Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:15 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786)
In reply to: Redis is no longer free software by paulj
Parent article: Redis is no longer free software

I would argue that it doesn't matter how many proxies you put between the software and the user; as long as Redis is a part of the chain that brings the bits from the server to the user's computer, it is being "used".

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.

Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 21, 2024 16:31 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

What about the software running the network control plane, that directs the network routers and switches how to get those bits from the server to the Internet, and on to the user?

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.

Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 29, 2024 21:07 UTC (Fri) by sammythesnake (guest, #17693) [Link]

Three ways the AGPL has difficulty achieving its goal:

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...

Redis is no longer free software

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:

give people the maximum freedom with widespread adoption but no reciprocation (permissive licenses)
retain some control by withholding some freedom that reduces adoption but allows you to demand compensation (copyleft, dual-licensing, unfree software, etc)

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."

Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 21, 2024 23:19 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> 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.

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,
Wol

Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 22, 2024 16:33 UTC (Fri) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link]

That's a massive oversimplification. GCC and the Objective C frontend is an older case where the GPL caused the Objective C frontend to be available to everyone. Linux, which became a very large cake, has had decent returns from commercial users; BSD seems to have had relatively little, with the exception of some end-of-life stuff tossed out. Even then, e.g. AdvFS (from BSD-based OSF/1) was released as GPL-2, not BSD, for use with Linux.

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.

Redis is no longer free software

Posted Mar 22, 2024 1:10 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

> 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.

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.