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"Many people had contributed their efforts to the Redis project for free - both in terms of code but also in advocacy, writing tutorials, publishing example cod

"Many people had contributed their efforts to the Redis project for free - both in terms of code but also in advocacy, writing tutorials, publishing example code etc" I can understand that, but the thing about the BSD license is that such value never gets lost. People are able to fork, and after a fork for the original project to still lead will be require to put something more on the table. Inside Redis it was tried very hard to don't change license. For years it was some kind of "dogma", something one could not even speak about. Then after all the kind of attempts, and following the experiences of MongoDB and others, finally this choice was made. (Disclaimer: I saw the switch as an outsider, so my information is not complete about the final decisions -- I for sure know how this was always considered to avoid if other setups were possible). However now I see that there is the case for giving the community something in exchange to the license change: a lot of good things in the core, a very good attitude towards the community, and so forth.

benatkin 2y ago
In a sense valkey is the main line and redis is now the fork. Valkey is about the same except losing the trademark. It’s similar to Hudson and Jenkins. It’s not so clear cut with OpenSearch.
- sroussey 2y ago
  What’s valkey?
  - benatkin 2y ago
    Persistent key-value database with network interface https://packages.debian.org/testing/database/valkey-server https://packages.debian.org/testing/database/valkey-server
  - alanwreath 2y ago
    fork of redis https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey just before the transition to their new source available licenses
    - sroussey 2y ago
      Ah thanks. Is this by AWS or similar?
      - simonw 2y ago
        Yes: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc... > Industry participants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap Inc. are supporting Valkey.
        benatkin 2y ago
        Interesting to see Google there. They have LevelDB.
        Octoth0rpe 2y ago
        I've only looked briefly at leveldb, but IIRC redis is _hugely_ more featureful than leveldb (which I'm sure is a great fit where it's used).
        scq 2y ago
        Redis and LevelDB are very different, with different use cases. LevelDB is a key-value storage library that writes to disk. It's the sort of thing you could use as the storage layer for a relational database. On the other hand, Redis is an in-memory key-value database server.
        bitexploder 2y ago
        Cloud providers offer productized versions of Redis, so their interest in Valkey should be obvious :)
        bornfreddy 2y ago
        Yep. It is still a bit ironic that the community rallied behind Big Tech instead of a small startup though. Just saying.
  - simonw 2y ago
    It's the Redis fork with the most resources and the most backing. It's well funded and it sits under the Linux foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...
    - jonny_eh 2y ago
      and remains truly open-source, unlike Redis.
      - benatkin 2y ago
        Redis from Redis Labs, available under a choice of its own license or the SSPL, is pretty close to truly open-source, IMO closer to it than the BUSL, which is another source-available license. It is pretty similar to the AGPLv3, and they even credibly applied to get it OSI-approved. https://blog.tidelift.com/what-i-learned-from-the-server-side-public-license https://blog.tidelift.com/what-i-learned-from-the-server-sid... https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11291/how-to-interpret-the-sspl-terms-on-licensing-the-service-under-sspl https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11291/how-to-... What it isn't close to is the original license, which is a permissive open source license. The license switch-up is why a fork was needed. Matrix did a similar thing with the AGPL which alas, doesn't have a major fork. https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ Although it's technically still open source, they didn't do right by the contributors to it.
        jenadine 2y ago
        If the new license is so similar to the AGPL, why did they not pick AGPL as one of the license options in order to keep a well known OSI-aproved license?
        adolph 2y ago
        Yes, picking the same license is at least some security against a backdoor of some crafty IP lawyer.
- antirez 2y ago
  IMHO the "real" Redis is not about licensing, but about design (as long as the license is acceptable, as I think it is in both cases). We will see.
  - benatkin 2y ago
    That’s a nice way of looking at it. It’s quite an influential project. I’m just now thinking of taking more direct inspiration from it for a micro-library for webassembly. I wish you success in Redis Labs and thanks for Redis. In my other comment I said I never considered using Redis under the new license, but I didn’t say that I never would consider it, and I think I would if I found myself on a project that needs a key value database with enterprise support or more bells and whistles. I think it has its place, and to me it is an awful lot like postgres and EnterpriseDB, especially if Redis Labs gives its blessing, directly or tacitly, to adding this new vector type to valkey.
simonw 2y ago
I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't fully taken into account that those contributions do at least remain under the BSD license and hence stay open under those original terms. Thanks for reminding me of that.
- antirez 2y ago
  It's not an error at all, Simon! Because different setups in the past lead exactly to the scenario that you depicted. Examples: projects that requested signed copyright transfer for each patch (even GNU projects required this). But also what is more insidious is that very complex projects, while sometimes BSD or similarly licensed, were made completely proprietary (and not under the MongoDB / Redis circumstances, but just to turn proprietary for other reasons) but they were so complex internally that basically you can't do anything with the code, without paying like... 50 engineers to study it for six months. So it is an actual danger, but not in the case of BSD + projects that have an acceptable barrier to entry to be understood, fixed, modified, ...
- PeterZaitsev 2y ago
  Note though, the code is not Music, it rots quickly without maintenance. The "social contract" of contributing the code is what it will be maintained by collective community, otherwise many companies would just keep it as private forks. It is wonderful thing though, with Open Source, people can band together and "pull Valkey" to create well maintained fork based on all those past contributions
  - jart 2y ago
    That may be true of node.js codebases, but last time I checked Redis was written in C and only depends on ISO and POSIX standardized stuff. I doubt there's been any leftpads that have broken the old versions by now.
    - PeterZaitsev 2y ago
      It is not just compatibility, there are bugs, but most important security issues which are constantly being discovered.
crote 2y ago
With open-source software, a license is as much a social contract as it is a legal one. People contribute because they want to be part of a community building something which is beneficial to everyone. Everyone contributes where they can, and in turn takes what they need. Redis Ltd. broke the social contract. They decided that the short-term profitability of the company was more important than the project as a whole, the community which had grown around Redis and the future of the software. Probably a wise decision from a business perspective, but that doesn't make it any less of a rug pull from a community perspective. You're right that no pre-relicense code was lost. People could and did fork. But something far more valuable was lost: the community's trust. First they relicensed the code solely for their own benefit, now they tried to take over third-party libraries and started behaving in a hostile way towards the community forks. Why would anyone volunteer their time and effort when it is mainly going to benefit a company which is so openly antagonistic against its volunteers? After all, what's the next shady move going to be?
- kunley 2y ago
  It is really hard to believe that no one defends antirez&co as protecting themselves from greedy overpriced SaaS businesses who were parasiting others hard work. What about them saases breaking a social contract of giving reasonable prices adequate to the effort put into a product (or a wrapper around the product)?
  - simonw 2y ago
    It's possible to hold both positions at the same time.
    - kunley 2y ago
      In the world of legal consequences it is not. Or please explain.
      - kunley 2y ago
        Erm I am not sure if I was understood correctly - I meant legal consequences from the perspective of redis guys on one side, and saas guys on the other side.. One simply can't admit that they both were doing a valid thing
ensignavenger 2y ago
That is true, and that is how Valkey and other forks are moving forward. But the value wasn't just in the code- many folks contributed value by writing blog posts, making videos, and writing books or otherwise promoting "Redis". The Redis trademark owners had every legal right to change what "Redis" means by changing the license, but it creates a massive headache and a practically impossible task for everyone that gave so much to promoting the project to change all of these references. Folks like to cite MongoDB as some great example, but Redis had significant community contributions in recent years. And AWS never used any Mongo code.
weinzierl 2y ago
"I can understand that, but the thing about the BSD license is that such value never gets lost." That is one side of the coin: value never gets lost! The other side is that the BSD license is very clear what it allows. It's a good thing that there are licenses that allow what Redis did. It is also a good thing that there are other licenses which can help prevent what Redis did. It is our choice as developers and we should never blame others for exercising the rights we granted them.
smolder 2y ago
Put another way, many people have contributed to Bezos' bottom line for free. The restriction is annoying but there should probably be a better way to get a piece of that huge value for everyone who generates it, mostly thanklessly. Some kind of OSS tax proportional to profitability would make some sense, as annoying as that might be to implement or deal with.
- Towaway69 2y ago
  This idea is similar to what some countries do around music: artist register with an government identity that collects copyright fees from venues that play music - live or otherwise (bars, clubs, theatres included). The government identity then distributes those monies to the artists according to playlists collected from said venues. It works for big acts, for small acts the overhead tends to consume the payouts.
jillyboel 2y ago
> However now I see that there is the case for giving the community something in exchange to the license change: a lot of good things in the core, a very good attitude towards the community, and so forth. You can do this without fucking over past contributors. Just... Don't change the license. Then still do all that other stuff. They're not contradictory.

benatkin 2y ago

In a sense valkey is the main line and redis is now the fork. Valkey is about the same except losing the trademark. It’s similar to Hudson and Jenkins. It’s not so clear cut with OpenSearch.

sroussey 2y ago
What’s valkey?
- benatkin 2y ago
  Persistent key-value database with network interface https://packages.debian.org/testing/database/valkey-server https://packages.debian.org/testing/database/valkey-server
- alanwreath 2y ago
  fork of redis https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey just before the transition to their new source available licenses
  - sroussey 2y ago
    Ah thanks. Is this by AWS or similar?
    - simonw 2y ago
      Yes: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc... > Industry participants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson, and Snap Inc. are supporting Valkey.
      - benatkin 2y ago
        Interesting to see Google there. They have LevelDB.
        Octoth0rpe 2y ago
        I've only looked briefly at leveldb, but IIRC redis is _hugely_ more featureful than leveldb (which I'm sure is a great fit where it's used).
        scq 2y ago
        Redis and LevelDB are very different, with different use cases. LevelDB is a key-value storage library that writes to disk. It's the sort of thing you could use as the storage layer for a relational database. On the other hand, Redis is an in-memory key-value database server.
      - bitexploder 2y ago
        Cloud providers offer productized versions of Redis, so their interest in Valkey should be obvious :)
        bornfreddy 2y ago
        Yep. It is still a bit ironic that the community rallied behind Big Tech instead of a small startup though. Just saying.
- simonw 2y ago
  It's the Redis fork with the most resources and the most backing. It's well funded and it sits under the Linux foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launches-open-source-valkey-community https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-launc...
  - jonny_eh 2y ago
    and remains truly open-source, unlike Redis.
    - benatkin 2y ago
      Redis from Redis Labs, available under a choice of its own license or the SSPL, is pretty close to truly open-source, IMO closer to it than the BUSL, which is another source-available license. It is pretty similar to the AGPLv3, and they even credibly applied to get it OSI-approved. https://blog.tidelift.com/what-i-learned-from-the-server-side-public-license https://blog.tidelift.com/what-i-learned-from-the-server-sid... https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11291/how-to-interpret-the-sspl-terms-on-licensing-the-service-under-sspl https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/11291/how-to-... What it isn't close to is the original license, which is a permissive open source license. The license switch-up is why a fork was needed. Matrix did a similar thing with the AGPL which alas, doesn't have a major fork. https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ https://element.io/blog/element-to-adopt-agplv3/ Although it's technically still open source, they didn't do right by the contributors to it.
      - jenadine 2y ago
        If the new license is so similar to the AGPL, why did they not pick AGPL as one of the license options in order to keep a well known OSI-aproved license?
        adolph 2y ago
        Yes, picking the same license is at least some security against a backdoor of some crafty IP lawyer.
antirez 2y ago
IMHO the "real" Redis is not about licensing, but about design (as long as the license is acceptable, as I think it is in both cases). We will see.
- benatkin 2y ago
  That’s a nice way of looking at it. It’s quite an influential project. I’m just now thinking of taking more direct inspiration from it for a micro-library for webassembly. I wish you success in Redis Labs and thanks for Redis. In my other comment I said I never considered using Redis under the new license, but I didn’t say that I never would consider it, and I think I would if I found myself on a project that needs a key value database with enterprise support or more bells and whistles. I think it has its place, and to me it is an awful lot like postgres and EnterpriseDB, especially if Redis Labs gives its blessing, directly or tacitly, to adding this new vector type to valkey.

simonw 2y ago

I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't fully taken into account that those contributions do at least remain under the BSD license and hence stay open under those original terms. Thanks for reminding me of that.

antirez 2y ago
It's not an error at all, Simon! Because different setups in the past lead exactly to the scenario that you depicted. Examples: projects that requested signed copyright transfer for each patch (even GNU projects required this). But also what is more insidious is that very complex projects, while sometimes BSD or similarly licensed, were made completely proprietary (and not under the MongoDB / Redis circumstances, but just to turn proprietary for other reasons) but they were so complex internally that basically you can't do anything with the code, without paying like... 50 engineers to study it for six months. So it is an actual danger, but not in the case of BSD + projects that have an acceptable barrier to entry to be understood, fixed, modified, ...
PeterZaitsev 2y ago
Note though, the code is not Music, it rots quickly without maintenance. The "social contract" of contributing the code is what it will be maintained by collective community, otherwise many companies would just keep it as private forks. It is wonderful thing though, with Open Source, people can band together and "pull Valkey" to create well maintained fork based on all those past contributions
- jart 2y ago
  That may be true of node.js codebases, but last time I checked Redis was written in C and only depends on ISO and POSIX standardized stuff. I doubt there's been any leftpads that have broken the old versions by now.
  - PeterZaitsev 2y ago
    It is not just compatibility, there are bugs, but most important security issues which are constantly being discovered.

crote 2y ago

With open-source software, a license is as much a social contract as it is a legal one. People contribute because they want to be part of a community building something which is beneficial to everyone. Everyone contributes where they can, and in turn takes what they need. Redis Ltd. broke the social contract. They decided that the short-term profitability of the company was more important than the project as a whole, the community which had grown around Redis and the future of the software. Probably a wise decision from a business perspective, but that doesn't make it any less of a rug pull from a community perspective. You're right that no pre-relicense code was lost. People could and did fork. But something far more valuable was lost: the community's trust. First they relicensed the code solely for their own benefit, now they tried to take over third-party libraries and started behaving in a hostile way towards the community forks. Why would anyone volunteer their time and effort when it is mainly going to benefit a company which is so openly antagonistic against its volunteers? After all, what's the next shady move going to be?

kunley 2y ago
It is really hard to believe that no one defends antirez&co as protecting themselves from greedy overpriced SaaS businesses who were parasiting others hard work. What about them saases breaking a social contract of giving reasonable prices adequate to the effort put into a product (or a wrapper around the product)?
- simonw 2y ago
  It's possible to hold both positions at the same time.
  - kunley 2y ago
    In the world of legal consequences it is not. Or please explain.
    - kunley 2y ago
      Erm I am not sure if I was understood correctly - I meant legal consequences from the perspective of redis guys on one side, and saas guys on the other side.. One simply can't admit that they both were doing a valid thing

ensignavenger 2y ago

That is true, and that is how Valkey and other forks are moving forward. But the value wasn't just in the code- many folks contributed value by writing blog posts, making videos, and writing books or otherwise promoting "Redis". The Redis trademark owners had every legal right to change what "Redis" means by changing the license, but it creates a massive headache and a practically impossible task for everyone that gave so much to promoting the project to change all of these references. Folks like to cite MongoDB as some great example, but Redis had significant community contributions in recent years. And AWS never used any Mongo code.

weinzierl 2y ago

"I can understand that, but the thing about the BSD license is that such value never gets lost." That is one side of the coin: value never gets lost! The other side is that the BSD license is very clear what it allows. It's a good thing that there are licenses that allow what Redis did. It is also a good thing that there are other licenses which can help prevent what Redis did. It is our choice as developers and we should never blame others for exercising the rights we granted them.

smolder 2y ago

Put another way, many people have contributed to Bezos' bottom line for free. The restriction is annoying but there should probably be a better way to get a piece of that huge value for everyone who generates it, mostly thanklessly. Some kind of OSS tax proportional to profitability would make some sense, as annoying as that might be to implement or deal with.

Towaway69 2y ago
This idea is similar to what some countries do around music: artist register with an government identity that collects copyright fees from venues that play music - live or otherwise (bars, clubs, theatres included). The government identity then distributes those monies to the artists according to playlists collected from said venues. It works for big acts, for small acts the overhead tends to consume the payouts.

jillyboel 2y ago

> However now I see that there is the case for giving the community something in exchange to the license change: a lot of good things in the core, a very good attitude towards the community, and so forth. You can do this without fucking over past contributors. Just... Don't change the license. Then still do all that other stuff. They're not contradictory.