22 ms·

Redis is open source again

• draw_down 1y ago
  [dead]
• placatedmayhem 1y ago
  I'm curious whether the community will trust Redis-the-company again after this, or if they'll choose to stick with Valkey. The other concern is at least some big company legal departments are wary of AGPL software, which makes Valkey, still BSD, more attractive to them. Edit: Regardless, thank you and the rest of the folks inside Redis for pushing to bring this back to OSS!
  • ksec 1y ago
    I am thinking the same that going to AGPL may actually push more people to Valkey. Although I haven't checked if ValKey any substantial development since the fork.
    • reconditerose 1y ago
      Yeah, there has been a lot of stuff like performance [1] and efficiency improvements [2]. A lot of the contributors, that didn't work for Redis labs but worked on Redis OSS before the fork, moved to Valkey and they continued to contribute. [1] https://valkey.io/blog/unlock-one-million-rps-part2/ https://valkey.io/blog/unlock-one-million-rps-part2/ [2] https://valkey.io/blog/new-hash-table/ https://valkey.io/blog/new-hash-table/
    • olavgg 1y ago
      Valkey has RDMA support, which offers significant performance improvements.
    • graton 1y ago
      Well Valkey has more commits to their repository then Redis does, and more contributors. So it appears to be active. https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey https://github.com/redis/redis https://github.com/redis/redis
    • skywhopper 1y ago
      In fact, some of Redis 8’s new features were taken from Valkey source code.
      • internetter 1y ago
        Lol feels a little hypocritical to complain about proprietary clouds, then take open source software from a competitor and embed it into your own
      • immibis 1y ago
        Is that why they're AGPL now?
  • VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
    I very much doubt that anyone will stick with valkey after the PaaS providers switch back to just offering Redis proper.
    • md3911027514 1y ago
      Why would PaaS providers switch back to offering Redis? They've clearly all already invested a lot in Valkey (AWS, GCP, Heroku).
      • antirez 1y ago
        AWS, GCP, surely are invested: they paid for ValKey, they forked to avoid doing revenue sharing with Redis in any way :D IMHO it's a matter of what the community does, and it, in turn, this depends on how well we are able to develop Redis. It's not just licensing and hyper-scalers, it's also a matter of development quality and direction. For instance, now in Redis you can find substantial more stuff not available in ValKey, including hash items expires, Vector Sets that are very useful for a number of things, the probabilistic data structures just introduced with Redis 8, and so forth.
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
      • lotharcable 1y ago
        If Redis is superior then sticking with Valkey would just be throwing good money after bad. Hopefully those companies are competent enough to understand the concept of sunk costs. Maybe Valkey has served its purpose in pressuring Redis into playing ball. Just answering "why would". Whether or not Redis is better then Valkey or if it would be worth it to switch back is not something I know.
      • kiitos 1y ago
        AWS and GCP offer valkey-based versions of products that are typically based on Redis, but those versions are currently, generally, preview-grade, and statistically zero customers are using them. They still offer the original, Redis-based versions of those products, which, statistically, 100% of their customers are using.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • kiitos 1y ago
    Statistically nobody is using valkey.
    • echoangle 1y ago
      Are there usage stats available? How do you know this?
      • potatocoffee 1y ago
        [flagged]
      • Osiris 1y ago
        My guess is most people are using Redis via cloud providers. Did any cloud providers switch away from Redis?
        • andenacitelli 1y ago
          AWS supports Valkey for Elasticache, and they actually bill it 33% cheaper. We use it and it works well.
        • pjm331 1y ago
          AWS Elasticache gave a nice discount to switch to valkey w/ 1 button click no downtime migration path
        • aweiher 1y ago
          ValKey is cheaper in AWS than Reddis
        • echoangle 1y ago
          Wasn’t the whole point (or one of the major ones) of Valkey so that AWS could use it?
      • reconditerose 1y ago
        My guess is they are making it up. AWS has no public information, but there are some high profile customers that have migrated https://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/customers/ https://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/customers/.
  • seneca 1y ago
    All of this aside, Redis-the-company has some of the least tactful salespeople I've come across in my long stint in this industry. Used car sales level tactics. Between that and the licensing, I would never consider dealing with them.
    • antirez 1y ago
      The team of sales was, AFAIK, rebuilt from scratch recently. Please if this happened recently tell me, and I'll make sure to report back. Thanks.
  • cortesoft 1y ago
    We kept using redis, the license change never affected us. We had no reason to switch.
    • ketzo 1y ago
      I imagine there is quite a large, quiet fraction (majority) of users who were the same way. Not to say it’s not an important discussion!
      • Alupis 1y ago
        Many people switched to Valkey and didn't even know it. A lot like how many users are using MariaDB but think they are using MySQL. Several major linux distros transparently switched to Valkey and the users are none-the-wiser. On Fedora, for example, doing `sudo dnf install redis` just installs Valkey.
        • sigzero 1y ago
          Well that's a reason not to use a distro right? If I type `sudo dnf install redis`, I want to install redis not valkey.
          • Alupis 1y ago
            I disagree probably because I'm just used to it. Most of your major distros do this, including Fedora and Debian (the two largest). Usually this is due to license issues.
            • fastball 1y ago
              "I'm used to it" is a terrible reason for disagreement.
          • gkbrk 1y ago
            If I update my packages and suddenly an open-source software is replaced with a closed-source one, I would blame my distro. It's totally normal for distros to replace packages like this with the best replacement they have.
  • llmthrow103 1y ago
    We switched to Valkey on our Elasticache instances and immediately noticed a performance improvement in our usecase that allowed us to reduce number of instances. Not really interested in moving back to Redis at this point.
• eknkc 1y ago
  During this time I believe a lot of alternatives (mostly protocol compatible to redis so they would be drop in replacements) came into light. Has there been a consensus on one? Is there a winner? I love redis and will probably keep using it. Just curious.
  • DeepYogurt 1y ago
    Valkey has replaced redis in a few distros
    • ezekg 1y ago
      Also PaaS like Heroku adopted Valkey as a drop-in replacement for Redis.
    • eknkc 1y ago
      It is a fork of the latest oss release right? I thought some completely new implementations were introduced.
      • reconditerose 1y ago
        It's not just a fork, there have been two releases on Valkey that improved performance and memory efficiency. There is a lie that Redis likes to spread that only their own employees were working on the core engine at the time of the fork, but most of the engineers on Valkey came directly from having worked on Redis OSS. A recent example is we modernized the hash table a bit: https://valkey.io/blog/new-hash-table/ https://valkey.io/blog/new-hash-table/.
        • antirez 1y ago
          Nobody wants to deny that Redis got from contribution from external developers. But it is fundamentally true that for like 8 years almost every substantial contribution was created by people working for Redis, and that later we got something that was still a small part compared to the total. There are the commit histories, the GitHub contribution graphs. Everything is public. The current code base was written for the majority by a few single folks, for another small amount of the sum of all random people in the community, for a smaller part by people that now work at ValKey.
• ezekg 1y ago
  Of course it's the AGPL, which is essentially the SSPL in practice.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    Except that it’s actually open source.
    • ezekg 1y ago
      In word, but not in deed. I'll say it over and over again: COSS startups don't adopt the AGPL because they want to prioritize user freedom, they adopt it as a means of defense.
      • happymellon 1y ago
        Absolutely in deed. Just because they don't have the same motives as you, doesn't stop it being a user freedom. Anything that shares the changes and improvements is a user improvement.
        • ezekg 1y ago
          You misunderstand my point. Startups adopt the AGPL, not for user freedom, but because of the FUD that makes the AGPL just like SSPL in practice. I wrote more about the issue here: https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/ https://keygen.sh/blog/whither-open-source/
      • anticorporate 1y ago
        I don't really care why they adopt it, only that they do. AGPL is a license I can use, SSPL is not.
  • ndiddy 1y ago
    The difference is how compliance is handled for cloud providers. Complying with the AGPL requires releasing the source code for the program you're hosting as a service. Complying with the SSPL requires releasing the source code for "all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software" under the terms of the SSPL. This is effectively impossible for any cloud provider to comply with (it would require a massive engineering effort to rewrite every single piece of software used to convey the service), which is why the OSI didn't approve it as an open source license.
• xiwenc 1y ago
  A bit more info from CEO: https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ Sounds like SSPL did not yield the desired outcome. Glad AGPL is an option now.
  • ocdtrekkie 1y ago
    It did yield the desired outcome: Google and AWS are no longer using it.
    • jillesvangurp 1y ago
      If by desired outcome you mean split the developer community and then chase them away to a newly forked competitor that is now widely used by all the cloud providers and users that prefer open source; complete success! But I doubt that was the outcome that they hoped for. They created a large and successful competitor that by nature of being a fork does exactly the same thing. It's pretty hard to compete with yourself and the differentiate from your own product. Honestly, I think Redis Inc. was better off when there was just one code base. AGPL just marginalizes them further. It's not an acceptable license for many corporate legal departments. So, it would necessitate buying a commercial license for such companies. I.e. Fortune 500 companies, public companies, and pretty much anything with a legal department worthy of the name. Note how Redis advertises AGPLv3 as "one" of the available licenses. The whole point of that license is selling commercial licenses. Valkey is at this point stable and supported and a drop in replacement. It's pretty much the default choice for anyone not interested in buying a commercial license. That genie isn't going back in the bottle with this license choice. More importantly, Valkey is a pretty active Github project with dozens of contributors in the last month. More than double those in Redis. Those commits aren't going to Redis. And Redis still requires the right to re-license your commits if you try to contribute. That's how they were able to pull this stunt to begin with. I doubt a lot of the Valkey contributors will be moving back to that status quo.
    • skywhopper 1y ago
      Not sure how the hyperscale clouds switching to a compatible/competing project from which Redis Labs gets no value or contribution is a win.
• VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
  I'm guessing valkey will be dead now?
  • detaro 1y ago
    why? The investment into it has already been done, and quite a few places will be happier with its license still. I think enough has happened/too much time passed that its not a given everyone will just quietly move back to Redis.
• kubatyszko 1y ago
  Sure, but the damage is done already, and it's AGPL too.
  • MrFurious 1y ago
    I can understand problems with SSPL license, but i cannot understand the problems with AGPL. If you use software for your SAAS service for free, and made changes in it, you should share the changes with others. Is free software, not a gift for your business.
• dismalaf 1y ago
  AGPL is cancer. Valkey already exists, people already switched, it's already landed in a bunch of distros. I don't see anyone moving back, especially when Valkey has some big corporate support. And for my personal usage, Rails 8 has moved Redis functionality into the database by default, which works fine.
  • nilamo 1y ago
    > Rails 8 has moved Redis functionality into the database by default, which works fine. Databases could always do what redis did. Redis doesn't bring functionality to the table, it brings speed. If database caching, pub/sub, and streams are good enough for your use case, there was never a reason to pay for an extra instance just to stand up redis.
    • anonzzzies 1y ago
      Extra instance and developer overhead.
  • mattl 1y ago
    AGPL isn’t cancer. It’s a license that exists to solve a particular problem: the proliferation of free software in a world of network services. If you don’t like it, don’t use AGPLv3 software. Those of us who do like it will keep writing AGPLv3 software.
  • dijit 1y ago
    AGPL is cancer[0] in exactly the same way GPL is cancer, in that it's intentionally designed to *BE* cancer (or, congenital at least). If you modify GPL code you are expected to open source the changes, AGPL adapts that to the networked world, if you modify AGPL code to serve something, you should open source those changes too, otherwise you're violating the original spirit of GPL which was designed in a time that was not as perpetually internet (and SaaS) driven as today. If you want a true free license, BSD or MIT have you covered, but then you shouldn't expect corporations to give back. A good example of what happens if companies don't give back is Linux VS the various BSD's. BSD is a lot more popular in appliances than you might otherwise believe but the popularity is starting to wane as Linux (despite GPL) has improved so much with companies giving back that the "free license" BSD is no longer being seen as good enough in some cases. People do not tend to give back to the BSD's. [0]: https://blog.jamesbayley.com/2014/01/17/gpl-living-with-cancer/ https://blog.jamesbayley.com/2014/01/17/gpl-living-with-canc...
• md3911027514 1y ago
  Our company made the switch over to Valkey, and we've invested hundreds of engineering hours into it already. I don't see us switching back at this point especially when it's clear Redis could easily pull the bait-and-switch again.
  • benwilber0 1y ago
    Your company invested hundreds of engineering hours switching from Redis to a clean fork of Redis?
    • cogman10 1y ago
      I can easily see this for a midsize company. While it's likely an easy process to drop in valkey, creating the new instances, migrating apps to those new instances, and making sure there's not some hidden regression (even though it's "drop in") all takes time. At a minimum, 1 or 2 hours per app optimistically. My company has hundreds of apps (hurray microservices). That's where "hundreds of hours" seems pretty reasonable to me. We don't have a lot of redis use in the company, but if we did it'd have taken a bit of time to switch over. Edit: Dead before I could respond but I figured it was worthwhile to respond. > It's literally just redis with a different name, what is there to test? I've seen this happen quite a bit in opensource where a "x just named y" also happens to include tiny changes that actually conflict with the way we use it. For example, maybe some api doesn't guarantee order but our app (in a silly manor) relied on the order anyways. A bug on us, for sure, but not something that would surface until an update of redis or this switch over. It can also be the case that we were relying on an older version of redis, the switchover to valkey necessitates that we now bring in the new changes to redis that we may not have tested. These things certainly are unlikely (which is why 1 or 2 hours as an estimate, it'd take more if these are more common problems). Yet, they do and have happened to me with other dependency updates. At a minimum, simply making sure someone didn't fat finger the new valkey addresses or mess up the terraform for the deployment will take time to test and verify.
      • sieabahlpark 1y ago
        [dead]
• linotype 1y ago
  No thanks, going to stick with Valkey for all future projects.
• mindaslab 1y ago
  [flagged]
• bravetraveler 1y ago
  After what Mullenweg has pulled, in the era of Blogging CEOs I have to be cynical. Valkey.
  • fastball 1y ago
    antirez is not the CEO of Redis.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • bravetraveler 1y ago
      Sorry, you're right. ICs, CTOs, and CEOs. Oh my. Pardon me for not subscribing to another accountability shell game. I again call Mullenweg. /s in case I haven't piled it on thick enough to make an impact. Read the last link of TFA [0], the last time this came up [1] (noting the timespan), and extrapolate as necessary. 0: https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ (CEO) 1: https://redis.io/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/ https://redis.io/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/ (CTO) Or don't, I don't care. Point/fix has been made.
      • fastball 1y ago
        I'm not really sure what your point is. Salvatore Sanfilippo (aka antirez and the author of this blog post) has never been the CTO or CEO of Redis Ltd. He didn't start it and only briefly worked there (relative to how long it has been around as a company).
        • bravetraveler 1y ago
          antirez isn't the focus of my ire, stop. They simply have the misfortune of proximity. The actual CTO told us 'always BSD'. Now Salvatore is telling us it didn't totally expire. Great! Except... the CEO forgot. Here's a lesson about AGPL and the Big Bad Cloud. Give me a break or I'll take one. At risk of confusing things further: YouTube is leaking, is kind of my point. Apologies again for not exhaustively phrasing my criticism. s/ging CEOs/gers/; better? One last try: I'm happy for the evangelism, I'm less happy about the repeat license discussion. The blogs from all of the employees add a frustrating element. It's a trend now spanning businesses. With what Mullenweg did, another conveniently forgetful CEO, I'm (admittedly, excessively) cynical. How you thought I was saying antirez is the CEO is utterly baffling. I have a hard time thinking this is genuine, but rather, a troll. Entirely non-sequitur/failure of compound reasoning.
• not_your_vase 1y ago
  This will be very relevant when Valkey decides to go closed source. It's better than the previous state of course, but it would have been even better if the previous license change didn't happen. As the french people say: fool me once, shame on you...
  • benatkin 1y ago
    fool me can't get fooled again But in seriousness, the chances of valkey going closed source are low. It's run by Linux Foundation. It would be like suggesting that Node.js might go closed source...
    • Zambyte 1y ago
      They were obviously making a tongue in cheek comment instead of seriously suggesting Valkey may go proprietary.
      • benatkin 1y ago
        And it was so absurd that it didn't land with me, even though most of the time I notice these sorts of things. Ah well.
  • paavohtl 1y ago
    Valkey is a Linux Foundation project. Talking about license changes is just pure irrational FUD.
• ac130kz 1y ago
  Good luck to them, everyone is moving to Valkey, especially with its major backing and already better performance.
• mattl 1y ago
  Redis should step up and fund an independent foundation now and encourage Valkey to contribute where relevant. Some code under a 3 clause BSD and some under AGPLv3 could be interesting.
  • _msw_ 1y ago
    Why? They can already just copy the code they want from Valkey, since Valkey is 3 clause BSD... But maybe Valkey should switch to GPLv3 instead to correct this imbalance. https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/13638 https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/13638
    • gray_-_wolf 1y ago
      I am not sure what that would achieve? Combining programs under GPLv3 and AGPLv3 is possible (the resulting work is under AGPLv3).
      • jraph 1y ago
        The imbalance I think _msw_ refers to is the fact that Valkey couldn't both take code from a GPL-licenced Redis and keep its license. So either they relicense, or they can't take code from Redis but Redis can take code from Valkey.
        • gray_-_wolf 1y ago
          I see, I misunderstood that. I have read it as an attempt to prevent redis taking the code from valkey. However, if the intention was the other way (to allow valkey to take code from redis), valkey should just go for AGPL as well, there is little reason to pick GPL if the code sharing would be the motivation for the license change.
      • _msw_ 1y ago
        Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. In theory, one would not be able to offer a combined program under other licenses (in particular, RSALv2 and SSPLv1), as those licenses have conflicts with GPL obligations. Direct contributions to the Redis project avoid this issue via a separate Contributor License Agreement. It would only mean that Redis developers could not unilaterally copy code from Valkey. I'm not saying that the Valkey community should do this. Personally, I think it's better off as a BSD-3 licensed project, with the community fulfilling the promise made by others that it would always be that way.
• jamessinghal 1y ago
  Similar move to Elasticsearch, tacking on AGPL with their existing source available licenses. [1] The products (commercialized open source) that are often chosen by and championed by developers as opposed to executives see the harm that a bait and switch has on their popularity. With their competitors being more permissive, I don't see many devs moving back unless Valkey loses significant feature parity. [1] https://ir.elastic.co/news/news-details/2024/Elastic-Announces-Open-Source-License-for-Elasticsearch-and-Kibana-Source-Code/default.aspx https://ir.elastic.co/news/news-details/2024/Elastic-Announc...
• remram 1y ago
  This doesn't solve anything, Redis has proved that it is willing to do a rug pull, and how much they are willing to hurt the community when they do (taking over client libraries, etc). I don't see a reason to go back from valkey. Again and again, Redis Labs has been the worst thing about Redis, I'm glad we now have an other option.
• kamranjon 1y ago
  One of the big things I love about Redis is that it’s become this tool for me to learn new techniques and explore data. Like, the new vector sets feature has let me really explore dense vectors and custom search and taxonomy mapping and all sorts of areas that seemed like a high barrier to entry for me, but now I’m just streaming stuff into llama.cpp with an embedding model and storing it in Redis and being able to do mappings between different data sets super efficiently. A big part of that is API design - I can’t think of another system that is as well thought out as the Redis API - it’s deceptively simple and because of that I didn’t have to wait for client libraries to incorporate the new Redis features - they just work cause they all speak RESP and I can just send raw commands. All of this is to say that I was really happy to hear Antirez was back working on Redis and it’s paying off in more ways than I could have imagined. People can use valkey or whatever they want as an alternative - but I like Redis because it’s always pushing forward and letting me explore new things that otherwise wouldn’t feel as “at my fingertips” as it does in Redis.
  • antirez 1y ago
    Thank you so much for your kind words! I tried hard, with Vector Sets, to follow exactly the "wave" you are referring here, I hope I was able to. Thanks.
    • Implicated 1y ago
      The Vector Sets, omg. Thank you, so much thank you :)
  • wg0 1y ago
    Redis is in SQLite and Wireguard league of simplicity and elegance.
  • boruto 1y ago
    Could you please link any blog post which goes into what you are talking about, I feel I am also at the high barrier to enter situation about this stuff
• c0l0 1y ago
  I contributed a minor (but imho still neat :p) improvement to Redis under its original license, and personally moved to using redict when the unexpected license change to SSPL was announced - and I was feeling betrayed as a contributor to a properly-FOSS-codebase. (Had they switched to AGPL right away, I'd have been perfectly fine with that change from a moral perspective, ftr.) I have a great deal of respect for antirez and recgnize him as a kind and benevolent member of the FOSS community, but no matter what Redis, Inc. announced or does, they have lost my trust for good, and I will continue to use Redis forks for as long as they exist.
  • homebrewer 1y ago
    The only real reason to use non-copyleft licenses for these kinds of projects is to be able to do the rug pull, so you should have expected it instead of feeling betrayed. I imagine they will now require copyright assignment or something like that for external contributors to be able to relicense new code under a commercial license.
    • kjrfghslkdjfl 1y ago
      [dead]
    • echelon 1y ago
      All advantage accrues to hyperscaler "managed" versions. That's so much more fucked than a rug pull. Amazon gets to make millions off of the thing you built. "Equitable source" licenses with MAU / ARR limits, hyperscaler resale limits, and AGPL-like "entire stack must be open" clauses is the way to go. It's a "fuck you" to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in particular and leaves you untouched. Open source today is hyperscaler serfdom. Very few orgs are running Redis on bare metal, and a equitable source license can be made to always support the bare metal case.
      • tough 1y ago
        It's sad as an open source lover how money fucks it all
• sammy2255 1y ago
  Kati Perri Hot Cold.
• NetOpWibby 1y ago
  It's a bold strategy, let's see if it works out for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HVejEB5uVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HVejEB5uVk
• xiphias2 1y ago
  ,,for companies rooted in open source, it has posed a fundamental challenge: how do you keep innovating and investing in OSS projects when cloud providers reap the profits and control the infrastructure without proportional contributions back to the projects that they exploit?'' I don't see any exploitation happening. As DHH said, the main reason engineers open source their work is to give a gift to the world.
  • immibis 1y ago
    Open source is a gift to everyone (including Jeffrey Bezos); free software is a sharing economy. The difference is whether the sharing is reciprocal. With open source it's a one way gift from you to Jeffrey. He could have paid you for that. At the very least you can make him pay with reciprocal sharing.
    • jraph 1y ago
      I think you are not describing the difference between open source and free software but the difference between copyleft and permissive license. Open source and free software licenses are basically the same (there are a few exceptions). For me, the difference is the focus. Free software cares about user freedom first.
    • immibis 1y ago
      User freedom means not giving someone else the freedom to take away user freedom though, which is what doormat licenses (can we call them cuck licenses or is that too far for HN?) do.
      • jraph 1y ago
        > User freedom means not giving someone else the freedom to take away user freedom though This sentence does a shortcut that's worth expanding on, because it can give the impression that permissive licenses don't respect user rights, and because it doesn't cleanly apply to every situations. User freedom is full with a permissive license. If I get software under MIT, my freedom is fully respected. But it is true that forcing downstream developers to respect the freedom of their users through copyleft licenses is one of the strategies to improve user freedom overall (Personally, that's why I prefer the (A)GPL - I'm not keen on helping). There still are some situations where you might be better off using a more permissive license, when your code is small enough or would strongly benefit from the network effect, for instance if it's a codec, or if there already are alternatives that proprietary software can use [1,2]. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html
• liviux 1y ago
  Wishing all real-open-source projects best of luck, including valkey, OpenTofu and so on. These are my clear first choice!
  • DetroitThrow 1y ago
    Copyleft does not mean fake-open-source, I'd not consider Linux fake-open-source for example. Though plenty of reason to use permissive licenses instead of copyleft and vice versa depending on your situation.
  • immibis 1y ago
    Copyleft is Free Software, free as in freedom. Pushover licenses (such as MIT) are working for free for Amazon, Google and Oracle. Which is fine if your boss is paying you money to work for free for Amazon, Google and Oracle - it's their money. If it's your own spare time, you might not like it as much.
• infogulch 1y ago
  Congrats antirez! I'm sure this was a huge effort internally, and I hope the Redis team can be successful releasing software under SSPL+AGPL.
• mmaunder 1y ago
  Here's the play: Open source with AGPL, then offer an enterprise license. You get two wins. The OSS community applauds your adoption of an agressive OSS license. Enterprise customers can't use software under AGPL because it risks infecting their IP, so they're forced to buy an enterprise license.
  • Zambyte 1y ago
    s/can't/choose not to/ s/'re forced to//
  • matesz 1y ago
    Wait, AGPL is a good license for enterprise, they don’t need to buy unless they want to modify source without releasing, am I wrong about this? Edit: Doubled checked with gpt, no cases of “infection” yet, there has also been many talks about this license being very good
    • umbra07 1y ago
      the alternative is/was BSD. enterprise hates AGPL. AGPL is generally not a serious alternative to BSD/MIT in corpoland, because something something (A)GPL-poisoning. whether it's true or not doesn't matter. what matters is whether big tech considers AGPL infectious - which they do.
      • jenadine 1y ago
        > whether it's true or not doesn't matter It matters a lot. A company could potentially make choice that saves them a lot of money, so they better base their decisions on accurate information rather than rumours. (Note also that big tech have different incentives)
    • immibis 1y ago
      The goal of free software (noting that "open source" is a watered down version of "free software") is for everyone to share their sohrce code. To that end, licenses that require sharing of source code are used. LGPL says, roughly, you must share the source code of this software to anyone you shared the binary to. GPL is more extensive: anyone you shared the binary or the binary of something built on this software to. AGPL is even more aggressive: anyone you shared it to or gave access to it over a network. And SSPL is currently the most aggressive: you have to share the whole thing you built, not just what's linked with this software. The more aggressive a license you pick, the more likely a corporation won't want to use it. But that's by design. They're allowed to use it, even commercially - they just have to give the source code back. If the software is useful enough, they will. We should make software useful enough for corporations to consider the be benefits of using it to outweigh the cost of having to share their source code. (Also the more source you make them share, the less likely this is. The Linux kernel succeeded at this. SSPL is controversial and untested (and goes against the business interests of the OSI so will never be box-tick certified compliant) and likely counterproductive if it means you have to share things like Windows. AGPL is the normal "aggressively free" license. GPL is mostly for those who haven't discovered AGPL yet and MIT is for those who don't agree in the goal of source code freedom to begin with.
• threatofrain 1y ago
  Notably, Redis is about to sue Dragonfly for deliberate trademark confusion.
• tiffanyh 1y ago
  While I applaud the effort to repair developer trust, do note that many organizations prohibit the use of AGPL. Linked below is Google's own stance on why AGPL is banned: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl-policy https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...
  • _msw_ 1y ago
    My personal opinion: we shouldn't let Google's bad policy poison our brains. The people who wrote that policy had their reasons for taking this position. It might have been the right thing for Google at the time the policy was written. That doesn't mean it's the right position for you, or for every situation. Many organizations with a higher levels of maturity in open source matters will take a more nuanced approach when it comes to AGPLv3 licensed software.
  • jraph 1y ago
    Their loss, at some point… I'm quite fed up with this GAFAM FUD against the AGPL and the GPLv3.
  • vvillena 1y ago
    That's the license working as intended, isn't it?
  • WD-42 1y ago
    So a hyperscaler bans the AGPL? Shocking. Seems to be working as intended.
• blotfaba 1y ago
  Hashtag #ThankYouValkey?
• DetroitThrow 1y ago
  I think the big drop in trust was the change in licensing away from permissive in the first place, but AGPL-today is a much better choice than SSPL-forever. You probably can't recover from a loss of trust in low single digit years unfortunately, but this is a good first step towards the project rebuilding the OSS community that existed around redis initially. Thanks for fighting for this. Hopefully this shows more companies stuck on source-available that you can achieve similar goals with OSS licenses.
• ibnurasikh 1y ago
  Gladly, Valkey has other benefits besides its more permissive license compared to Redis. One of them is multi-threading support, which makes it pretty easy for someone like me—who has a bit of a skill issue with DevOps—to actually utilize all CPU cores for my caching layer.
  • antirez 1y ago
    The I/O threading was initially implemented by myself, when I was still working on the core before rejoining, and is also available in Redis. So this is actually another case of the benefits ValKey got for being able to clone Redis, receiving money from the hyper-scalers that just want to maximize their revenues... They made certain improvements later, but Redis 8 (see the release notes in my blog post if you are curious) improved this stuff a lot, too. Also, Redis 8 contains a new data structure, Vector Sets, that allows to do many useful things, together with more probabilistic data structures, single hash fields expires, and many other stuff. It is not factually correct that ValKey has any features edge over Redis I believe. We will see in the next year which project takes the best development path: this is what really matters.
    • reconditerose 1y ago
      The Valkey implementation of multi-threading is fundamentally different than what existed in Redis. The history dates back to work done in ElastiCache that was released as "Enhanced IO", https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/03/amazon-elasticache-for-redis-503-enhances-io-handling-to-boost-performance/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/03/amazon-el.... The version released in Redis could only do about 350k RPS because of poor memory locality of operations, the inability to do command processing while handling I/O, and the inability to offload much of the TCP read path. The new version in Valkey can achieve 1.2M RPS. "They made certain improvements later", should be "we threw away the old implementation and built a better one."
      • antirez 1y ago
        1. The fundamental idea was mine. Ideas can be improved, of course, and that's good. That was my point. However, allow me to say that Redis is fundamentally a "software of ideas" than anything else. Technologically it is far from impressive (Redis, ValKey, all the forks). 2. Redis 8 improves the same idea, too, released today. 3. If you claim [in a different comment here] you provided a lot of code to Redis, why you didn't send a pull request for that? So, you are practically saying you were using, at Amazon, all the BSD code we provided, but could not provide an important part of the code to us? You see how broken such model was? At least stop defending it. 4. We can now copy the implementation: the parts are reversed (the irony!), and your code is BSD as our was for 15 years. When we avoid doing things like that, is because we have issues with how certain things were made. 5. I don't understand the motivations of you and other AWS people commenting here today. You work for a company that is creating issues to the OSS ecosystem: this is hard to deny. You cloned (and, yes, the license allowed for it) the code of Redis, and work on it so that hyperscalers can continued to do what they used to do. We bring Redis back to AGPL, and you are here to do the interests of Amazon in the comments. Did you see me commenting your stuff, when you release your things, with comments like "ah! But this is unfair"? There is to make choices. I understand that it was cool to continue to work at a Redis fork, and part of the incredible thing open source is, is that forks survive in the hands of different teams (but design ideas can be misunderstood and projects may turn into other projects). So if you are happy to hack on ValKey, I hope you'll have the best experience out of it. But there is to make choices on how/when to interact.
• md3911027514 1y ago
  https://redis.io/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/ https://redis.io/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/
• Zambyte 1y ago
  Very interesting that this is happening at the same time that NATS is going proprietary. Obviously Redis is way more well known, but as someone who has built a bunch on NATS over the last few years, this makes Redis an interesting choice to migrate to again.
  • nchmy 1y ago
    apparently synadia is working with the linux foundation now to find a better way forward, and will release a joint statement soon. (CEO mentioned in their slack)
    • Zambyte 1y ago
      Cool, I'm definitely hoping for a sensible outcome. NATS has been a great tool to work with, and Synadia has also been great to work with.
    • kermatt 1y ago
      https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2025/05/01/cncf-and-synadia-align-on-securing-the-future-of-the-nats-io-project/ https://www.cncf.io/announcements/2025/05/01/cncf-and-synadi...
  • williamstein 1y ago
    Context: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43829008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43829008 - https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/1632 https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/1632 - https://github.com/nats-io/nats-server/issues/6832 https://github.com/nats-io/nats-server/issues/6832 I also built a lot on NATS Jetstream, and I'm questioning my decision in light of the threatened license change.
    • snotreal 1y ago
      Why? Have you actually ready Synadia's comments where they made it clear that they always intended to maintain the Apache 2 Version by contributing the stuff they build back to the main repo? It just won't be as fast, so they can make some money first which will fund them giving it away. You said "I also built a lot" Are you making money off those projects or get paid for your services for that use?
• captn3m0 1y ago
  - 8.0 - Tri-licensed under RSALv2/SSPLv1/AGPLv3 - 7.4 - Dual licensed under RSALv2/SSPLv1 - 7.2 and earlier - 3BSD
• zoogeny 1y ago
  I am starting a new web app project and I wanted an in-memory store for session data. I just defaulted to Redis, literally yesterday doing the `npm install`. I mean, I remembered the whole Valkey saga after the license switch. I guess I'm just not as ideological as some here? I just thought "I need a fast in memory object store" and went with Redis as my default. I treat it like an appliance within my infrastructure. I also vaguely recall antirez going back to Redis (the company) during the AI boom to work on vector extensions to Redis. I believe he is a big part of why Redis is such a rock-solid piece of tech. I am more confident in this product with him influencing the trajectory. I also have the decision on license in the back of my mind. As I said, I am not an OSS zealot, but I do like the idea of an OSS license that has some protection against someone completely ripping off the code with no recourse. AGPL might be a decent compromise, especially with a dual license.
• immibis 1y ago
  Flagged for misleading headline. SSPL is open source. It's just not the open source you want. It meets all the criteria and the only difference from AGPL is how much source code you have to release and when - which is also the difference between GPL and AGPL. It has problems, but being closed source isn't one of them. The OSI will never certify it, of course, because that would go against the business interests of the OSI members. The OSI is a consortium of companies who receive free labour from permissively licensed projects and to a lesser extent GPL projects, and it would like that to continue, which it cannot in practice under SSPL. The OSI article linked in a reply does not make a single point against the open-sourceness of the SSPL, and essentially just says they don't like it, and that some companies won't be able to comply, which is true of every free software license. The FSF, Debian, etc haven't decided one way or another because it's not a very widespread license and they can just use valkey instead of wasting the effort.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    This is not a widely accepted claim. I do not see SSPL as open source, and neither do OSI[0] or FSF[1] or Debian[2]. [0]https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-license https://opensource.org/blog/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l... [1]https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html [2]https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/ https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/
    • ocdtrekkie 1y ago
      We need to stop taking the OSI or FSF's positions on anything as particularly valuable. The OSI is captured entirely by corporate sponsors. Amazon was paying a full-time salary a year to the OSI when the SSPL issue happened, the OSI had no ability to take a moral pro-labor stance without crippling their own operations. They still do not meaningfully answer to individual users: The OSI recently refused to disclose who won their board election and installed their preferred candidates. And it will be inherently unethical to even consider the position of the FSF as long as it lacks the moral fortitude to permanently punt RMS from the board. If the OSI wasn't owned by corporate interests, and had rightfully declared SSPL as a copyleft license... nobody would argue it isn't. The problem is we've let an extremely problematic organization "define" something in a way that does not serve our interests.
• nailer 1y ago
  If you care about open source, and would like Llama 3 to also be open source (instead of the current license which, like Redis' SSPL, isn't, depite Meta saying it is), you might want to add your vote to: https://github.com/meta-llama/llama3/issues/156 https://github.com/meta-llama/llama3/issues/156
• edweis 1y ago
  Mesmerizing number of views. I must admin I refreshed the page multiple times to see the count increase. If I increased the view count several times, I must admin I did not read the article multiple times.
• rdtsc 1y ago
  That's great news. I never liked the newly sprung up licenses. I understand the background but always felt a burden having to read and understand them, and wonder how they'd hold up in practice. GPL licenses have been around for decades and is something people, including legal teams, know more about. And when I say "know", I don't mean "like": it could be that this will just make it easier for a particular team to decide that it doesn't want to deal with the AGPL, and they should go find something else, but at least it's clear what it is. As opposed to some BSSXYZWL license that you never heard of, which kind sounds like it's open source but kind of isn't...
  • tombert 1y ago
    I fairly recently dodge a bullet; I rewrote a large chunk of code I was working on using Akka because my idea lent itself fairly well to an actor system. I got it working fine with Akka on my local machine, I was about to make a PR for it at work, and then saw that it was using BUSL instead of Apache, which I had assumed it was using (since a lot of stuff in the Java world seems to use Apache). I did get my stuff working with Pekko (the Apache fork of Akka), and it did work, but I was so pissed off at the entirety of this that I ended up rewriting the entire thing again using Vert.x, which I double checked the license for before doing more work. I do understand why Akka feels like they have to use something like BUSL, it's hard to make money as a smaller software company, doubly so for open source software, and I also realize me complaining that "this free product made with free labor isn't free enough for me" is pretty entitled, but fundamentally I really don't think that the BUSL (and its similar licenses) are the right way forward. Whether or not it's fair, stuff like Akka does have competition from stuff that has more OSS-friendly stuff, and fundamentally I'm just going to use those, and if they're not up to snuff I'll augment them myself.
  • antirez 1y ago
    That's a good point, traditional OSS licenses, we can like them or not, but they are "understood".
    • CaptainFever 1y ago
      "Choose boring licenses."
• badmonster 1y ago
  great news
• rustc 1y ago
  They still require a CLA [1] so there's nothing stopping them from doing another relicense to a proprietary license tomorrow. The only way this remains open source forever is to accept AGPL-only licensed patches. [1]: https://github.com/redis/redis/blob/d65102861f51af48241f607afa678c4c2a0f894c/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/redis/redis/blob/d65102861f51af48241f607a...
  • Macha 1y ago
    That's sort of fine. As a personal user, someone could fork and maintain redis in that case, which wasn't true in the SSPL era. Now AGPL+CLA is not a license I'd contribute under, but also Redis is so far down my priorities that it wasn't a project I was going to be issuing PRs for anyway.
    • jenadine 1y ago
      > AGPL+CLA is not a license I'd contribute under, Why not? Is it because only one company can make proprietary fork? Would you rather contribute to MIT software where everyone can make proprietary fork? Or AGPL without CLA where nobody can make proprietary fork?
      • eitland 1y ago
        > Would you rather contribute to MIT software where everyone can make proprietary fork? In my case that is it. I'm totally fine with people taking my MIT licensed code in a MIT licensed project and running with it. However, working for free on someone elses code base knowing that they can always go commercial with it or do whatever they want while I and the rest of the community is stuck with AGPL, that is something I'd rather avoid, if possible.
      • Macha 1y ago
        Yes, the asymmetry is a problem. If the terms the company has to use my contributions is more favorable to them than the terms under which I can use their contributions, then I'm not into playing that game.
• dbacar 1y ago
  Thanks, maybe this will be exemplary behavior for Elastic and Mongo.
• simonw 1y ago
  From this post on the Redis blog https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ it looks like they've made a bunch of new features available under the new AGPL license too: > Integrating Redis Stack technologies, including JSON, Time Series, probabilistic data types, Redis Query Engine and more into core Redis 8 under AGPL Redis Query Engine is new-to-me (I stopped following Redis closely after the license change) - it looks like an in-memory alternative to a lot of the things you might do with Elasticsearch: https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/interact/search-and-query/ https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/interact/search-and-que... With syntax that looks something like this: FT.SEARCH places "museum @city:(san francisco|oakland) @shape:[CONTAINS $poly]" PARAMS 2 poly 'POLYGON((-122.5 37.7, -122.5 37.8, -122.4 37.8, -122.4 37.7, -122.5 37.7))' DIALECT 3 (This is a smart move in terms of answering the question "Why would I switch back to Redis if I've moved to Valkey" - Redis just grew a bunch of new interesting features.)
  • taway1525 1y ago
    [flagged]
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • kragen 1y ago
    Dismayingly, the CEO misspelled antirez's last name in this press release, https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/. That's so incredibly disrespectful: > Following our license change, in November of 2024 Salvatore Sanfillipo (antirez) decided to rejoin Redis as a developer evangelist. Collaborating with Salvatore on new capabilities, company strategy and community engagement has been a true privilege that has made a major impact that will pay dividends into the future. If it's a true privilege, you should earn it by not misspelling his name. Actions speak louder than words. Pink Floyd has a song about this: Well, I've always had a deep respect and I mean that most sincere The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think Oh, by the way, which one's Pink? And did we tell you the name of the game, boy? We call it riding the gravy train We're just knocked out, we heard about the sell-out You gotta get an album out, you owe it to the people We're so happy we can hardly count Everybody else is just green, have you seen the chart? It's a hell of a start, it could be made into a monster If we all pull together as a team.
• dec0dedab0de 1y ago
  So with redis being AGPL, who counts as a user? If you have a webapp that uses redis on the backend for a task queue, do the users of the webapp count as users of redis, and you then have to provide source to redis? Is there a chance that you might have to release your apps code to be compliant?
  • jopsen 1y ago
    I just read the AGPL and the FAQs and it's not entirely clear to me either. Probably why many companies find AGPL toxic.
  • ensignavenger 1y ago
    This is my number one objection to the AGPL. Still way better than the SSPL or BUSL, but I will stick with valley for now.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    No. Users of Redis are the ones connecting to it. Furthermore, the Redis client library that you link into your program is MIT licensed. Unless you embed Redis directly into your app, you'd never have to release your own code to use it.
    • dec0dedab0de 1y ago
      I think this is correct, at least I hope so. I wish it were common for projects to explain in common language how they expect the license to work, with examples of how it applies to their project.
• sneak 1y ago
  This is disappointing. The AGPL is a nonfree (and nonsensical) license. The fact that the FSF wants a EULA but can’t have a EULA without violating Freedom 0 doesn’t make the AGPL suddenly logically sound. marcan has written about it in more detail than I care to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30044019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30044019 Stop using the AGPL. It violates the basic principles of free software. The ability to run a SaaS company with free software is a feature, not a bug.
  • jraph 1y ago
    You can run a SaaS company with AGPL-licensed software, no problem. What do you think is nonfree about AGPL?
    • sneak 1y ago
      Not a differentiated one. The AGPL, in its quest to be a EULA, violates free software Freedom 0 ("The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose"). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html The AGPL literally demands specific functionality be present in the software that cannot be removed without breaking the license. The anticapitalist FSF zealots got so in love with the idea of closing what they call "the ASP loophole" that they wrote themselves a EULA.
      • gkbrk 1y ago
        > The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose I can do this with AGPL software just fine. Which purposes are not allowed under AGPL?
        • sneak 1y ago
          You are not allowed to modify an AGPL program without adding a mandatory feature to provide the currently-running source code to a remote network user of the software. You are also not allowed to remove that functionality. It's a clear violation of freedom 0. I suggest that you read the actual text of the AGPL. It's madness. They wanted a EULA so badly.
• bk496 1y ago
  cool, does this means it works on Windows now?
• gray_-_wolf 1y ago
  I am bit confused by the comments here. Sure, it remains to be seen whether Redis Ltd. can be trusted again, but cannot we just be a happy for a bit that we (again) have a good software under a free license?
• simonw 1y ago
  Lots of cynical takes in this thread - and I get it, there isn't a guarantee they won't relicense again in the future (they have a CLA that would let them) and people feel betrayed by the last license change. I think we should celebrate this anyway. It's a smart decision, it's what the community wanted to happen and it would be great if other companies with janky licenses could see "Redis relicensed to open source and had a great boost out of it", not 'Redis relicensed to open source and it didn't help them at all". I'm delighted. Thank you, team Redis.
  • antirez 1y ago
    Thank you, Simon. I believe that cases like Elastic and Redis returning back to an open source license is like writing on the rock: "open source won", at least in the system software space. Companies get created, prosper and fail over time, but this message is here to stay with us for a long time, and shapes the society of tomorrow. It's a win of the software community itself.
    • lolinder 1y ago
      It's a win for the community over and against the corporations that are Redis and Elastic. They're not the good guys for giving in to the pressure. They tried to ride FOSS to prominence and then extract wealth on the backs of the community and found that the community mattered more than they did. So sure, let's celebrate, but celebrate the community, not those who tried to pull the rug out from under them.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • antirez 1y ago
        I said exactly that's a win of the community. But money are needed to pay the folks that work at open source software, and the companies that went for the SSPL were trying to protect their business (and, as a side effect, wanted or not, the ability to pay for such work). I believe the software world failed to protect open source software in the cloud era, but in general the environment that we collectively created made the open source software won.
• createaccount99 1y ago
  AGPL + selling under other licenses seems to be the way
• otterley 1y ago
  If there's a lesson to be learned from this drama, it's that changing a software license from a liberal open-source one to a anti-competitive one (even if the source is still available and open to contribution) is a one-way door and loses trust. Once done, even if you recognize your error and revert the license, you're not getting that trust back.
  • freeAgent 1y ago
    The announcement just happened. I don’t know that we know the results yet.
    • lolinder 1y ago
      Elastic announced they were switching back a few months ago, we should be able to measure the results by now.
  • jonny_eh 1y ago
    > you're not getting that trust back It's not black and white. They'll get some trust back at least.
    • otterley 1y ago
      Anyone capable of pulling a rug once is capable of doing it twice.
      • jonny_eh 1y ago
        You can't win all the trust back at once, it's a process.
• ConanRus 1y ago
  stop clowning around already
• umajho 1y ago
  MinIO also switched to AGPLv3 a while back, and they stated that “the AGPL license requires that all software connecting with MinIO be 100% open source for you/your users not to be in violation of the license.”[^1] Since Redis and MinIO are somewhat similar, (Both can be used to store and retrieve data. Redis uses a custom protocol, and MinIO uses an S3-compatible API.) Should I assume that this statement also applies to Redis? [^1]: https://github.com/minio/minio/issues/13308#issuecomment-929254690 https://github.com/minio/minio/issues/13308#issuecomment-929...
  • pingiun 1y ago
    I believe the AGPL doesn't actually require this, even though MinIO may think it does. I hope someone gets sued over this some day so we may find out
    • merb 1y ago
      It would not even make sense. Since you do not even always know what license the thing has you are connecting to. And not even the fsf sees it that way.
      • jopsen 1y ago
        Sure, if you're connecting to a service using AGPL, the service operator must offer the source along with a copy of the license. I'm no lawyer, but unless the software in question makes an exception for the particular API, I wouldn't feel confident. Or what is the distinction here?
  • preisschild 1y ago
    > Should I assume that this statement also applies to Redis? I dont think it applies to clients using the API at all. It just specifies that the modified source should be offered to clients connecting over the API, but not that the client itself has to be open source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...
  • jan_g 1y ago
• revskill 1y ago
  Is it a business decision right ?
• ksynwa 1y ago
  I ask this as a scrub end user. What are the implications of forking when it comes to a Redis? Specifically, what I am wondering about whether forks like valkey which are worked on by competent programmers[1] continue to be good choices or does Redis Inc. having founded redis give it a distict advantage? [1] I am assuming this because valkey comes under the Linux Foundation umbrella.
• ingen0s 1y ago
  amen
• skrebbel 1y ago
  I wonder whether they did deals with AWS and Google behinds the scenes. Something like "you poured money into Valkey, how about you give that kind of money to us instead and we'll switch to AGPL and you can stop confusing two customers with two practically identical but differently priced options". Could that ever work? (I have no idea)
  • reconditerose 1y ago
    Google is well known for having banned AGPL (https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty/licenses https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty...).
    • skrebbel 1y ago
      Oh nice! Smart move then. Makes me wonder why they went with SSPL in the first place.
• hsnice16 1y ago
  In time, I built this - https://github.com/hsnice16/golang_learning/tree/main/One2N/in-mem https://github.com/hsnice16/golang_learning/tree/main/One2N/...
• eduction 1y ago
  I'm always grateful for open source code, but on AGPL I can only quote the lawyer Kyle Mitchell: "Inebriated aliens might as well have beamed it down from space as a kind of practical joke..." "It’s not just hard for lawyers, who have the legal picture and can parse the whole license very carefully without passing out...It’s also hard for hackers, even those familiar with free software lore, who lack the legal side of the picture and a sense of what other ways things might have been said. Imagine how people who don’t know software, law, legal drafting, software architecture, hacker culture, or the self-styled 'philosophical' musings of one Richard M. Stallman feel." https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL https://writing.kemitchell.com/2021/01/24/Reading-AGPL As Mitchell implies folks who want network copyleft should look into the more straightforward OSL3, IMO. But it's something, and it's not my call to make because I didn't write the code, so properly I can only be grateful.
  • skrebbel 1y ago
    This is the first time I read about OSL3 (https://opensource.org/license/osl-3-0-php https://opensource.org/license/osl-3-0-php). I'm bad at licenses, and I admit I don't completely get it. At first glance, it seems like a simpler more readable license that tries to accomplish something similar to AGPL. I think the "license terminates when you sue me for patent infringement" clause is nifty. But it says that an "external deployment" counts as "distribution" (ok, fair), which means you must OSL-license your changes too (ok, fair too). But how does that in practice prevent AWS and GCP from cloud-hosting your software without giving back? Seems to me that if Redis went OSL3, GCP could host it fine so long as they'd OSL3-distribute any changes they made.
    • em-bee 1y ago
      how does that in practice prevent AWS and GCP from cloud-hosting your software without giving back it doesn't. but neither does the AGPL. the only reason companies avoid the AGPL is because the AGPL stipulates that anything that the software is integrated with must be distributed as well. they are avoiding the GPL for the same reason. i don't know if the OSL does that too. if it doesn't then it would be less protective than the AGPL. the AGPL works to prevent competition because companies are scared of it, but that was not its intention. none of the GPL licenses are intended to prevent competition without giving back. and that is the real problem that redis and other companies are facing: how can we share source with our users without allowing well funded competitors to eat our lunch. there are several experimental licenses that are trying to address that problem, among others, FUTO is working on that, as is bruce perens. but so far no clear choice has emerged. and unfortunately many see the idea of limiting competition as against the spirit of FOSS. personally, i think that needs to change.
• Nemo_bis 1y ago
  As noted by others, this is irrelevant unless Redis actually uses AGPL as the primary license for the software (that is, in an inbound=outbound fashion). https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2014/jun/09/do-not-need-cla/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2014/jun/09/do-not-need-cla/
• rcarmo 1y ago
  Great to see this. 12 years ago I wrote https://github.com/rcarmo/miniredis https://github.com/rcarmo/miniredis during a very slow weekend where I both wanted to get a feel for the internals of how Redis worked and have a little PubSub server I could call my own. I spent the entire weekend poring over the C code and found it some of the most beautiful C I'd ever read (ever since the heady years of SunOS), and now I feel I should at least go and update miniredis to asyncio/Python 3--for kicks...
  • eGQjxkKF6fif 1y ago
    Do it. I'm thinking of making one for node.
    • rcarmo 1y ago
      Already started. python3 branch. Claude removed all my nice idiomatic conditional expressions, but the (few) tests I have for the server already pass, and the aioserver is coming next :)
      • eGQjxkKF6fif 1y ago
        Nice. Godspeed to you sir. I'll keep a gander on it.
• theturtletalks 1y ago
  When Antirez left Redis, he wrote an amazing blog post I go back to often [0]. In there he said: "I write code in order to express myself, and I consider what I code an artifact, rather than just something useful to get things done. I would say that what I write is useful just as a side effect, but my first goal is to make something that is, in some way, beautiful. In essence, I would rather be remembered as a bad artist than a good programmer." I'm glad Antirez was seeing his art losing it's beauty and now, is reclaiming it! 0. https://antirez.com/news/133 https://antirez.com/news/133
  • parrit 1y ago
    So nice to hear talk like that in the AI "your code is worthless age". Keep the craft going!
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• radium3d 1y ago
  Wow I chose to start using redis in the right week :)
• martinsnow 1y ago
  They can seriously screw themselves with the rugpull they made. I reported so many bugs and helped diagnose them in the sentinel module. Seriously fuck them.
• tonyhart7 1y ago
  they realize that they dont have a "moat" and if entire industry try hard enough to replace them then its over for them
• foobarian 1y ago
  I'm happy to see the news after having a chance to look at sources more closely (for unrelated reasons). The Redis geohash/gis related implementation is such a pleasure to read.
• alabhyajindal 1y ago
  LMAAOO
• osigurdson 1y ago
  I think a project has to be Linux or Postgres big to really operate as open source. Why? Because cloud providers can easily sell your product and contribute nothing back. So, for anything < Postgres in size you need to create a new license to allow you to run a managed service. The problem is, with something like AGPL, companies that aren't selling your stuff (just using it), now need to release their stuff as AGPL as well. With so many things using Redis, it seems that millions of companies will now be in violation of the license agreement upon a given update in the future. Personally, I think it is better just to call a spade a spade and release things with commercial licenses. Let all companies with < 1T market cap use your stuff for free. Companies that are making money will want a managed service or support anyway. Companies that want to host your stuff in their environment fall into the > $1T category. The above is a bit of a strawman but what we really want is for valuable projects to continue to exist.
  • lukaslalinsky 1y ago
    What about looking at it the other way around, neither Linux nor PostgreSQL is a commercial product, never were and never will be. Many people create commercial products on top of them, and that's OK, it's allowed by the license. Even Redis started as a fully open source project. But then it was sold to a company, and company cares more about making money than taking care of open source product. If you are a small company, and want to create an open source product, that's only free for personal use, just say so up front. Don't try to pretend the product is something else. It's really not about size, it's about motivation, and the motivation of a company is always making money in the first place.
• _tom_ 1y ago
  Doesn't AGPL give you LESS rights? (fewer?) AGPL is pretty much a non-starter for any commercial development. The RSALv2 let you use Redis, unless you were a service provider. Now, you can't use it for anything (EVERYTHING is accessed over a network now) without sharing your source. So, before everyone but amazon could use it for commercial purposes, now no one can.
  • skywhopper 1y ago
    1) you can still use it under RSAL. 2) you only have to share what you change. You don’t have to change it to provide it as a service, but if you do, you have to share the code. That doesn’t seem particularly harsh and certainly doesn’t prevent providing it commercially.
  • roetlich 1y ago
    Unless you modify Redis, what do you want to share? You don't have to share any of your server code or anything. No reason to be so dramatic. :)
    • _tom_ 1y ago
      You have to make the choice about sharing at the start. If you use AGPL and later decide to make changes, you'll have to share. So most don't want to risk it. But more important, AGPL software is banned at many large corporations. It's simply not an option.
• aftbit 1y ago
  From the CEO blog post - https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ https://redis.io/blog/agplv3/ >This achieved our goal—AWS and Google now maintain their own fork Was this really the goal though? Forcing your biggest users to fork your software and maintain their own divergent version is not really good for anyone. Sure, Amazon and Google (or AWS and GCP - type confusion in the source material) now have to contribute some more engineering hours to the open fork, but why would anyone still want to use Redis now that there's a permissively licensed alternative maintained by the same cloud hyperscalers who will end up running it for you?
  • skybrian 1y ago
    Are there compensating benefits? For web browsers, having multiple, competing implementations is considered good.
    • jacobgkau 1y ago
      Are there benefits to the ecosystem? Possibly. But the person you replied to was talking about Redis's goal, and I don't think it's likely their goal had anything to do with having a competitor to themselves around. Even if they did want that, they could've just bankrolled (or engineered) a fork; changing a license to one that causes your largest users to do the work themselves is a rather roundabout way to do it. I can almost kind of see the large users needing to work together on a replacement, meaning that replacement might as well be open-source, meaning Redis can get future improvements that were funded by the fork users (who Redis was upset wasn't paying them) as a semi-vindictive, semi-useful goal. But it's still roundabout. If that was really the plan, it could've been articulated better in this postmortem to make it clear the "goal" bit hadn't just been BS'd.
  • Spivak 1y ago
    Yeah this take kind of surprised me, you really wanted Valkey to be the default option for cloud customers ensuring they'll have no migration path to your own offering? I just don't get it. You were getting $0 and now you're getting $0.
    • 1y ago
• znpy 1y ago
  The post is a bit misleading as the agpl is a licensing option but not the license. It’s a good trade-off though. Grafana does the same and they’re doing just fine. I hope redis gets to live a long life now that’s more open than ever (essentially it’s free software now) :) After the redis troubles I hope more people start to realise that the GPL license is the way really, and that other licenses (like the BSD that Redis used to use) are really just too risky.
• fooker 1y ago
  Does anyone use redis any more?
• gitroom 1y ago
  was honestly waiting for something like this, but that trust hit doesn't really fade for me - you think companies ever recover from stuff like this or do folks just move on for good?
• bionhoward 1y ago
  Again? Didn’t it go from BSD to some infectious copyleft thing? Doesn’t seem “open source again” to me if we can’t use it in private work projects without being forced to open source our project. Isn’t AGPL even WORSE than what they switched from? Wouldn’t “open source again” imply going back to BSD?
  • yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
    > Again? Didn’t it go from BSD to some infectious copyleft thing? They went to SSPL, which isn't open source. (Whether it's copyleft is an interesting exercise left to the reader. I genuinely don't know, I'd have to stare at definitions for a bit to form an opinion.) > Doesn’t seem “open source again” to me if we can’t use it in private work projects without being forced to open source our project. Er, I'm not a lawyer, but why wouldn't you be able to use it in a private work? AFAIK the viral parts of AGPL/GPL only say you have to share source with users of the software; if your only user is you then it's immaterial. > Isn’t AGPL even WORSE than what they switched from? Wouldn’t “open source again” imply going back to BSD? Worse/better is somewhat subjective, but AGPL is a (Free and) Open Source license. It was open source (BSD), then it wasn't (SSPL), then it was open source (AGPL).
• redbell 1y ago
  Ironically, when Redis changed their license a couple of months ago, I commented back then [1]: 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 Yeah, that future had come, and Redis is free again! Thanks antirez and to all the team behind Redis. _________________ 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41611636#41612750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41611636#41612750
• mkoubaa 1y ago
  No need to trust them. Use it and if the license changes fork it again. Where is the problem?
• donatj 1y ago
  Literally the day after I started working on moving to Valkey... That's how it goes.
  • fastball 1y ago
    Why the change yesterday? Were there developments happening in Valkey that made you feel like a switch would be worthwhile?
• senderista 1y ago
  Why I will never try to monetize my own project: 1. To monetize a project, it must first gain wide adoption. 2. To gain wide adoption, it must have a permissive license. 3. To successfully monetize (after gaining wide adoption), it must have a restrictive license. 4. Changing a project's license to be more restrictive will alienate the community and hurt adoption. I see no solution to this dilemma.
• bpiroman 1y ago
  I still don't understand what Redis does or why we need it as web devs...
• PeterZaitsev 1y ago
  Note AGPL license is in completely different class compared to BSD. Where BSD was level playing field allowing anyone to do commercial derivatives, now only Redis can do it. I also question whenever this decision comes from the pure change of heart rather than threat of Valkey... and if so what else should we expect in the future
• pabs3 1y ago
  I would love to see Amazon offer a Redis service, comply with the AGPLv3 instead of using the other Redis licensing options and do revenue sharing to incentivise more commercial source-available projects to go that route.
  • antirez 1y ago
    Microsoft does this.
    • pabs3 1y ago
      Interesting, is there any more public info about this? If not, have you/Redis considered blogging about it?
      • acmeian 1y ago
        It was announced back in November: https://redis.io/blog/introducing-azure-managed-redis/ https://redis.io/blog/introducing-azure-managed-redis/
        • pabs3 1y ago
          That predates AGPL Redis, so doesn't sound like what I was talking about. Sounds more like a custom license given to Microsoft only.
• thr0waway001 1y ago
  AW YEEAH!
• fmxsh 1y ago
  Not seen any mention of KeyDB... Maybe I miss something obvious, but it solved my small use case that would stretch to the other side of Redis pay wall. I'm very happy with KeyDB.
• bradgessler 1y ago
  I got a really stupid email from Redis®* a year ago that wanted me to put a disclaimer on the “first page” where Redis®* appeared on a website, as if it was a paper legal document. That was the very moment Redis®* died for me—I’ve never encountered a tech company that was so aloof about how tech works. Hopefully that damage is undone. — *Redis is a registered trademark of Redis Ltd. Any rights therein are reserved to Redis Ltd. Any use by Brad Gessler is for referential purposes only and does not indicate any sponsorship, endorsement or affiliation between Redis and Brad Gessler.
  • hodgesrm 1y ago
    It's not the only company that does this. That's why foundations typically ask for the trademark and logos as part of donating code.
  • antirez 1y ago
    You are right, and this attitude was reverted. You can't imagine what law departments can do even without explicit mandate, if not correctly moderated. Redis grew very fast in the middle of a CEO switch and I believe this created many issues like this one. Now, we should be past that. To provide an example in a very important field, client libraries, the decision was to help with the code sending PRs and don't interfer with things like trademarks.
• nicman23 1y ago
  yeah no thanks
• FooBarWidget 1y ago
  Cloud vendors have been strip-mining open source for years, yet judging by user and contributor sentiment on forums such as HN, and the lack of OSI-approved licensing innovation, there’s been no meaningful progress toward a solution. If anything, I get the feeling that the community is effectively more on the side of cloud vendors than on the side of authors. It seems the community at large doesn't care about authors' businesses suffering. Meanwhile, they largely don't oppose cloud vendors forking the latest open source version either. AGPL protects better against cloud strip-mining than most opens source licenses, but doesn't solve the fundamental problem of big cloud vendors easily outcompeting authors' businesses. AGPL only compels source sharing when the software is modified and offered over a network. But cloud providers can sidestep that by hosting the unmodified version. They excel at operations at scale and sales. Most open source consumers seem to care more about benefiting from this than about the authors' struggles. Fair source licenses — such as SSPL and Elastic License — while not OSI-compliant, are designed thoughtfully to balance authors' business and user needs, and don’t impact the vast majority of users. They often only restrict cloud-scale commercial hosting, not self-hosting or local use. Yet they trigger disproportionate outrage. This is part of a broader problem: the community’s lack of empathy for authors. It is unsustainable. Open source maintainer burnout has been going on for a long time now. The "indie" open source author community is aging. Meanwhile, many big open source projects come from large coporations who use open source as a loss leader. My impression is that: 1. the community at large is too stuck in ideological purity, in an age where the original FOSS ideology is a bad fit. Permissive licenses made sense when open source was a grassroots movement fighting for adoption — not when it’s powering trillion-dollar clouds. 2. People prioritize their own short-term interests too much. Companies are doing open source because of the momentum we built over the past few decades. This momentum is being eroded by maintainer burnout, fragmented ecosystems, and declining trust between authors and users. Yet the open source consumer and authorities such as FSF and OSI effectively neglect indie author health. This is going to collapse one day. If we want open source to survive as more than just free labor for cloud providers, we need a new movement—one that defends both user freedom and author sustainability.
• globular-toast 1y ago
  The increased use of AGPL is a good sign. Hopefully more people start to realise copyleft licences are what is good for us (people, communities). Permissive licences are for big corporations. Looking at the comments it's amazing how much damage Ballmer/Microsoft did to free software with their "infection" rhetoric. Amazing that people would choose something that's good for Microsoft. Hint: if Microsoft likes something then you (a person) almost certainly want the complete opposite.
• xolve 1y ago
  From BSD clause to AGPL, I see it as a huge win!
• danielovichdk 1y ago
  Some of these open source licenses are somewhat flawed when it comes to building a business on things that are "free". Wouldn't it be possible to add a clause to some of these licenses that if you are using open source software and generate a certain amount of revenue from it, something has to be given back to the project. I totally understand that the software is meant to be free but isn't there a balance here, where at some point it must be enforced that some the money it generates in a business, must flow back to its contributors/project ? I have worked plenty of places where Redis was a thing that served at least some backbone for success for a business. Those places could pay a fee for generating revenue based on free software ? Does it make sense ?
  • Spivak 1y ago
    Yes, and it's called proprietary software which is free for non-commercial use and companies under a certain size. Docker Desktop uses this license.
  • Voultapher 1y ago
    IMO for that to make sense the license would have to be infectious and even then you run into the anything but trivial and gameable issue of splitting royalties among the tree of dependencies. Redis itself uses other open source libraries and so on. It's a tricky problem but it shouldn't stop us from trying, any amount of no strings attached funding for open source is better than what we have today. Personally I'd like to see it solved by diverting some amount of tax payer money to open source project maintainers, via some hopefully non conflicted government agency that ascertains what projects are more funding worthy than others.
• saltysalt 1y ago
  Great news antirez, well done!
• manupati 1y ago
  Engineering/ Designing applications with Apache Foundation's software's might be the first option, less pain. It is extremely stressful to change the base architecture. As, AGPL threatening commercial apps to open source their code. It is unfair changing the license after getting popular.
• pease344 1y ago
  [dead]
• amaran1999 1y ago
  I guess so
  • amaran1999 1y ago
    yeah
• yesterdayjones 1y ago
  AGPL: Uselessly open-source. Anyone who wants to make money with it, even if it's just one of many components in your tech stack, would have to open-source everything. This drives people to adopt the paid versions of the same software over the open-source version, and that's no doubt the point. Adopting the AGPL is a cold, calculated move.
  • codeguro 1y ago
    > would have to open-source everything Stop lying. This is FUD. It must be disregarded with extreme prejudice. It is completely, factually, unequivocally, incorrect. You can connect to Redis using their first-party, MIT-licensed client library. You can write proprietary software using that library with no requirement whatsoever to release your software under any particular license (although of course you still have to comply with the MIT license's attribution requirements). Heck, you can even serve this software to your users. The only condition being that you you distribute the original source or your modified changes of the AGPL'd part of the software in your stack to your users under the terms of the AGPL license. Nobody said you have to open up your whole stack. That's SSPL territory.
• rootnod3 1y ago
  Nah, as much as I loved the original Redis, they dropped the ball with the license change. To me it looks like they realized way too late. There was a window for them to turn back, but now it looks like they are bleeding some way or another and just trying to recuperate. In the meantime, other drop-in solutions took over. Can't say that I feel sorry for them though.
• rednafi 1y ago
  The bridge has already been burnt. They can always pull the rug again.
• zwaps 1y ago
  Genuine question: i want to start a project which fundamentally i would line to open source. I want people and in particular people working in companies to use my project. However i also want to be able to make a living from it if it takes off ie build a business on it. I guess if that business has competition purely from hosted copies, that is also fine. However, I do not want any hyperscalers to fork and close source the project. I want sny benefit to continue to be available. So it seems I should choose Agpl. But i know that in most companies this leads to being blacklisted, especially in the EU where its legally unclear what the AGPL entails. Without corporate adootion i do not see the project gaining traction so i would only do it for myself. With permissive licensing it seems a rug pull is inevitable to be able to do it full time. What to do?
  • f33d5173 1y ago
    You could dual license, under the agpl and a proprietary license.
• ray023 1y ago
  "We heard from some customers that it is easier for them to operate under an OSI-approved license, so we’ve added that option." ROFL. Yeah, translation. We got the biggest backlash ever from the license change, the community HATED us so much for this. THIS is why we backpedaled. Valkey was created and already took over Linux distro package distributions with easy AF drop in replacements installs. I installed Valkey on my VPS for a WordPress Object Cache and I just installed the package, did not even need to edit any file or anything, just runs and works and the WP plugins for Redis just thinks it's Redis. Besides the name as an end user, literally nothing changed. Valkey got a massive interest and if clearly became obvious that it made zero sense, and it was the wrong decision.