlessly heard corp lawyers say this to my face while I worked there. I have had a "popular" open source library I contributed significantly to campaigned by Microsoft to change the license to MIT, and the founder and creator decided to relicense without getting any sign offs because they felt that nobody would get mad enough to sue them.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      The only thing stopping a commercial product from using copyleft software is themselves, not the copyleft. Lawyers entire job is to make convincing arguments for any position you want, by artfully speaking only true facts, no matter what the position is and no matter what the facts are. Of course a lawyer can and will say that you "can't" let any gpl software pollute the companys product "because the gpl prevents it", instead of saying that the company doesn't want to pay the license fee for the software. The facts of the gpls terms may be true, and the lawyer may present them for their argument, but that still doesn't make the overall assertion true. They can use gpl software all they want. They just don't want to. And good for them. That is better than simply stealing it which many do. It's also merely an assertion that "most" open source software uses apache/mit/bsd wthout some numbers and citation. But that sentence could be parsed more than one way. They might have only been saying that most of the projects that use apache/mit do so for commercial compatibility reasons.

by tormeh 3y ago

Macha 3y ago

> If you aren't a cloud provider and you don't modify the code of your chosen Redis variant, Or get hosted redis services from someone other than Redis Labs. That isn't fearmongering about the SSPL, it is literally the point of the SSPL.

tormeh 3y ago
Sure, but that's left for the hosted service providers to figure out. No one can sue you for using AWSs offering.

verdverm 3y ago

Open source seems to be doing fine without the clarity. Even fields that have nothing to do with software are adopting the mindset. The movement only gains in steam

yunohn 3y ago
Most popular OSS projects use Apache and MIT in my experience, precisely because GPLs are problematic for commercial usage and contributions from employed people.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  This is a common misconception and source of fear/uncertainty/doubt regarding copyleft licenses. It's true that, the stronger the copyleft license, the more obligations it imposes on companies, and the AGPL is perhaps the most onerous of all and thus the least attractive to businesses. But, copyleft exists on a spectrum, and there are thousands of big-ticket FOSS projects that tens of thousands of businesses depend on and make use of that have a copyleft license. Linux itself is GPL, and pretty much everyone depends on it. The license for Redict is one of the weaker copyleft licenses and should not pose any onerous compliance obligations on the most common commercial use-cases for Redict.
- xorcist 3y ago
  That has been a popular opinion since FreeBSD was a complete operating system and Linux and bunch of disparate tarballs. Yet here we are. There have been other examples where copyleft products have competed with more permissively licensed products as commercial products. The results are overwhelmingly in favor of the former. Empirically, cooperation works much better on a level playing field where your company's work won't be included in a competitors closed fork.
- hobs 3y ago
  Don't know why this is downvoted, I have endlessly heard corp lawyers say this to my face while I worked there. I have had a "popular" open source library I contributed significantly to campaigned by Microsoft to change the license to MIT, and the founder and creator decided to relicense without getting any sign offs because they felt that nobody would get mad enough to sue them.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    The only thing stopping a commercial product from using copyleft software is themselves, not the copyleft. Lawyers entire job is to make convincing arguments for any position you want, by artfully speaking only true facts, no matter what the position is and no matter what the facts are. Of course a lawyer can and will say that you "can't" let any gpl software pollute the companys product "because the gpl prevents it", instead of saying that the company doesn't want to pay the license fee for the software. The facts of the gpls terms may be true, and the lawyer may present them for their argument, but that still doesn't make the overall assertion true. They can use gpl software all they want. They just don't want to. And good for them. That is better than simply stealing it which many do. It's also merely an assertion that "most" open source software uses apache/mit/bsd wthout some numbers and citation. But that sentence could be parsed more than one way. They might have only been saying that most of the projects that use apache/mit do so for commercial compatibility reasons.