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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.
- voidwtf 2y ago
  some of these licensing changes have led to larger players forking and/or implementing their own version. personally i appreciate Amazon for sticking it to Oracle with Corretto after the JRE licensing changes.
- devsda 2y ago
  > 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. Unless your primary product involves selling a hosted version of Redis, simply using it shouldn't affect anyone. Is this not the case ?
  - jaggederest 2y ago
    No, because now AWS will be selling a fork and virtually everyone will be using that instead. Now we have a broken ecosystem, having to support effectively two libraries or a lowest-common-denominator, but only because they're mad that their open source software was popular (!?) and want a do-over, even though it never would have been popular to begin with if it wasn't open source. All of these open-source-no-wait-lol-jk companies want to have their cake (widespread adoption because it's open source) and eat it too (be rentiers paid to host and support the software they released). It's especially egregious in the case of Redis as Redis Labs hasn't been the primary contributor for a number of years. As is always the case with closed source relicensing it's a landgrab.
voidwtf 2y ago
When an open source project achieves success it does so on the backs of not only those who use it, but those who contribute. Sometimes these contributions are not just code but also include constructive feedback, bug reports (some very detailed with repros), documentation, advertisement by way of blog posts about the ways consumers use it, and more. While i fully believe that other players should be expected to contribute monetarily or with code, I also don’t believe that you should fundamentally change the relationship between the project and the consumer because the consumer has built a product on or with your project. They chose to build that product based on the license you provided them. If you didn’t want to license it that way then don’t do so from the beginning and you probably won’t get as many of the aforementioned benefits. If I choose to open source something it’s because it’s either a passion project or it solves a problem that myself and others struggled to solve. I don’t open source it under the expectation of eventual profit. In fact, i hope by putting it out there it might become better as others improve upon it and we all benefit.
- SmellTheGlove 2y ago
  > If I choose to open source something it’s because it’s either a passion project or it solves a problem that myself and others struggled to solve. I don’t open source it under the expectation of eventual profit. In fact, i hope by putting it out there it might become better as others improve upon it and we all benefit. I agree with this. The problem is, you've open sourced it and someone else does profit to the tune of millions/billions. That seems unfair and is why I'm sympathetic to these sorts of license changes sometimes. Seems like they went into this knowing full well many would move to forks. > If you didn’t want to license it that way then don’t do so from the beginning and you probably won’t get as many of the aforementioned benefits. Fair point. Was that foreseeable in 2009? A lot of the actions we take now are based on what's reasonably foreseeable in the future. I honestly don't recall.
  - reconditerose 2y ago
    > Fair point. Was that foreseeable in 2009? A lot of the actions we take now are based on what's reasonably foreseeable in the future. I honestly don't recall. The company now known as Redis didn't acquire the redis trademark until 2018, and didn't change their name to include redis until after that. That is probably the better timeframe to think about.
jasode 2y ago
>I don't really understand the blowback when a project tries to monetize, Your starting premise of "monetization" being the issue is incorrect ... which then causes the misunderstanding of the blowback. Instead, the blowback is about changing the license as I outlined before : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951361 It annoys the community when Redis starts out with a permissive license that attracts outside contributors including employees from Tencent+Alibaba+Amazon+Bytedance+etc who collectively commit more code than Redis employees [1] ... and then later change the license which destroys the goodwill that attracted the outside contributors in the first place. [1] code stats since 7.0.0 release: https://lwn.net/Articles/966631/#:~:text=Top%20changeset%20contributions%20by%20employer https://lwn.net/Articles/966631/#:~:text=Top%20changeset%20c...
- SmellTheGlove 2y ago
  No, I understand that changing the license is the issue drawing the reaction. But it looks like they're changing it in order to monetize. > It annoys the community when Redis starts out with a permissive license that attracts outside contributors including employees from Tencent+Alibaba+Amazon+Bytedance+etc who collectively commit more code than Redis employees [1] ... and then later change the license which destroys the goodwill that attracted the outside contributors in the first place. This is a very fair point.
josephcsible 2y ago
Because actually monetizing FOSS is a good thing, but turning it proprietary is a bad thing.

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.

voidwtf 2y ago
some of these licensing changes have led to larger players forking and/or implementing their own version. personally i appreciate Amazon for sticking it to Oracle with Corretto after the JRE licensing changes.
devsda 2y ago
> 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. Unless your primary product involves selling a hosted version of Redis, simply using it shouldn't affect anyone. Is this not the case ?
- jaggederest 2y ago
  No, because now AWS will be selling a fork and virtually everyone will be using that instead. Now we have a broken ecosystem, having to support effectively two libraries or a lowest-common-denominator, but only because they're mad that their open source software was popular (!?) and want a do-over, even though it never would have been popular to begin with if it wasn't open source. All of these open-source-no-wait-lol-jk companies want to have their cake (widespread adoption because it's open source) and eat it too (be rentiers paid to host and support the software they released). It's especially egregious in the case of Redis as Redis Labs hasn't been the primary contributor for a number of years. As is always the case with closed source relicensing it's a landgrab.

voidwtf 2y ago

When an open source project achieves success it does so on the backs of not only those who use it, but those who contribute. Sometimes these contributions are not just code but also include constructive feedback, bug reports (some very detailed with repros), documentation, advertisement by way of blog posts about the ways consumers use it, and more. While i fully believe that other players should be expected to contribute monetarily or with code, I also don’t believe that you should fundamentally change the relationship between the project and the consumer because the consumer has built a product on or with your project. They chose to build that product based on the license you provided them. If you didn’t want to license it that way then don’t do so from the beginning and you probably won’t get as many of the aforementioned benefits. If I choose to open source something it’s because it’s either a passion project or it solves a problem that myself and others struggled to solve. I don’t open source it under the expectation of eventual profit. In fact, i hope by putting it out there it might become better as others improve upon it and we all benefit.

SmellTheGlove 2y ago
> If I choose to open source something it’s because it’s either a passion project or it solves a problem that myself and others struggled to solve. I don’t open source it under the expectation of eventual profit. In fact, i hope by putting it out there it might become better as others improve upon it and we all benefit. I agree with this. The problem is, you've open sourced it and someone else does profit to the tune of millions/billions. That seems unfair and is why I'm sympathetic to these sorts of license changes sometimes. Seems like they went into this knowing full well many would move to forks. > If you didn’t want to license it that way then don’t do so from the beginning and you probably won’t get as many of the aforementioned benefits. Fair point. Was that foreseeable in 2009? A lot of the actions we take now are based on what's reasonably foreseeable in the future. I honestly don't recall.
- reconditerose 2y ago
  > Fair point. Was that foreseeable in 2009? A lot of the actions we take now are based on what's reasonably foreseeable in the future. I honestly don't recall. The company now known as Redis didn't acquire the redis trademark until 2018, and didn't change their name to include redis until after that. That is probably the better timeframe to think about.

jasode 2y ago

>I don't really understand the blowback when a project tries to monetize, Your starting premise of "monetization" being the issue is incorrect ... which then causes the misunderstanding of the blowback. Instead, the blowback is about changing the license as I outlined before : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39951361 It annoys the community when Redis starts out with a permissive license that attracts outside contributors including employees from Tencent+Alibaba+Amazon+Bytedance+etc who collectively commit more code than Redis employees [1] ... and then later change the license which destroys the goodwill that attracted the outside contributors in the first place. [1] code stats since 7.0.0 release: https://lwn.net/Articles/966631/#:~:text=Top%20changeset%20contributions%20by%20employer https://lwn.net/Articles/966631/#:~:text=Top%20changeset%20c...

SmellTheGlove 2y ago
No, I understand that changing the license is the issue drawing the reaction. But it looks like they're changing it in order to monetize. > It annoys the community when Redis starts out with a permissive license that attracts outside contributors including employees from Tencent+Alibaba+Amazon+Bytedance+etc who collectively commit more code than Redis employees [1] ... and then later change the license which destroys the goodwill that attracted the outside contributors in the first place. This is a very fair point.

josephcsible 2y ago

Because actually monetizing FOSS is a good thing, but turning it proprietary is a bad thing.