Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Posted Mar 21, 2024 14:07 UTC (Thu) by AlecTavi (guest, #86342)In reply to: Redis is no longer free software by paulj
Parent article: Redis is no longer free software
Posted Mar 21, 2024 14:11 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link] (18 responses)
Posted Mar 21, 2024 14:39 UTC (Thu)
by AlecTavi (guest, #86342)
[Link] (17 responses)
If the concern is instead, "never giving back financial support," the solution is non-free software. I.e. disallowing execution / modification of the software without financial compensation. This restriction can be targeted to commercial uses in a custom license while permitting free use by non-commercial entities. You can even allow evaluation periods (shareware).
Posted Mar 21, 2024 17:16 UTC (Thu)
by MarcB (subscriber, #101804)
[Link] (16 responses)
Look at the Linux kernel. Look at PostgreSQL (very comparable position in the software stack). The cloud companies not only give back, they even contribute to the software far beyond their integration work. Where this notoriously fails is "boring" infrastructure, like OpenSSL, but for more complex software, it tends to work.
Redis became more or less commercial in 2015. They picked up venture capital in at least seven financing rounds. They added more and more features to Redis to cover more and more uses cases. Nothing of this was "community-driven". I'd assume that easily 90% or more of all development resources go into those features.
The goal of Redis is not to keep an open source project financed, their goal is to make money.
> If the concern is instead, "never giving back financial support," the solution is non-free software. I.e. disallowing execution / modification of the software without financial compensation.
This is almost impossible. It is absurdly hard to get into the market as a closed source database, or any other core infrastructure, provider. No one will trust you enough to bet their business on your product. No developers will have experience with your product.
This is why all those companies start as open source: To get known, to get picked up by developers and to be used in increasingly important projects. At some point, they conclude there position is now strong enough to make a commercial offer (or their investors lose patience).
Posted Mar 21, 2024 17:38 UTC (Thu)
by AlecTavi (guest, #86342)
[Link] (15 responses)
You're right. This fails for boring parts of the Linux kernel as well.
The kernel's license doesn't require these contributions. The companies can stop giving back at any point - it's up to them. Only some of the modifications / improvements make it back to the upstream kernel. If there's an improvement that gives a cloud provider a material financial advantage (such as CPU savings across a whole cloud fleet) compared to competing cloud providers, they will never give that improvement to the public while it's in their overall interest to withhold the improvement.
This situation may be good enough, but paulj was asking about "how to prevent" the lack of contribution that was visible for Redis SaaS providers.
> It is absurdly hard to get into the market as a closed source database, or any other core infrastructure, provider.
Again, you're right. The markets are saturated, and an open-source implementation does increase trust.
Note, however, that I referred to "non-free software" rather than "closed-source software." The source can be publicly available with a license that does not permit commercial use, private modification, or redistribution. You can even accept third-party contributions! This model rarely happens, as license-violations are hard to police; usually a company trying to financially exploit their software capital is worried about squeezing everybody for those license fees, not just the biggest companies.
Realistically, however, you're right: any new software in one of the saturated spaces of core infrastructure will struggle to "get into the market." This seems fine to me. Let's implement our innovative ideas for the public good, rather than market concerns. I want more Tim Berners-Lee and less Mark Zuckerberg.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 19:18 UTC (Thu)
by MarcB (subscriber, #101804)
[Link] (1 responses)
If that had been the real issue, the fix would have been obvious: Reach out to stakeholders, set up a "Redis Foundation" or some other open, governing structure and try to make it come alive.
But that was never Redis' model. Redis LTD was a commercial company from the beginning. They later hired the original open source developers.
And this is true for all those "projects" that complain about "cloud providers exploiting the open source community" to justify a license change: The "community" actually is exclusively the company and their goal always was to make real money, not to run an open source community.
> Note, however, that I referred to "non-free software" rather than "closed-source software." The source can be publicly available with a license that does not permit commercial use, private modification, or redistribution.
That doesn't work. "No commercial use" roughly translates to "do not touch". Really, if I come across a license term like this, when looking at some new software, I stop reading. It would fail any approval process and any working time spent on it is wasted.
The immediate goal of these companies is to gain developer attention, including publicly visible attention that they can demonstrate to potential investors. Once this has been achieved, they use the investor's money to hire and to grow rapidly, outpacing the competition, including real open source projects (Redis vs Memcached is a striking example). This usually happens in a circle, with multiple rounds if investment.
But of course, then they are committed to the investors who will have set some undisclosed amount and point in time for their expected returns on investment.
Now, this venture capital thing is not bad per se. Some companies, usually those that started later and had MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch and others as warnings examples, play with open cards. They state from the very beginning what the differences between their open source and commercial editions will be.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 6:40 UTC (Fri)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
AFAIK the original developer hasn't worked ther for a few years. I don't know when they have parted ways and I don't know why that happened.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 21:41 UTC (Thu)
by donbarry (guest, #10485)
[Link] (12 responses)
Honor him for what he was, but not for what he is, which only deserves contempt.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 22:33 UTC (Thu)
by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Mar 22, 2024 0:46 UTC (Fri)
by roc (subscriber, #30627)
[Link]
Also, the oppose-EME-at-all-costs people predicted that it would inevitably lead to DRM for all Web content. It's been nearly 10 years and there's no sign of that.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 1:30 UTC (Fri)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link] (5 responses)
> Already forgot about how much fun it was when the only way to consume media online was Flash, or Silverlight? THAT was the alternative.
I have a teenager who watches youtube with no EME and doesn't give a shit about netflix. I've lived the majority of my life when netflix.com didn't exist. People without TVs existed, and people without EME exist and are thriving. How does it feel to be/act like a shill? https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/cancel-netflix-if-you...
Posted Mar 22, 2024 2:55 UTC (Fri)
by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Mar 22, 2024 5:37 UTC (Fri)
by donbarry (guest, #10485)
[Link] (2 responses)
"It's easier to capitulate before corporate interests." Well, maybe in the short term. That EME hasn't gobbled up more of the web *yet* is no justification for its existence.
I've never installed it. I've certainly never subscribed to one of the delivery services that would use it. I can't say I've ever missed it, and I also sleep well at night.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 6:52 UTC (Fri)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
It allows corporations to provide an open and interoperable DRM that doesn't require intrusive measures or custom applications.
But it's bad because it allows people to watch TV without intrusive measures or custom applications.
Got it.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 11:44 UTC (Fri)
by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
[Link]
Would it be even better without DRM? Of course, but a strongly worded blog post from a height of 0.0x% of market share is not going to make that happen, because we live in a capitalist society and that's just not how capitalism works.
Pick your battles.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 7:32 UTC (Fri)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link]
Posted Mar 22, 2024 7:08 UTC (Fri)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
Firefox downloads the proprietary thing, and then it doesn't work.
That's it.
.mkv files on the other hand work very reliably.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 23:55 UTC (Thu)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Mar 22, 2024 1:16 UTC (Fri)
by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 22, 2024 9:18 UTC (Fri)
by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
[Link]
A frequent defense of Richard Stallman is the work he did in the 80s to make free software a reality. If your argument with respect to Tim Berners-Lee is that we should feel free to criticise people based on their current behaviour with no regard to what they achieved in the past, are you fine with criticism of RMS that ignores everything he achieved in previous decades?
Posted Mar 21, 2024 15:45 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (8 responses)
"all users interacting with it remotely".
Does a back-end component (e.g., a Redis instance) have "users interacting" with it, when those "users" interact with a web app, and only the web app on the same host interacts with the Redis instance?
The AGPL is not clearly applicable to many kinds of software that are still key components of "cloud" hosting companies.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:15 UTC (Thu)
by DOT (subscriber, #58786)
[Link] (6 responses)
Of course, that still doesn't fix the problem that Redis Inc. has: making Amazon, Microsoft and Google pay. Sure, moving to the AGPL would undoubtedly cause those to buy a license to make the AGPL go away. But every other company in the world also needs that: AGPL is banned in most companies. And that would introduce tremendous pressure to create an open source fork.
I don't necessarily agree that AGPL should have a blanket ban for most companies, but many companies are fearful that the AGPL would apply to their entire service, not just the small part that is AGPL-licensed. Thus, they ban the license completely.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:31 UTC (Thu)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (1 responses)
If the user only ever interacts with a web app on a server in a tech company's proprietary "cloud", would that tech company have to release mods to Free Software infrastructure, like network elements, if licensed under the AGPL? I think it's very unlikely, and hence the AGPL is not useful for a lot of stuff.
Posted Mar 29, 2024 21:07 UTC (Fri)
by sammythesnake (guest, #17693)
[Link]
1) It requires $BIGCORP release the code for their entire operation as AGPL software, so they won't use AGPL software.
2) It doesn't apply require the release of anything behind a paper thin veneer of SaaS interface, so it's not meaningfully different from the "normal" GPL.
3) (This is the biggie, OMHO) It's really not clear whether #1 or#2 (or something in between) is really the case. The wording in the AGPL terms leaves plenty of scope for reasonable disagreement about what it even means. Even identifying the relevant jurisdiction is non-trivial, let alone finding out what ruling might come out of any court action. A quick Google doesn't reveal any suggestion of test cases to learn from...
3½) Is the AGPL's requirement of AGPL-licensed release of code absent distribution (in the copyright law sense - the AGPL uses the term "convey"), even enforceable at all? Again, I don't think this has been tested, but I imagine it would have tough time in the courts, to say the least(!)
Even if none of the above punctures the AGPL, any sufficiently mean spirited $BIGCORP could arrange for their modifications to be be made by a suitable distinct $PUPPETCORP, licenced under the AGPL but only made available to $BIGCORP, who would then not fall into the category of using a "modified" (by them) version, and would have no requirement to release any code at all (section 13 of the AGPL only applies to *modified* versions as I read it)
Honestly, I think the *idea* of the AGPL is not only perfectly valid, but laudable - a software author ought to be able (if they so desire) to provide code under terms that keep it big-F "Free" to end-users as well as recipients,, but I'm not sure there's any way to achieve this under current copyright or contact law. What I am pretty confident of, though, is that the AGPL is not such a way...
Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:58 UTC (Thu)
by AlecTavi (guest, #86342)
[Link] (3 responses)
There is tension between freedom and control of software. Freedom includes using, modifying, and redistributing software. Freedom includes private improvements to software that are never given back to the public. Copyleft licenses remove that particular freedom to encourage the growth of the other freedoms.
The financial exploitation of software capital (license fees, SaaS subscriptions, etc.) makes those freedoms contingent on financial compensation.
The companies that ban AGPL are rational to do so: they want to ensure they have no obligation to give their users those software freedoms. They want to retain control of their software to enable it's exploitation as a form of capital. paulj asked how to prevent this private exploitation.
Inevitably, if the software is less-exploitable by private entities, it will be less-adopted by them. This is another tension, between private exploitation and forcing public benefit through the legal system. It's not good or bad, but we developers need to make the choice of which to emphasize for any software project:
Without a mechanism to force the financial or software-development contribution from users of software, some users of the software will choose not to "give back."
Posted Mar 21, 2024 23:19 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
And it's not a zero sum game. Do you want a small slice of a large cake, or a large slice of a small cake? The problem with trying to force public benefit is you are then likely to have pretty much all of a very small cake. Go the other way, and your small slice is likely to be much larger than the small cake.
Cheers,
Posted Mar 22, 2024 16:33 UTC (Fri)
by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
[Link]
Working with giants like AWS and Azure is hard; they have every intent on being compatible with Redis only so long as they have to. They want you locked into Amazon Elasticache or Azure's version. Can a BSD version keep even a tiny slice of cake against that? I'd suspect Redis is going to drift into oblivion as open source users drop it and AWS & friends ignore or duplicate any changes.
Posted Mar 22, 2024 1:10 UTC (Fri)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
This is incorrect, copyleft licenses only require giving to your users, not back to the upstream project or the public in general. You can certainly keep improvements private if you don't have any users or your users aren't technical enough to use or request the source or publish it anywhere.
Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:33 UTC (Thu)
by AlecTavi (guest, #86342)
[Link]
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
I recall a report about the estimated conversion rate to such a commercial offer being off by a factor of 10,000. I think this was for MongoDB.
At that point, the investors get scared, and the companies start looking for other ways to monetize their product. One popular choice is offering it "as a service"; turns out others had this idea before, and those others also run the cloud platforms that the aspiring "as a service" company has to pay for. So the original cloud company will always be cheaper or have a higher margin...
> Look at the Linux kernel. Look at PostgreSQL (very comparable position in the software stack). The cloud companies not only give back, they even contribute to the software far beyond their integration work. Where this notoriously fails is "boring" infrastructure, like OpenSSL, but for more complex software, it tends to work.
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Why would any company work for another company for free? With a CLA, this is immediately off the table. Even without one (like here), the other company would be very reluctant, especially since there is a lot of precedent for license changes like this. Also, the other company would want some influence on the direction of the project. You don't have that if you only can provide patches that may or may not be accepted for whatever (unspoken) reason.
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Thanks to the EME standard interface, and thanks to corporations that maintain builds of the implementation that work, things that people actually want to use nowadays "just work" on Linux too. We are so much better off now than we were before, and it's not even close.
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
Wol
Redis is no longer free software
Redis is no longer free software
> Copyleft licenses remove that particular freedom to encourage the growth of the other freedoms.
Section 13 specifically applies to users interacting with the software over the network. So, offering Redis as a cloud service would require disclosure of changes to the Redis software changes to direct users of that service.
If Redis were used as a backend component, not offered to public users, then section 13 does not apply. The users themselves do not interact with the licensed software.
Redis is no longer free software