6 ms·

Open source is a gift economy. Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts. It is not a "rug pull" for someone to stop gi

by jart 2y ago

Open source is a gift economy. Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts. It is not a "rug pull" for someone to stop giving you gifts. The old versions of Redis are yours for all time. No one can take that away from you. In fact, Redis is still giving you gifts to this day, just with a different wrapping. The new license seems perfectly reasonable, given how much companies like Amazon have exploited the gift economy to the point where it threatens these startups survival.

sangnoir 2y ago
> Open source is a gift economy. Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts I think op was talking about contributors, who essentially gifted back. One might take offense if they were exchanging gifts with someone, and they open a pop-up store and sell what was gifted. Also, it's also a tiny bit hypocritical to expect revenue sharing with Amazon without doing the same for contributors.
- jart 2y ago
  Redis has a CLA so contributors can't use their gifts as leverage to control others. https://redis.io/legal/redis-software-grant-and-contributor-license-agreement/ https://redis.io/legal/redis-software-grant-and-contributor-...
  - collingreen 2y ago
    I don't think you should conflate CONTROL with resentment or distaste or feeling betrayed or feeling misled. They aren't the same.
    - jart 2y ago
      Even without a CLA, Redis was originally licensed BSD. Releasing code under a BSD license is making a promise that you are OK with people using your code for commercial purposes. If you as a developer express personal feelings of dissatisfaction that someone is doing with your gift what you gave them permission to do, in such a way that could be construed as reneging on your promise, then that would make you dishonorable and untrustworthy.
      - skinner_ 2y ago
        > in such a way that could be construed as reneging on your promise Nothing could be construed in such a way, because such a reneging is not possible.
        thayne 2y ago
        Well in this case, antirez literally promised[1] they wouldn't change the license of the core away from BSD, and then Redis Labs did just that, and now antirez is speaking favorably of that decision. [1]: https://antirez.com/news/120 https://antirez.com/news/120
        skinner_ 2y ago
        Wow, I wasn't aware. @jart, do you have any harsh comments on the actual reneging of an actual promise? @antirez, do you have any kind of comments?
        gavindean90 2y ago
        That post was from literally thousands of days ago and seems to be in relation to some confusion at that time. Honestly to me you can see the tensions that led to the license change in that post. It’s largely consistent with what antirez has said in the post and in this thread.
        master2121 2y ago
        [dead]
        jillyboel 2y ago
        Ok so just because something is in the past it's become irrelevant? So no promises are ever worth trusting? The creator of redis LITERALLY said "Redis will remain BSD licensed". And it's no longer BSD licensed.
        2y ago
- agumonkey 2y ago
  I guess there's a blind spot here. antirez gave community gave most people assume that this create a new thing, a group, which has a shared past and value .. and should continue (i would agree to that personally) "pure" open source advocacy would claim "nothing is ever to be expected in any future" (i can understand that too but find it a bit sad)
  - devsda 2y ago
    I wonder how the oss community will react if the sequence of events were a little different. 1. Redis Inc creates a fork of Redis and names it say RedisNext or anything else(xyz) without a reference to Redis name at all. 2. Announces that, xyz is a fully compatible next gen version of Redis with enterprise features but it is only available under SSPL license. 3. Also announces that original Redis software is feature complete and will be under maintenance with only critical bug fixes. This will be them playing by the same rules as any other third-party. Will the community still manage to find fault with Redis Inc? Will it feel entitled to continued updates or the Redis brand demanding a project handover to a different "group"?
    - watermelon0 2y ago
      Cannot speak for the community, but I'd assume that the right thing would be to handover Redis brand to a FOSS foundation. Anything else just complicates things, like we see today, where Valkey and others are referenced as being Redis compatible (at least as far as RESP is concerned), and we either have specific clients (such as valkey-go), or existing Redis clients, that seem to want to maintain compatibility with most (all?) of them.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  They're also stealing the name of the community. I feel like once a software is open sourced the name of that software should also be required to remain open sourced as well, and any closing of the source must come with a requirement of forking the software and changing the name. It's honestly pretty horrible that a group of people can take centuries of man hours away from the community and tell the community to kick rocks when the software they're stealing would NEVER NEVER NEVER have had the traction it has if it were not OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE TO BEGIN WITH. There is a rash of thefts going on in broad daylight, and I think people need to start litigating. Its obscene and soulless and doesn't belong as an acceptable thing to do in society.
  - enugu 2y ago
    It is absurd to call this license change stealing when the previous work is still available under the original license. This is more like someone who is giving to the community, still continuing to give, but with a slightly more strict license. Do you expect someone who is doing philantropic work, gets contributions from others, but later becomes less philantropic to change their name? > NEVER NEVER NEVER have had the traction There is plenty of even closed source software which has traction in many domains, let alone software released under a license which as anti-rez points out allows the users to freely run their websites on redis, modify and redistribute code etc.(with the exception of running hosting services like Amazon). For instance, it would be amazing and a great improvement if there was a top-quality CAD program with a similar license to Redis.
  - evanelias 2y ago
    You clearly feel very strongly about this topic; out of curiosity, are you a Redis contributor? If so, was your contribution done via your day job (paid time) or was it an outside/independent contribution? > I feel like once a software is open sourced the name of that software should also be required to remain open sourced as well, and any closing of the source must come with a requirement of forking the software and changing the name. Who should enforce such a requirement, and under what mechanism? Open source licenses are copyright licenses, whereas product names are trademarks. These are separate legal concepts. Meanwhile "the community" isn't even a legal entity at all. As I understand it, there's nothing to "start litigating" here, and no one to litigate it. Are you proposing that the OSI should change the OSD such that open source licenses must include mandatory trademark assignment to an independent nonprofit foundation? That's a rather extreme view if so.
ac29 2y ago
If a company's survival is threatened by people using its open-source software, then maybe it shouldn't be open source. Open source software (to me) says I should be able use the software for any purpose, including commercial ones.
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  I agree. It seems that "open core"[1] is a failed experiment. I'm hopeful the idea will be replaced either by governments being smarter about the computers, or companies agreeing to sponsor foundations, or... something. But clearly taking venture investment to build OSS and turn it into a profitable enterprise is an idea that has been thoroughly shown to be flawed. [1] aptly named if you think about the nuclear power analogy :)
  - redkoala 2y ago
    It’s the entire premise of public goods, and the sustainable funding model for that would be through government funding or funding of open source foundations like the CNCF. For example, the IETF standards body is founded by the global charitable organization the Internet Society. How do we continue to build on this public goods funding model for projects like this?
  - motorest 2y ago
    > seems that "open core"[1] is a failed experiment. I don't think the jury is out. If you look at nginx, you won't see a lot of complains over nginx plus. The nginx brand still has a lot of goodwill and a few open source projects seem to be peacefully building upon it without any issue.
- TrueDuality 2y ago
  That isn't really the case here. It didn't start with a company. The company came along independently, effectively took control of an open source project that was already well established. They found that support alone wasn't enough to be profitable on and have been lashing out at the community that built around the original project, including independent opensource clients. It's not that the company shouldn't have the code as open source. The company shouldn't exist in the first place and we're all suffering for it.
jasonwatkinspdx 2y ago
Reciprocality over time building trust is in fact the basis of gift economies. Please read some David Graeber.
Aeolun 2y ago
> Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts. Certainly, but if you exchange gifts with someone every christmas, have been doing so for a decade, and they suddenly stop giving you one, or give you an unpolished one where they previously cleaned it to a shine, you are perfectly within your rights to be a bit miffed at that, and withold your own. People can say the new license is reasonable (and by all reasonable measures it probably is) but that’s not how it feels, and that’s the important part.
UweSchmidt 2y ago
Open source is not a gift economy, and is in fact a different, and long established social contract. Never has this misplaced metaphor been used to describe open source, nor do the contributers demand any return that amounts to an "entitlement to future gifts".
jillyboel 2y ago
It absolutely is though. Do you not see any value in bug fixes? Do you think software never needs to be updated? We all know security updates are crucial, and pretending you can just run the old version forever is insane. If I contributed to redis in the past I did so under the assumption that I was contributing to a product that I could actually keep using. But instead they took all those contributions and gave the contributors a huge middle finger by denying them security updates and fixes. And sure, you can say "just do the bug fixes yourself". But if I knew that was going to be the case, I'd never have bothered to contribute.
- evanelias 2y ago
  > If I contributed to redis in the past I did so under the assumption that I was contributing to a product that I could actually keep using It sounds like you also have an assumption that the maintainers will spend the effort to maintain your contribution forever, after already spending the initial effort to review and integrate your contribution. This all takes time and money, which has to come from somewhere. You're asking "Do you not see any value in bug fixes? Do you think software never needs to be updated?" from the contributors' and users' point of view. But the same exact issue exists from the maintainers' point of view. A lot of people in this thread are commenting as if an open source contribution is a purely altruistic act by the contributor which then solely benefits the maintainers. That's far from the case in reality. Many third party contributors are writing their contributions as part of their day job (meaning they're paid to do it), and the contribution directly benefits themselves and/or their employer by fixing some problem they encountered or adding some feature that they needed.
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    > It sounds like you also have an assumption that the maintainers will spend the effort to maintain your contribution forever, after already spending the initial effort to review and integrate your contribution. This all takes time and money, which has to come from somewhere. Correct, that's generally how open source works. You make a contribution, they merge it, and then the assumption is that it is maintained by the maintainers. You seem to act like this is an odd assumption, even though it is and has been the reality for pretty much every open source project ever. > But the same exact issue exists from the maintainers' point of view. Right, it's their "job". Maintaining the software. It's pretty much in the name. That's what happens when you accept contributions. They get merged into the software project, and then you (the maintainer) are responsible for maintaining it, or removing the functionality in a subsequent release. That's why code review happens where you consider the maintenance burden, and features sometimes don't get merged. If this doesn't sound appealing then don't become the maintainer of an open source project. > Many third party contributors are writing their contributions as part of their day job (meaning they're paid to do it), and the contribution directly benefits themselves and/or their employer by fixing some problem they encountered or adding some feature that they needed. Sure, and they could've kept it private so it only benefits them and/or their employer. But instead they chose to open source it in the hopes that 1) The maintainers will maintain it 2) It might benefit someone else That's the whole deal. You're essentially trading your contributions for future maintenance.
indymike 2y ago
> It is not a "rug pull" for someone to stop giving you gifts. I'm not sure that the developers contributing code from outside the company see it that way. An easy way to tell if contributors see a license change as a rug pull is if the forks that happen after the rug pull get traction. > The new license seems perfectly reasonable, given how much companies like Amazon have exploited the gift economy to the point where it threatens these startups survival. Most of the time, though, open source limits growth - and doesn't threaten the original author's startup. This is a really important distinction because there is a trade-off in choosing open source as a marketing strategy - you do potentially face competition from other contributors, users and parasites that will moderate growth.

by jart 2y ago

sangnoir 2y ago

> Open source is a gift economy. Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts I think op was talking about contributors, who essentially gifted back. One might take offense if they were exchanging gifts with someone, and they open a pop-up store and sell what was gifted. Also, it's also a tiny bit hypocritical to expect revenue sharing with Amazon without doing the same for contributors.

jart 2y ago
Redis has a CLA so contributors can't use their gifts as leverage to control others. https://redis.io/legal/redis-software-grant-and-contributor-license-agreement/ https://redis.io/legal/redis-software-grant-and-contributor-...
- collingreen 2y ago
  I don't think you should conflate CONTROL with resentment or distaste or feeling betrayed or feeling misled. They aren't the same.
  - jart 2y ago
    Even without a CLA, Redis was originally licensed BSD. Releasing code under a BSD license is making a promise that you are OK with people using your code for commercial purposes. If you as a developer express personal feelings of dissatisfaction that someone is doing with your gift what you gave them permission to do, in such a way that could be construed as reneging on your promise, then that would make you dishonorable and untrustworthy.
    - skinner_ 2y ago
      > in such a way that could be construed as reneging on your promise Nothing could be construed in such a way, because such a reneging is not possible.
      - thayne 2y ago
        Well in this case, antirez literally promised[1] they wouldn't change the license of the core away from BSD, and then Redis Labs did just that, and now antirez is speaking favorably of that decision. [1]: https://antirez.com/news/120 https://antirez.com/news/120
        skinner_ 2y ago
        Wow, I wasn't aware. @jart, do you have any harsh comments on the actual reneging of an actual promise? @antirez, do you have any kind of comments?
        gavindean90 2y ago
        That post was from literally thousands of days ago and seems to be in relation to some confusion at that time. Honestly to me you can see the tensions that led to the license change in that post. It’s largely consistent with what antirez has said in the post and in this thread.
        master2121 2y ago
        [dead]
        jillyboel 2y ago
        Ok so just because something is in the past it's become irrelevant? So no promises are ever worth trusting? The creator of redis LITERALLY said "Redis will remain BSD licensed". And it's no longer BSD licensed.
        2y ago
agumonkey 2y ago
I guess there's a blind spot here. antirez gave community gave most people assume that this create a new thing, a group, which has a shared past and value .. and should continue (i would agree to that personally) "pure" open source advocacy would claim "nothing is ever to be expected in any future" (i can understand that too but find it a bit sad)
- devsda 2y ago
  I wonder how the oss community will react if the sequence of events were a little different. 1. Redis Inc creates a fork of Redis and names it say RedisNext or anything else(xyz) without a reference to Redis name at all. 2. Announces that, xyz is a fully compatible next gen version of Redis with enterprise features but it is only available under SSPL license. 3. Also announces that original Redis software is feature complete and will be under maintenance with only critical bug fixes. This will be them playing by the same rules as any other third-party. Will the community still manage to find fault with Redis Inc? Will it feel entitled to continued updates or the Redis brand demanding a project handover to a different "group"?
  - watermelon0 2y ago
    Cannot speak for the community, but I'd assume that the right thing would be to handover Redis brand to a FOSS foundation. Anything else just complicates things, like we see today, where Valkey and others are referenced as being Redis compatible (at least as far as RESP is concerned), and we either have specific clients (such as valkey-go), or existing Redis clients, that seem to want to maintain compatibility with most (all?) of them.
BizarroLand 2y ago
They're also stealing the name of the community. I feel like once a software is open sourced the name of that software should also be required to remain open sourced as well, and any closing of the source must come with a requirement of forking the software and changing the name. It's honestly pretty horrible that a group of people can take centuries of man hours away from the community and tell the community to kick rocks when the software they're stealing would NEVER NEVER NEVER have had the traction it has if it were not OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE TO BEGIN WITH. There is a rash of thefts going on in broad daylight, and I think people need to start litigating. Its obscene and soulless and doesn't belong as an acceptable thing to do in society.
- enugu 2y ago
  It is absurd to call this license change stealing when the previous work is still available under the original license. This is more like someone who is giving to the community, still continuing to give, but with a slightly more strict license. Do you expect someone who is doing philantropic work, gets contributions from others, but later becomes less philantropic to change their name? > NEVER NEVER NEVER have had the traction There is plenty of even closed source software which has traction in many domains, let alone software released under a license which as anti-rez points out allows the users to freely run their websites on redis, modify and redistribute code etc.(with the exception of running hosting services like Amazon). For instance, it would be amazing and a great improvement if there was a top-quality CAD program with a similar license to Redis.
- evanelias 2y ago
  You clearly feel very strongly about this topic; out of curiosity, are you a Redis contributor? If so, was your contribution done via your day job (paid time) or was it an outside/independent contribution? > I feel like once a software is open sourced the name of that software should also be required to remain open sourced as well, and any closing of the source must come with a requirement of forking the software and changing the name. Who should enforce such a requirement, and under what mechanism? Open source licenses are copyright licenses, whereas product names are trademarks. These are separate legal concepts. Meanwhile "the community" isn't even a legal entity at all. As I understand it, there's nothing to "start litigating" here, and no one to litigate it. Are you proposing that the OSI should change the OSD such that open source licenses must include mandatory trademark assignment to an independent nonprofit foundation? That's a rather extreme view if so.

ac29 2y ago

If a company's survival is threatened by people using its open-source software, then maybe it shouldn't be open source. Open source software (to me) says I should be able use the software for any purpose, including commercial ones.

jcgrillo 2y ago
I agree. It seems that "open core"[1] is a failed experiment. I'm hopeful the idea will be replaced either by governments being smarter about the computers, or companies agreeing to sponsor foundations, or... something. But clearly taking venture investment to build OSS and turn it into a profitable enterprise is an idea that has been thoroughly shown to be flawed. [1] aptly named if you think about the nuclear power analogy :)
- redkoala 2y ago
  It’s the entire premise of public goods, and the sustainable funding model for that would be through government funding or funding of open source foundations like the CNCF. For example, the IETF standards body is founded by the global charitable organization the Internet Society. How do we continue to build on this public goods funding model for projects like this?
- motorest 2y ago
  > seems that "open core"[1] is a failed experiment. I don't think the jury is out. If you look at nginx, you won't see a lot of complains over nginx plus. The nginx brand still has a lot of goodwill and a few open source projects seem to be peacefully building upon it without any issue.
TrueDuality 2y ago
That isn't really the case here. It didn't start with a company. The company came along independently, effectively took control of an open source project that was already well established. They found that support alone wasn't enough to be profitable on and have been lashing out at the community that built around the original project, including independent opensource clients. It's not that the company shouldn't have the code as open source. The company shouldn't exist in the first place and we're all suffering for it.

jasonwatkinspdx 2y ago

Reciprocality over time building trust is in fact the basis of gift economies. Please read some David Graeber.

Aeolun 2y ago

> Receiving a gift does not form a social contract that entitles you to future gifts. Certainly, but if you exchange gifts with someone every christmas, have been doing so for a decade, and they suddenly stop giving you one, or give you an unpolished one where they previously cleaned it to a shine, you are perfectly within your rights to be a bit miffed at that, and withold your own. People can say the new license is reasonable (and by all reasonable measures it probably is) but that’s not how it feels, and that’s the important part.

UweSchmidt 2y ago

Open source is not a gift economy, and is in fact a different, and long established social contract. Never has this misplaced metaphor been used to describe open source, nor do the contributers demand any return that amounts to an "entitlement to future gifts".

jillyboel 2y ago

It absolutely is though. Do you not see any value in bug fixes? Do you think software never needs to be updated? We all know security updates are crucial, and pretending you can just run the old version forever is insane. If I contributed to redis in the past I did so under the assumption that I was contributing to a product that I could actually keep using. But instead they took all those contributions and gave the contributors a huge middle finger by denying them security updates and fixes. And sure, you can say "just do the bug fixes yourself". But if I knew that was going to be the case, I'd never have bothered to contribute.

evanelias 2y ago
> If I contributed to redis in the past I did so under the assumption that I was contributing to a product that I could actually keep using It sounds like you also have an assumption that the maintainers will spend the effort to maintain your contribution forever, after already spending the initial effort to review and integrate your contribution. This all takes time and money, which has to come from somewhere. You're asking "Do you not see any value in bug fixes? Do you think software never needs to be updated?" from the contributors' and users' point of view. But the same exact issue exists from the maintainers' point of view. A lot of people in this thread are commenting as if an open source contribution is a purely altruistic act by the contributor which then solely benefits the maintainers. That's far from the case in reality. Many third party contributors are writing their contributions as part of their day job (meaning they're paid to do it), and the contribution directly benefits themselves and/or their employer by fixing some problem they encountered or adding some feature that they needed.
- jillyboel 2y ago
  > It sounds like you also have an assumption that the maintainers will spend the effort to maintain your contribution forever, after already spending the initial effort to review and integrate your contribution. This all takes time and money, which has to come from somewhere. Correct, that's generally how open source works. You make a contribution, they merge it, and then the assumption is that it is maintained by the maintainers. You seem to act like this is an odd assumption, even though it is and has been the reality for pretty much every open source project ever. > But the same exact issue exists from the maintainers' point of view. Right, it's their "job". Maintaining the software. It's pretty much in the name. That's what happens when you accept contributions. They get merged into the software project, and then you (the maintainer) are responsible for maintaining it, or removing the functionality in a subsequent release. That's why code review happens where you consider the maintenance burden, and features sometimes don't get merged. If this doesn't sound appealing then don't become the maintainer of an open source project. > Many third party contributors are writing their contributions as part of their day job (meaning they're paid to do it), and the contribution directly benefits themselves and/or their employer by fixing some problem they encountered or adding some feature that they needed. Sure, and they could've kept it private so it only benefits them and/or their employer. But instead they chose to open source it in the hopes that 1) The maintainers will maintain it 2) It might benefit someone else That's the whole deal. You're essentially trading your contributions for future maintenance.

indymike 2y ago

> It is not a "rug pull" for someone to stop giving you gifts. I'm not sure that the developers contributing code from outside the company see it that way. An easy way to tell if contributors see a license change as a rug pull is if the forks that happen after the rug pull get traction. > The new license seems perfectly reasonable, given how much companies like Amazon have exploited the gift economy to the point where it threatens these startups survival. Most of the time, though, open source limits growth - and doesn't threaten the original author's startup. This is a really important distinction because there is a trade-off in choosing open source as a marketing strategy - you do potentially face competition from other contributors, users and parasites that will moderate growth.