6 ms·

It's interesting how Redis's decision is often defended while AWS and other 'big corps' are criticized. Let's not forget that Redis was a collaborative effort b

by dig1 3y ago

It's interesting how Redis's decision is often defended while AWS and other 'big corps' are criticized. Let's not forget that Redis was a collaborative effort built on the contributions of many, including those funded by big corporations: gcc/compilers, kernel, editors, VMs, etc. If the Redis authors, who were part of this collaborative ecosystem, decided to change their approach, it's their prerogative. However, it's worth noting that many others were left with a sense of dissatisfaction after the license change. The same is true for ES, Mongo, and Grafana (to name a few). If you want to use a restrictive license, start your project with it, period. Don't bait people by giving something for free and then making all sorts of excuses later. IMHO, small companies and developers ultimately lose here. ES and Mongo still use and rely on AWS for their managed offerings. OpenSearch (mainly pushed by AWS) is vibrant and very alive. Redis will be ditched by distros and die a slow death, and (probably) Valkey will be in the next distro major versions. But we (small companies and devs) now have to spend time migrating and moving things around without any additional value.

Dalewyn 3y ago
>It's interesting how Redis's decision is often defended while AWS and other 'big corps' are criticized. We in the same universe? I've seen nothing but Redis thrown to the wolves for daring to ask for money, at least around here anyway.
- jasode 3y ago
  >I've seen nothing but Redis thrown to the wolves for daring to ask for money, Reducing it to purely "asking for money" is not what the criticism is about. The issue is the changing of licensing terms and not the money. Other open source projects that also have commercial paid products/services include SQLite, Bitwarden, TrueNAS, etc and yet there isn't endless arguments about those projects "asking for money" because their licenses have remained stable and don't change. GPL, AGPL, BSD, public domain, etc. doesn't matter; they didn't change the license. That's what the whole "rug pull" arguments have been about.[1] One can choose to side with Redis Inc over Amazon but you can't mischaracterize what the debate has been focused on: changing the license. Did Redis Inc have legal right to do that?!? Yes. But the debate wasn't about their legal right. The following 2 types of timelines have very different reactions from the community: - start with SSPL license on day 0 and never change vs - start with BSD license and keep it for 15 years and then change to SSPL [1] 2018-08-22 >, this is Yiftach, CTO and Co-founder of Redis Labs. First, let me assure you that Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license. -- from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17819392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17819392
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    > start with BSD license and keep it for 15 years and then change to SSPL Well, the competition landscape was a lot different 15 yrs ago. In the same way, GPL went from version 2 to 3, in response to the landscape I think it's unwise to not respond to environment changes.
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >I think it's unwise to not respond to environment changes. True, but killing your company and make your code proprietary is most likely the wrong response.
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    so trillion dollar public companies get to use all their legal rights (and lobby governments to extend them), but the little guy can get fucked if he does?
- BSDobelix 3y ago
  It's not "asking for money", it's shutting down a usage of the code, and that's completely against the spirit of "free software", and even against the broader meaning of opensource[1]. However, I think everyone understands that it's a problem to make a living from small but important part of an bigger infrastructure, but this is the wrong way. The Linux Foundation will throw money at Valkey, Amazon will still sell the service and Redi's will lose (because it's just one company and not opensource). [1] https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... And I'm not even talking about external contributors whose work is re-licensed under a proprietary license.
  - justincormack 3y ago
    The Linux Foundation won't "throw money" at it, it will probably provide some legal support if needed, but project work is largely funded by the membership fees for the subfoundations, and at this project membership level thats not much unless eg AWS etc are contributing it.
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >but project work is largely funded by the membership fees for the subfoundations That's something completely different you are right ;) >>Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community >>Industry participants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap Inc. are supporting Valkey. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...
tecoholic 3y ago
I get that people get upset that their software of choice license is changed at the philosophical level. But I don’t get it at the economical level. When a project changes the license for a future version, the older versions are still available in the older open license right? So the contributions from collaborative effort is still usable under the same terms in those versions. So what’s this “bait and switch”? License changes, people don’t like the new license, they don’t contribute anymore (let’s keep the forks aside for a second), all new change are now by the employees of the company, they own the rights to that like every other product company. What am I missing here? Why do people get upset about the economics of effort and benefit? I have always been to afraid to ask this ask this question for fear of appearing stupid. But gotta live and learn. So here goes nothing.
- readams 3y ago
  You can't just use old versions of software. You need security fixes, dependency updates, etc just to keep it running
- growse 3y ago
  The bait and switch is because people feel the social contract has been broken. If you start a project, invite people to come along and donate their free time to making it better, building (and benefitting from) a community of people working towards a common goal, suddenly switching that project to proprietary is a bit of a dick move. Sure, it's legal, but for the people who thought they were collaborating together on something it feels a bit crappy.
- mooreds 3y ago
  What you're missing is that people contribute (time, energy, code, attention) in the now expecting to be able to reap the benefits into the future. When I learn redis, I spend time and want to amortize that over a long period. When I integrate elastic search into my application, I expect to be able to use it in the same way far into the future. Relicensing, as you point out, doesn't affect past versions, but it sure does future ones. Now I have a surprise chore on my plate, to figure out if and how I need to replace the existing component or learn about an alternative. More than that, my confidence is shaken. Will they make changes in the future requiring more work on my part? Changing a license is very similar to an increase in price, but even more fundamental in terms of uncertainty. And people hate change. (I'm explicitly not addressing the impact of a license change on software freedom because I think it is very important to some. But IMO most folks are more interested in free as in beer than free as in speech. I don't know enough to speak to the free as in speech aspect, so won't.) I think you asked a great question, hope my answer sheds some light.
Y_Y 3y ago
Is there any way to show a real commitment upfront to openness? As far as I know there's nothing that can stop a project from switching license (for for new code only, of course) and this can feel like a deception. There may be a legal/corporate mechanism I don't know about, like a permanent kind of charter, but it seems not. The best option I can think of is giving control (board seats or copyright assignment or whatever) to trusted institutions like Apache or the FSF or Linux Foundation. It seems too easy for big "open" endeavours to change their mind after they've built trust and a userbase. It would be great if there was a way to guarantee that that won't happen.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  No. The solution is to use a different license, one that doesn’t allow contributions to be re-licensed in this way. This isn’t as complicated as people are making out. They just don’t want to admit that the license is operating as intended, but rather, their feelings about classical ‘open-source’ have changed. Admitting that would be admitting that the Software Gods of the last ~50 years are imperfect in their eyes, which is jarring for the sort of people that complain about these situations in the first place.
- kouteiheika 3y ago
  > Is there any way to show a real commitment upfront to openness? Of course there is. Don't require a CLA and use GPL instead of permissive licenses. Then any derivative work will have to legally be GPL compatible.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - zeckalpha 3y ago
    More details on the why behind no CLA: There are dual licensed GPL/Proprietary projects out there. The trick is whether copyright is assigned to a singular entity. If copyright is retained in a distributed (but licensed) manner, then it is harder to relicense.
redwood 3y ago
Re "But we (small companies and devs) now have to spend time migrating and moving things around without any additional value." You shouldn't have to do anything: I don't get it I think you're making a choice because you have a preference for non-copyleft licenses in software you use? That's your choice
- thayne 3y ago
  Sure you do. You have to worry about which fork has the best chance of succeeding in the long run (and my bet wouldn't be on the one from the company that was struggling enough that it felt the need to risk upsetting the community with a licence change). You need to worry about if the new license is acceptable, and even if you aren't selling a managed service for the software, these licenses make lawyers nervous (and I suspect that is intentional). And you have to evaluate if the license change is an indication that the company no longer values the community and users.
binary132 3y ago
How old is Redis again? It seems like a pretty big stretch to accuse them of having just been baiting people into depending on it this entire time.
pizza234 3y ago
Have you actually taken the time to understand the RSAL and SSPL? > If you want to use a restrictive license, start your project with it, period There is essentially only one restriction (the other is about formal notices) imposed by the RSAL, and it forbids to "Commercialize the software or provide it to others as a managed service". > IMHO, small companies and developers ultimately lose here This is an uninformed opinion. Nothing changes for small companies and developers. Actually, nothing changes even for larger companies, unless they are cloud providers. Large companies can actually provide Redis as service for internal use ("as a service internally or to subsidiary companies"). Companies are even free to sell support for Redis.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  The licence forbids > offering a product or service, the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Software or Modified version How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count?
  - graemep 3y ago
    > How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count? It will be if your app is a data store service . i.e. your apps is a thin wrapper around Redis. If your app is more than that, then its clear the value does not primarily derive from Redis. There are inevitably grey areas (e.g. if your app is a Redis based data store but adds a lot of functionality) but 99% of users do not need to worry.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      How thin is “thin”? If I build a chat app on top of Redis, is it safe? There’s a tutorial on the Redis website: https://developer.redis.com/howtos/chatapp/ https://developer.redis.com/howtos/chatapp/ — is it a sign that it’s too simple to be distinct? Or I can just migrate my app to Valkey and be sure I’m safe from lawyers.
TuringNYC 3y ago
>> IMHO, small companies and developers ultimately lose here. ES and Mongo still use and rely on AWS for their managed offerings. OpenSearch (mainly pushed by AWS) is vibrant and very alive. Redis will be ditched by distros and die a slow death, and (probably) Valkey will be in the next distro major versions. But we (small companies and devs) now have to spend time migrating and moving things around without any additional value. While I agree with you on not changing licenses mid-way, what is a small software company supposed to do? What is the Day Zero playbook that balances the desire for growth, creating customer value, and co-existing with the big cloud companies? I'm disappointed about the outcomes for companies like Redis/Elastic who obviously did create much value.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dontupvoteme 3y ago
You don't know what restrictive means.
skybrian 3y ago
I largely agree, except what the “bait” is. Here’s where antirez said he chose BSD because he wanted to allow forks that change the license. [1] Under BSD, forks that change the license and forks that don’t change the license are both okay, full stop. When antirez chose a BSD license, thinking he might do a proprietary fork later, it wasn’t “bait,” it’s how it works. But when Redis, the company, said that Redis “has always been and will continue to be BSD licensed” [2], this was an implicit promise about what license the company would use for their own future improvements to Redis. In that sense, what they said is misleading, and maybe that’s bait. So giving things away for free isn’t wrong, and making a proprietary fork isn’t wrong. It’s promising that you won’t do it and then doing it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863371 [2] https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/6bf2063136effa1e/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/6bf2063136effa1e/

by dig1 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

>It's interesting how Redis's decision is often defended while AWS and other 'big corps' are criticized. We in the same universe? I've seen nothing but Redis thrown to the wolves for daring to ask for money, at least around here anyway.

jasode 3y ago
>I've seen nothing but Redis thrown to the wolves for daring to ask for money, Reducing it to purely "asking for money" is not what the criticism is about. The issue is the changing of licensing terms and not the money. Other open source projects that also have commercial paid products/services include SQLite, Bitwarden, TrueNAS, etc and yet there isn't endless arguments about those projects "asking for money" because their licenses have remained stable and don't change. GPL, AGPL, BSD, public domain, etc. doesn't matter; they didn't change the license. That's what the whole "rug pull" arguments have been about.[1] One can choose to side with Redis Inc over Amazon but you can't mischaracterize what the debate has been focused on: changing the license. Did Redis Inc have legal right to do that?!? Yes. But the debate wasn't about their legal right. The following 2 types of timelines have very different reactions from the community: - start with SSPL license on day 0 and never change vs - start with BSD license and keep it for 15 years and then change to SSPL [1] 2018-08-22 >, this is Yiftach, CTO and Co-founder of Redis Labs. First, let me assure you that Redis remains and always will remain, open source, BSD license. -- from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17819392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17819392
- raverbashing 3y ago
  > start with BSD license and keep it for 15 years and then change to SSPL Well, the competition landscape was a lot different 15 yrs ago. In the same way, GPL went from version 2 to 3, in response to the landscape I think it's unwise to not respond to environment changes.
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    >I think it's unwise to not respond to environment changes. True, but killing your company and make your code proprietary is most likely the wrong response.
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  so trillion dollar public companies get to use all their legal rights (and lobby governments to extend them), but the little guy can get fucked if he does?
BSDobelix 3y ago
It's not "asking for money", it's shutting down a usage of the code, and that's completely against the spirit of "free software", and even against the broader meaning of opensource[1]. However, I think everyone understands that it's a problem to make a living from small but important part of an bigger infrastructure, but this is the wrong way. The Linux Foundation will throw money at Valkey, Amazon will still sell the service and Redi's will lose (because it's just one company and not opensource). [1] https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... And I'm not even talking about external contributors whose work is re-licensed under a proprietary license.
- justincormack 3y ago
  The Linux Foundation won't "throw money" at it, it will probably provide some legal support if needed, but project work is largely funded by the membership fees for the subfoundations, and at this project membership level thats not much unless eg AWS etc are contributing it.
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    >but project work is largely funded by the membership fees for the subfoundations That's something completely different you are right ;) >>Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community >>Industry participants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap Inc. are supporting Valkey. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...

tecoholic 3y ago

I get that people get upset that their software of choice license is changed at the philosophical level. But I don’t get it at the economical level. When a project changes the license for a future version, the older versions are still available in the older open license right? So the contributions from collaborative effort is still usable under the same terms in those versions. So what’s this “bait and switch”? License changes, people don’t like the new license, they don’t contribute anymore (let’s keep the forks aside for a second), all new change are now by the employees of the company, they own the rights to that like every other product company. What am I missing here? Why do people get upset about the economics of effort and benefit? I have always been to afraid to ask this ask this question for fear of appearing stupid. But gotta live and learn. So here goes nothing.

readams 3y ago
You can't just use old versions of software. You need security fixes, dependency updates, etc just to keep it running
growse 3y ago
The bait and switch is because people feel the social contract has been broken. If you start a project, invite people to come along and donate their free time to making it better, building (and benefitting from) a community of people working towards a common goal, suddenly switching that project to proprietary is a bit of a dick move. Sure, it's legal, but for the people who thought they were collaborating together on something it feels a bit crappy.
mooreds 3y ago
What you're missing is that people contribute (time, energy, code, attention) in the now expecting to be able to reap the benefits into the future. When I learn redis, I spend time and want to amortize that over a long period. When I integrate elastic search into my application, I expect to be able to use it in the same way far into the future. Relicensing, as you point out, doesn't affect past versions, but it sure does future ones. Now I have a surprise chore on my plate, to figure out if and how I need to replace the existing component or learn about an alternative. More than that, my confidence is shaken. Will they make changes in the future requiring more work on my part? Changing a license is very similar to an increase in price, but even more fundamental in terms of uncertainty. And people hate change. (I'm explicitly not addressing the impact of a license change on software freedom because I think it is very important to some. But IMO most folks are more interested in free as in beer than free as in speech. I don't know enough to speak to the free as in speech aspect, so won't.) I think you asked a great question, hope my answer sheds some light.

Y_Y 3y ago

Is there any way to show a real commitment upfront to openness? As far as I know there's nothing that can stop a project from switching license (for for new code only, of course) and this can feel like a deception. There may be a legal/corporate mechanism I don't know about, like a permanent kind of charter, but it seems not. The best option I can think of is giving control (board seats or copyright assignment or whatever) to trusted institutions like Apache or the FSF or Linux Foundation. It seems too easy for big "open" endeavours to change their mind after they've built trust and a userbase. It would be great if there was a way to guarantee that that won't happen.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
No. The solution is to use a different license, one that doesn’t allow contributions to be re-licensed in this way. This isn’t as complicated as people are making out. They just don’t want to admit that the license is operating as intended, but rather, their feelings about classical ‘open-source’ have changed. Admitting that would be admitting that the Software Gods of the last ~50 years are imperfect in their eyes, which is jarring for the sort of people that complain about these situations in the first place.
kouteiheika 3y ago
> Is there any way to show a real commitment upfront to openness? Of course there is. Don't require a CLA and use GPL instead of permissive licenses. Then any derivative work will have to legally be GPL compatible.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zeckalpha 3y ago
  More details on the why behind no CLA: There are dual licensed GPL/Proprietary projects out there. The trick is whether copyright is assigned to a singular entity. If copyright is retained in a distributed (but licensed) manner, then it is harder to relicense.

redwood 3y ago

Re "But we (small companies and devs) now have to spend time migrating and moving things around without any additional value." You shouldn't have to do anything: I don't get it I think you're making a choice because you have a preference for non-copyleft licenses in software you use? That's your choice

thayne 3y ago
Sure you do. You have to worry about which fork has the best chance of succeeding in the long run (and my bet wouldn't be on the one from the company that was struggling enough that it felt the need to risk upsetting the community with a licence change). You need to worry about if the new license is acceptable, and even if you aren't selling a managed service for the software, these licenses make lawyers nervous (and I suspect that is intentional). And you have to evaluate if the license change is an indication that the company no longer values the community and users.

binary132 3y ago

How old is Redis again? It seems like a pretty big stretch to accuse them of having just been baiting people into depending on it this entire time.

pizza234 3y ago

Have you actually taken the time to understand the RSAL and SSPL? > If you want to use a restrictive license, start your project with it, period There is essentially only one restriction (the other is about formal notices) imposed by the RSAL, and it forbids to "Commercialize the software or provide it to others as a managed service". > IMHO, small companies and developers ultimately lose here This is an uninformed opinion. Nothing changes for small companies and developers. Actually, nothing changes even for larger companies, unless they are cloud providers. Large companies can actually provide Redis as service for internal use ("as a service internally or to subsidiary companies"). Companies are even free to sell support for Redis.

Kwpolska 3y ago
The licence forbids > offering a product or service, the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Software or Modified version How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count?
- graemep 3y ago
  > How do you define how much value your app derives from Redis? If Redis is the primary data store for your app, does it count? It will be if your app is a data store service . i.e. your apps is a thin wrapper around Redis. If your app is more than that, then its clear the value does not primarily derive from Redis. There are inevitably grey areas (e.g. if your app is a Redis based data store but adds a lot of functionality) but 99% of users do not need to worry.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    How thin is “thin”? If I build a chat app on top of Redis, is it safe? There’s a tutorial on the Redis website: https://developer.redis.com/howtos/chatapp/ https://developer.redis.com/howtos/chatapp/ — is it a sign that it’s too simple to be distinct? Or I can just migrate my app to Valkey and be sure I’m safe from lawyers.

TuringNYC 3y ago

>> IMHO, small companies and developers ultimately lose here. ES and Mongo still use and rely on AWS for their managed offerings. OpenSearch (mainly pushed by AWS) is vibrant and very alive. Redis will be ditched by distros and die a slow death, and (probably) Valkey will be in the next distro major versions. But we (small companies and devs) now have to spend time migrating and moving things around without any additional value. While I agree with you on not changing licenses mid-way, what is a small software company supposed to do? What is the Day Zero playbook that balances the desire for growth, creating customer value, and co-existing with the big cloud companies? I'm disappointed about the outcomes for companies like Redis/Elastic who obviously did create much value.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dontupvoteme 3y ago

You don't know what restrictive means.

skybrian 3y ago

I largely agree, except what the “bait” is. Here’s where antirez said he chose BSD because he wanted to allow forks that change the license. [1] Under BSD, forks that change the license and forks that don’t change the license are both okay, full stop. When antirez chose a BSD license, thinking he might do a proprietary fork later, it wasn’t “bait,” it’s how it works. But when Redis, the company, said that Redis “has always been and will continue to be BSD licensed” [2], this was an implicit promise about what license the company would use for their own future improvements to Redis. In that sense, what they said is misleading, and maybe that’s bait. So giving things away for free isn’t wrong, and making a proprietary fork isn’t wrong. It’s promising that you won’t do it and then doing it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863371 [2] https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/6bf2063136effa1e/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/6bf2063136effa1e/