4 ms·

Redis users considering alternatives after licensing move

42 points by ohjeez 2y ago

burcs 2y ago
I was recently looking at keydb due to the licensing move and well I also liked the fact that the data can be encrypted at rest, but it looks like there hasn't been any activity on the repo in 5 months, anyone familiar with it or have good alternatives there?
- sitkack 2y ago
  This is mature software, unless you have a bug that isn't getting addressed, I wouldn't use the last commit as evidence for much here.
s0ss 2y ago
Does this move ever go well?
- levkk 2y ago
  I was wondering that also. Didn't they learn anything from elastic doing the same and backtracking?
- gomerspiles 2y ago
  Sure, the goal of a company is profit not market share. Plenty of businesses that couldn't make money while expanding make all their money over the years or decades it takes to drive all the customers away.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  On other side one has to ask does not doing this work out? Spend lot of money making product and giving it out free. With no proper realistic plan how to make money at sufficient scale with it. Free money runs out what you do next? This or just simply die?
alanfranz 2y ago
Valkey is just the way to go. No real reasons to stay with Redis. Valkey is supported by multiple industry players and by the Linux Foundation.
- halfcat 2y ago
  How does valkey compare with garnet? https://github.com/microsoft/garnet https://github.com/microsoft/garnet
  - runako 2y ago
    Haven't used either, but Garnet's dependence on .NET runtimes is possibly going to hinder widespread adoption.
    - lloydatkinson 2y ago
      You mean the cross platform framework? That will hinder adoption? Or do you mean the “Micro$oft is evil” people that still refuse to believe, even when provided links, that .NET is open source? And can even build a single binary?
      - internetter 2y ago
        I can't place it, but .NET just sets me off on a bad foot. I much prefer just a binary I can run and get on with my life
        yohannesk 2y ago
        Couldn’t you do that with self contained dotnet build?
        lloydatkinson 2y ago
        You have literally fallen into the same thinking of the people I described. You've been able to build to a single binary for several years. Now you can even do it natively, so no JIT.
SmellTheGlove 2y ago
I guess I don't really understand the blowback when a project tries to monetize, but not when AWS takes your free shit and monetizes it for themselves.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Well if they did not give away it for free in first place AWS could not have taken it. They are only themselves to blame for giving away free samples and then crying when in entirely morally justifiable way someone decides to sell their free product as service. Should have done that themselves. And second thing is, often the pricing of these monetization turns is just exploitative.
  - david38 2y ago
    Pretty poor take. You can be generous without wanting to be taken advantage of. Using a product is one thing, reselling it and becoming the defacto place people use it is another. Another take is that if Amazon eats everyone’s lunch, we will have nothing else.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  One is a hosting company using software under the terms that it was licensed. The other is the author(s) of software getting a following with very permissive licensing and then changing the deal after the software has been adopted. The blowback is because of the deal being changed.
  - reconditerose 2y ago
    The other is the company that bought the trademark https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/54 https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/54.
- RevEng 2y ago
  The difference is the blow back comes from the users affected. I have no love for Amazon or Google, but if I'm currently using Redis as part of my product or service, forcing these new terms is threatening my business because I rely on it. My employer specifically tracks all third party software we use and this new license wouldn't fly - we would be forced to find an alternative.
bakugo 2y ago
I'm still a bit out of the loop here. How exactly does the Redis license change affect me anyway, as an end user who just runs Redis binaries and does not use or sell any managed redis service?
- simonw 2y ago
  It greatly reduces the number of people outside of the backing company who are willing to spend their time working on improvements to Redis. Over time that means the dependency you are using has less improvements than if you lived in a parallel universe where it was still open source.
- TheChaplain 2y ago
  Not much really, imho Redis is pretty much "done" for what most people use it for. Looking at the commit graphs in the last 24 months the number of commits have not changed drastically either, so you'll be fine. It might be an issue later when you decide to monetize and go big, but then perhaps a cloud providers solution may be a better option.
linotype 2y ago
They had Elastic as an example to work off of (and how badly that was received). They did it anyway. No sympathy.
- lolinder 2y ago
  I would take the continued fall of the dominoes (Mongo, Elastic, Hashi, Redis...) as a sign that the impact on the businesses who do this is positive or neutral, and it's just the HN bubble that creates the sense that there was an outsized public outcry over the changes that should make other companies wary. These guys aren't following suit blissfully unaware of the backlash against similar moves: as they measure it the backlash was weak enough that the business folks decided it was worth it to follow suit. In my experience working in the industry, I wouldn't even have noticed that any of these license changes had happened if I weren't on HN. My company uses all of Mongo, Elastic, and Terraform and there hasn't even been a whisper of switching away from any of them.
  - jzb 2y ago
    So how do you interpret that Elastic has switched back to a FOSS license?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      That they're being fully honest and open about the fact that it doesn't matter anymore and they would rather be open source if possible? I don't have any compelling reason not to take them at their word when it comes to their motives, because no data I can find suggests that the switch was bad for them.
takeda 2y ago
Can redis essentially be replaced with postgresql with unlogged tables or memcached (if you really wanted pure caching)?
devsda 2y ago
The article suggests valkey as an alternative with nice features in recent versions. If redis finds a way to integrate these features from these other fork(s) back into its own product, adds additional "enterprise" feature set on top and sell it, I wonder how it will be received by the OSS community. Are there any products that are importing features from their more permissive competitive forks ?
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Discussion from March: Redis adopts dual source-available licensing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562
redbell 2y ago
> Redis CEO Rowan Trollope defended his company's move away from the more permissive interpretation of open source. He said the decision was designed to prevent AWS and Google from charging for Redis in their database services without paying for it. This seems to be a similar reason why Elastic Search moved from open source. From the founder/CTO of Elastic: I never stopped believing in Open Source. I’m going on 25 years and counting as a true believer. So why the change 3 years ago? We had issues with AWS and the market confusion their offering was causing. So after trying all the other options we could think of, we changed the license. But who knows what the future holds? Maybe the Redis team will change their mind and revert back the decision like Elastic Search did a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394797

42 points by ohjeez 2y ago

I was recently looking at keydb due to the licensing move and well I also liked the fact that the data can be encrypted at rest, but it looks like there hasn't been any activity on the repo in 5 months, anyone familiar with it or have good alternatives there?

sitkack 2y ago
This is mature software, unless you have a bug that isn't getting addressed, I wouldn't use the last commit as evidence for much here.

s0ss 2y ago

Does this move ever go well?

levkk 2y ago
I was wondering that also. Didn't they learn anything from elastic doing the same and backtracking?
gomerspiles 2y ago
Sure, the goal of a company is profit not market share. Plenty of businesses that couldn't make money while expanding make all their money over the years or decades it takes to drive all the customers away.
Ekaros 2y ago
On other side one has to ask does not doing this work out? Spend lot of money making product and giving it out free. With no proper realistic plan how to make money at sufficient scale with it. Free money runs out what you do next? This or just simply die?

alanfranz 2y ago

Valkey is just the way to go. No real reasons to stay with Redis. Valkey is supported by multiple industry players and by the Linux Foundation.

halfcat 2y ago
How does valkey compare with garnet? https://github.com/microsoft/garnet https://github.com/microsoft/garnet
- runako 2y ago
  Haven't used either, but Garnet's dependence on .NET runtimes is possibly going to hinder widespread adoption.
  - lloydatkinson 2y ago
    You mean the cross platform framework? That will hinder adoption? Or do you mean the “Micro$oft is evil” people that still refuse to believe, even when provided links, that .NET is open source? And can even build a single binary?
    - internetter 2y ago
      I can't place it, but .NET just sets me off on a bad foot. I much prefer just a binary I can run and get on with my life
      - yohannesk 2y ago
        Couldn’t you do that with self contained dotnet build?
      - lloydatkinson 2y ago
        You have literally fallen into the same thinking of the people I described. You've been able to build to a single binary for several years. Now you can even do it natively, so no JIT.

SmellTheGlove 2y ago

I guess I don't really understand the blowback when a project tries to monetize, but not when AWS takes your free shit and monetizes it for themselves.

Ekaros 2y ago
Well if they did not give away it for free in first place AWS could not have taken it. They are only themselves to blame for giving away free samples and then crying when in entirely morally justifiable way someone decides to sell their free product as service. Should have done that themselves. And second thing is, often the pricing of these monetization turns is just exploitative.
- david38 2y ago
  Pretty poor take. You can be generous without wanting to be taken advantage of. Using a product is one thing, reselling it and becoming the defacto place people use it is another. Another take is that if Amazon eats everyone’s lunch, we will have nothing else.
rpdillon 2y ago
One is a hosting company using software under the terms that it was licensed. The other is the author(s) of software getting a following with very permissive licensing and then changing the deal after the software has been adopted. The blowback is because of the deal being changed.
- reconditerose 2y ago
  The other is the company that bought the trademark https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/54 https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/54.
RevEng 2y ago
The difference is the blow back comes from the users affected. I have no love for Amazon or Google, but if I'm currently using Redis as part of my product or service, forcing these new terms is threatening my business because I rely on it. My employer specifically tracks all third party software we use and this new license wouldn't fly - we would be forced to find an alternative.

bakugo 2y ago

I'm still a bit out of the loop here. How exactly does the Redis license change affect me anyway, as an end user who just runs Redis binaries and does not use or sell any managed redis service?

simonw 2y ago
It greatly reduces the number of people outside of the backing company who are willing to spend their time working on improvements to Redis. Over time that means the dependency you are using has less improvements than if you lived in a parallel universe where it was still open source.
TheChaplain 2y ago
Not much really, imho Redis is pretty much "done" for what most people use it for. Looking at the commit graphs in the last 24 months the number of commits have not changed drastically either, so you'll be fine. It might be an issue later when you decide to monetize and go big, but then perhaps a cloud providers solution may be a better option.

linotype 2y ago

They had Elastic as an example to work off of (and how badly that was received). They did it anyway. No sympathy.

lolinder 2y ago
I would take the continued fall of the dominoes (Mongo, Elastic, Hashi, Redis...) as a sign that the impact on the businesses who do this is positive or neutral, and it's just the HN bubble that creates the sense that there was an outsized public outcry over the changes that should make other companies wary. These guys aren't following suit blissfully unaware of the backlash against similar moves: as they measure it the backlash was weak enough that the business folks decided it was worth it to follow suit. In my experience working in the industry, I wouldn't even have noticed that any of these license changes had happened if I weren't on HN. My company uses all of Mongo, Elastic, and Terraform and there hasn't even been a whisper of switching away from any of them.
- jzb 2y ago
  So how do you interpret that Elastic has switched back to a FOSS license?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    That they're being fully honest and open about the fact that it doesn't matter anymore and they would rather be open source if possible? I don't have any compelling reason not to take them at their word when it comes to their motives, because no data I can find suggests that the switch was bad for them.

takeda 2y ago

Can redis essentially be replaced with postgresql with unlogged tables or memcached (if you really wanted pure caching)?

devsda 2y ago

The article suggests valkey as an alternative with nice features in recent versions. If redis finds a way to integrate these features from these other fork(s) back into its own product, adds additional "enterprise" feature set on top and sell it, I wonder how it will be received by the OSS community. Are there any products that are importing features from their more permissive competitive forks ?

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Discussion from March: Redis adopts dual source-available licensing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39772562

redbell 2y ago

> Redis CEO Rowan Trollope defended his company's move away from the more permissive interpretation of open source. He said the decision was designed to prevent AWS and Google from charging for Redis in their database services without paying for it. This seems to be a similar reason why Elastic Search moved from open source. From the founder/CTO of Elastic: I never stopped believing in Open Source. I’m going on 25 years and counting as a true believer. So why the change 3 years ago? We had issues with AWS and the market confusion their offering was causing. So after trying all the other options we could think of, we changed the license. But who knows what the future holds? Maybe the Redis team will change their mind and revert back the decision like Elastic Search did a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394797