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Software Open Source

'Software Vendors Dump Open Source, Go For the Cash Grab' (computerworld.com) 120

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ComputerWorld: Essentially, all software is built using open source. By Synopsys' count, 96% of all codebases contain open-source software. Lately, though, there's been a very disturbing trend. A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then -- and only then -- switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions. I'm sick of it. The latest IT melodrama baddie is Redis. Its program, which goes by the same name, is an extremely popular in-memory database. (Unless you're a developer, chances are you've never heard of it.) One recent valuation shows Redis to be worth about $2 billion -- even without an AI play! That, anyone can understand.

What did it do? To quote Redis: "Beginning today, all future versions of Redis will be released with source-available licenses. Starting with Redis 7.4, Redis will be dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). Consequently, Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)." For those of you who aren't open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis' code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can't export, borrow from, or touch it.

Redis pulled this same kind of trick in 2018 with some of its subsidiary code. Now it's done so with the company's crown jewels. Redis is far from the only company to make such a move. Last year, HashiCorp dumped its main program Terraform's Mozilla Public License (MPL) for the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. Here, the name of the new license game is to prevent anyone from competing with Terraform. Would it surprise you to learn that not long after this, HashiCorp started shopping itself around for a buyer? Before this latest round of license changes, MongoDB and Elastic made similar shifts. Again, you might never have heard of these companies or their programs, but each is worth, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, while you might not know it, if your company uses cloud services behind the scenes, chances are you're using one or more of their programs,
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'Software Vendors Dump Open Source, Go For the Cash Grab' More

'Software Vendors Dump Open Source, Go For the Cash Grab'

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  • This is why forking is a thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wed128 ( 722152 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:04PM (#64351697)
    The Free software defense against this is forking the last free version. If I were a user of Redis I would already be working from a private fork.

    • Re:This is why forking is a thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:17PM (#64351729)

      The Free software defense against this is forking the last free version

      There is a downside to that. AWS, Alibaba, SourceHut, Wayland devs, and about three dozen others forked the project within a week of the announcement. Now we play the game of Redis using the confusion to get people into two to five year contracts because a lot of people don't properly fund their IT departments and you need a properly funded dev team to fully commit to one of the "could it turn quickly into a non-standard fork?" forks.

      So you are right, forking is an option and boy oh boy did plenty of folks fork Redis. But that causes mass confusion as to which direction to go in for the future. Only the best dev departments weather this kind of thing well. The vast majority that just shoestring a bunch of cloud and someone to duct tape it all together will just sign a contract with Redis that just happens to be long enough to go a bit past the "dust settling phase".

      • > fully commit to one of the "could it turn quickly into a non-standard fork?" forks.

        Their own damn fault, if they fork, know others have forked, and don't collaborate between the forks.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by znrt ( 2424692 )

        The vast majority that just shoestring a bunch of cloud and someone to duct tape it all together will just sign a contract with Redis that just happens to be long enough to go a bit past the "dust settling phase".

        and why should those be relevant? if they aren't willing or able to properly use/support software that was gifted to them and is important for their business, then let them pay through their nose to some sharks to keep using it. couldn't care less.

        sharks be sharks, and this pattern is as old as opensource itself. if the original project is any good it will live on with new maintainers. if not, then humanity just didn't deserve it, and just the same applies to opensource as a whole. i would say it's not doin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dyfet ( 154716 )

          many simply do not care, will not bother, and the old repos will disappear. Forking only really works when the community actually cares and is vigilant. I have not seen this truly the case in a long time now.

        • and why should those be relevant?

          Outside of that's voices that never support a single new FOSS solution coalescing, they aren't.

          if the original project is any good it will live on with new maintainers

          I mean that's a fine take. But take that up with those who get on about Wayland/systemd/whatever else people like to complain about here that wasn't the thing they grew up with. If X11 was any good, we'd see people flocking to it to update it. See how that sounds? And just to be clear, I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your justification isn't as rock solid as you might think it to be.

          but tech reporters have to write about something to meet quotas i guess

          And people come to s

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by znrt ( 2424692 )

            it wasn't meant as a justification, more an observation, but nevertheless i assure you that nothing in my mind is rock solid.

            dunno, X11 is probably good given its track record but time is also a factor. it has been instrumental but maybe it's just not that appealing anymore, so it slowly goes out of focus, of both sharks and hobbyists. it's still there for those who absolutely want it and it might become relevant again in the future, who knows. anyway, good point, i'll amend my observation: "if not, then hu

          • But take that up with those who get on about Wayland/systemd/whatever else people like to complain about here that wasn't the thing they grew up with.

            That situation is quite different. X11 and initd weren't replaced due to monetisation issues, they were technical decisions. The people who wanted the change were willing to put in more effort than the people who didn't want the change.

            • X11 and initd weren't replaced due to monetisation issues, they were technical decisions

              I mean that's mincing terms here because the underlying issue is what you indicated.

              The people who wanted the change were willing to put in more effort than the people who didn't want the change

              Be it a technical or fiscal kickoff (which if you want fiscal look at MySQL and Mariadb fight then or the PyQt and PySides thing when it happened) the big point as I indicated was

              But that causes mass confusion as to which direction to go in for the future

              X11 and initd aren't without their confusion as well. Y-Windows, XGL, and MIR were all things pitched around during the confusion stage of X11 to Wayland. And don't even get me started on upstart and the slew of PID 1 that grew in the middle 00s.

      • Thankfully a lot of those forks have their first commit as the last available open source version. I admit, there are probably CVEs to worry about, but it keeps the original open source code available for a while until it's determined who has any idea what they're doing with the fork.

      • welcome to the world of opensource. There is no guarentee beyond what you are willing to contribute yourself that any project will continue funding or support. You have to accept the bad with the good.

    • Re:This is why forking is a thing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:24PM (#64351763)

      Every distribution of linux and bsd will soon have not-redis in its repositories, just like mysql is infrequently used over mariadb.

    • And the free software vulnerability is your competitors taking your work for themselves without contributing to the development costs. It's suicide for a small company whose work product can be absorbed by a megacorp without even a low-balled buyout offer.

      It's wonderful to say everyone should share information and wisdom (in this case, in the form of code), but when a company is spending money to create something, it isn't actually evil for it to want to cover expenses.

      Nothing should be released as FOSS un

      • Re: This is why forking is a thing (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday March 28, 2024 @04:16PM (#64352064) Homepage Journal

        "Nothing should be released as FOSS unless it is truly insignificant to your profit model."

        If you're talking about releasing a fully formed piece of software, sure. But Redis was not that when it was initially released. They needed help developing it into that. They were smart enough to demand copyright assignment apparently (or they couldn't just change the license like this) so this strategy more or less worked.

        But as others have said, their official version is doomed to be eclipsed by some fork, like MySQL was by MariaDB. So they will have a limited time to profit. If the only real goal is to profit from the IPO, this is a plan with no drawbacks.

        • "Nothing should be released as FOSS unless it is truly insignificant to your profit model."

          If you're talking about releasing a fully formed piece of software, sure. But Redis was not that when it was initially released. They needed help developing it into that. They were smart enough to demand copyright assignment apparently (or they couldn't just change the license like this) so this strategy more or less worked.

          It would be interesting to hear an IP Law attorney chime in on if changing the license terms violated the agreement made when (and if) the copyright was assigned. If it was done on the basis of the software being open source, might the copyright revert to the original contributor? If that were the case, Redis would be fucked since they would no longer have rights to parts of the code.

      • And the free software vulnerability is your competitors taking your work for themselves without contributing to the development costs.

        If you license under GPL, there is no vulnerability. Your competitors will have to open their modifications to your code and, in turn, you can benefit from their modifications.

    • Well, in the case of the Jasper reports folk, the CE (open source) version has been dumped, and the source removed from public access. Requests for access have been ignored. It's all a brave new we no longer care what the license/law says world.

      • "Requests for access have been ignored. It's all a brave new we no longer care what the license/law says world."

        I don't know and won't look up what license they used for that, but if it is GPL then the license explicitly allows ceasing distribution of binaries as a remedy for failure to distribute source. If they have dual licensed then they can just do that.

    • Re:This is why forking is a thing (Score:4, Informative)

      by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @03:22PM (#64351931)

      Linux Foundation Launches Valkey As A Redis Fork

      https://www.phoronix.com/news/... [phoronix.com]

    • At least two groups are already doing that. AWS ElasticCache is an earlier fork of Redis. It's later on in the article.
      The question is, will there be enough outside developers to keep these forks alive? Is Redis going to lose enough outside developer support that they rescind their decision?

    • The Linux foundation has already forked: https://www.linuxfoundation.or... [linuxfoundation.org]
  • If only something could be done to prevent open source software from being purloined like this! Someone needs to invent a license, like say the GPL, that would mitigate against this. Oh, wait... "Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)"

    • Re:If only something could be done! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:22PM (#64351751)

      GPL or BSD has nothing to do with it really. A copyright holder can relicense his or her code at any time for any reason. This fact happens to be one reason I choose to use the GPLv3 for my personal projects. If someone comes along and finds it useful they can use it under those terms. But if in the unlikely event that a company wanted to incorporate my code into their proprietary project I could negotiate a suitable license for a fee (cash in).

      Regardless of license you pick, the only way to actually prevent code going proprietary is to make the project a truly community-owned project where contributors keep their own copyright. Then to relicense you'd have to get all contributors to agree (if you can find them all). The Linux kernel, for example, can never be relicensed for this reason.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Regardless of license you pick, the only way to actually prevent code going proprietary is to make the project a truly community-owned project where contributors keep their own copyright.

        This is the standard. As long as you have code contributed to the project from outsiders of the company that wasn't work for hire, then you'll end up with mixed copyright holders; provided noone's going to sign anything that grants the company extra sublicensing permissions.

        It's also what will happen to the forked versio

      • GPL or BSD has nothing to do with it really. A copyright holder can relicense his or her code at any time for any reason. This fact happens to be one reason I choose to use the GPLv3 for my personal projects. If someone comes along and finds it useful they can use it under those terms. But if in the unlikely event that a company wanted to incorporate my code into their proprietary project I could negotiate a suitable license for a fee (cash in).

        Could you? Did you use the "or later" language, GPL v3 or later? If so then the FSF could introduce a GPL version allowing the FSF to license a proprietary version. Google once promised not to be evil too.

      • "The Linux kernel, for example, can never be relicensed for this reason."

        With sufficient tracking of what code belonged to whom, you could rewrite the pieces that belonged to people who didn't want to relicense. But Linus doesn't want to relicense, so there has probably been zero effort to make that possible. He thinks GPL 2 is not only enough, but actually more desirable than GPL 3.

    • That's up to the author. As you point out, they have options. Downstream users might not agree with their choice, but coders know what the difference is and specifically choose what license "features" they want or do not.

      Perhaps the author saw this coming and didn't want to be boxed in by the GPL's terms. That's okay, because you can still fork the code at the point just before the license changed. I'd say don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Some software released under BSD or MPL terms might
  • Everyone is for themselves these days. Whether it's paying high end restaurant prices for fast food, spending most of your income not to be homeless, paying more than a mortgage for a university degree or simply taking the money and running (as in the case of the enshittification craze in the tech industry). With computers and AI all changing our perceptions of what work or economic value are, we lost sight of why humans invented money in the first place. I think we should skip the UBI stage and just alloc

    • Yes.

      The weird part is that if you did that, the people who wanted to make themselves useful anyway would simply get to work making themselves useful.

      50% chance it would be a net gain: think what would happen if all BS people get up to trying to make a buck at everyone else's expense suddenly just stopped.

    • I think we should skip the UBI stage and just allocate everyone enough food, shelter and AI generated entertainment until we figure out a proper economic system.

      Problem is, presently only one of those things can be provided without the labor force behind them complaining that it's unfair that they have to work while everyone else sits on their butts. As long as some goods and services still require human labor and limited resources, the economy is going to demand its pound of flesh in exchange for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Everyone is for themselves these days.

      That is really nothing new. Its mostly likely that fewer people are subsidized to freely contribute to FOSS than in the past.

  • Copyright owners can change the license (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:11PM (#64351715)

    If Redis is the sole owner of the copyright, they can change the license at any time, regardless of what the contributors think. If a company requires you to assign copyright to them when you contribute to an open source project then that's always a risk you run. It may feel a bit underhanded, and even takes advantage of contributors, but I can't completely blame them for wanting to cash in. It is a bit dirty that they've pulled all traces of the formerly-licensed code from their repos. But those who have already obtained copies under the old license can continue to use it and fork it.

    Overall this is far less shady than Red Hat seemingly trying to do an end run around the GPL with contract clauses forbidding their customers from exercising their rights under the GPL with code Red Hat doesn't even own.

    Greed is universal, and we can assume any and all companies will ditch open source the moment they think they can get away with it. And after they've taken advantage of the community to enhance their product.

    • The only problem here is the expectation that a for-profit business will sacrifice profit opportunities in order to serve the greater good.

      Individual people might do that sort of thing. But the sort of person who would do that sort of thing usually doesn't wind up as a key decision maker for a successful for-profit business. At least, not for very long.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      The flip side of this is how much Redis code is there in Elasticache or whatever its called on AWS?

      I have no idea; but I'd guess it isn't none. So how 'greedy' is it really for the people who built a thing even it was originally FOSS to want to reap the rewards for it at least when others are basically marketing it directly and/or scooping large bits of it into their own product that competes directly with it rather than integrating it to deliver something else?

      It hard to write a license that says its FOSS

      • > It hard to write a license that says its FOSS unless you're Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, or Microsoft.

        It's impossible. That would go against clause 5 of the Open Source Definition: "License must not discriminate against any person or group of persons," and probably against Freedom 0 of the "Free Software Definition"

        • Hmmm, so if I wrote a popular and useful program and released it as GPL3 but with an amendment that said "FAANG can suck it, you guys can't use my stuff at all under any circumstances!" it would not qualify as "open source" but would that really matter?

          The rest of the world would still happily use it and treat it as open source.

          • I think you'd have to change the name of the license, too, but yeah, you can license it however you want, but it wouldn't be FLOSS.

            • Ok, fair enough.

              But would it matter if I released my software under the "Not Quite Open Source, F*CK FAANG" license to anyone but one of the FAANG companies?

              It is certainly legal to do so as it's my code and I can choose who is allowed to use it or not under any terms of my choice.

              • Absolutely. But it wouldn't be GPL-compatible, either, so you wouldn't be able to use any GPL'd code in your project (since the GPL forbids adding any further restrictions), and a GPL'd project couldn't use your code (since your license requires using your license, not the GPL), so you've eliminated most of the benefit to yourself and others.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            You can do that. I am not so sure the rest of the world would be as happy as you think though.

            First a lot of legal departments would probably object on the ground that if you wrote FAANG out of the license because you don't like them who is to say you won't do it to us next?

            Second the FAANG gang has lot more lawyers than you do. If they like your toys enough and don't feel like paying they can probably get them. So Amazon stands up a subsidiary called IAmWaySmarterServices Inc that offers nice tight integr

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          I would suggest they write the license so that Accessing the software over the network constitutes distributing the program and Invokes the requirement that access to the complete source is made available to every user who can access the services provided by the program over the network. And a Warranty guaranteeing that working access to complete source code is available must be included with the service offering, requests for source must be completed without fail within a specified time period, and

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            I would suggest they write the license so that Accessing the software over the network constitutes distributing the program and Invokes the requirement that access to the complete source is made available to every user who can access the services provided by the program over the network. And a Warranty guaranteeing that working access to complete source code is available must be included with the service offering, requests for source must be completed without fail within a specified time period, and with specified financial penalties to be paid to the user and to the authors for failing to provide the warranty or any breach of the warranty.

            I mean, that's basically the Affero GPL, and IMO it's an absolutely toxic license.

            I can't think of a single time when I've installed any major server-side web app without needing to make changes to it. About 95% of those changes involve things like tying in a custom, site-specific login system or other site-specific hooks.

            I wouldn't feel comfortable making those sorts of changes available to the public, because doing so removes one entire layer of defense in depth from a security perspective. And even i

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mandrel ( 765308 )

              I mean, that's basically the Affero GPL, and IMO it's an absolutely toxic license.

              I can't think of a single time when I've installed any major server-side web app without needing to make changes to it. About 95% of those changes involve things like tying in a custom, site-specific login system or other site-specific hooks.

              I wouldn't feel comfortable making those sorts of changes available to the public, because doing so removes one entire layer of defense in depth from a security perspective. And even if that weren't the case, exactly none of those changes would ever be even slightly useful to anyone else, because they won't be running the software on my site, and won't have access to the user database or other infrastructure to make that code actually do something useful.

              Because of that, I won't touch anything with an Affero license, even for personal projects. Almost no company, no matter how small, would touch anything under that license with a ten-meter pole. So the net effect is that Affero-licensed projects rarely get used by anyone other than die-hard GPL zealots, plus whatever company created them, where applicable.

              An interesting perspective.

              I'm not sure that security-by-obscurity is a good reason to deny the worth of licences that force the release of source when the software is used remotely by the public, rather than only if a build is made available to be run locally. There's also no need for an organisation to release the source if the software isn't made available for the public to use, but is instead used internally.

        • "That would go against clause 5 of the Open Source Definition"

          The OSI lacks the authority to determine what is or is not open source. Many of us were already using the phrase before the OSI even existed, and certainly before Christine Peterson claims to have invented it (which is ignorant at best, but more likely a deliberate lie.)

          • Many of us were already using the phrase before the OSI even existed

            Well, of course. The term predates the OSI.

            and certainly before Christine Peterson claims to have invented it (which is ignorant at best, but more likely a deliberate lie.)

            Doubtful. Nobody I know of had heard the term before Peterson was credited by RMS, Torvalds, etc, of having coined it.
            I was an active linux developer in the 90s, and I certainly never heard the term.
            Previously, it was merely called "free software", and RMS argued strongly that it should remain so after Peterson coined the term in question.

            I'd love to see any evidence to the contrary.

            • I'd love to see any evidence to the contrary.

              OK. [archive.org] Unfortunately archive.org seems to have taken the video with the oldest reference I've found down, and without explanation. I have the video saved, but I'm not trying to catch a DMCA takedown and it was from a TV broadcast, which is possibly why it was removed.

              It was frankly common to use the phrase around the geek scenes of the 1990s. But there are lots of references. People have posted others here in discussions about this before when I've posted about it.

              • The Caldera evidence is very credible and comprehensive. I'll take it.
                Regardless, accusing Peterson of lying is absurd. If nothing else, she is intimately responsible for injecting the term into the zeitgeist. As for the OSI- fuck them.

                • Peterson is either deliberately lying about inventing the term, or ignorant of the situation and thus not worth listening to, and effectively lying about whether she is sufficiently familiar with the scene to heed. Either way she's lying about something.

                  • Oh, stop it dude.
                    You did some good research it, and you discredit it with your mouth-foaming bullshit.
                    RMS. [gnu.org]

                    Not all of the users and developers of free software agreed with the goals of the free software movement. In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.

                    Peterson:

                    Between meetings that week, I was still focused on the need for a better name and came up with the term "open source software." While not ideal, it struck me as good enough. I ran it by at least four others: Eric Drexler, Mark Miller, and Todd Anderson liked it, while a friend in marketing and public relations felt the term "open" had been overused and abused and believed we could do better. He was right in theory; however, I didn't have a better idea...

                    Nobody lied about shit. The "term" if you will, as it existed before, was loosely used, and without real meaning. Even the Caldera use of the word is questionably just your standard abuse of the word "Open".
                    After all, OpenDOS (as you cited) would not be considered Open Source, by the definition that term has come to mean.
                    Linus Torvalds:

                    I think everybody agrees that the term was pretty much ‘officially’ adopted early 1998. There were meetings and discussions about it, but as far as I’m concerned, it became official at the so-called ‘Open Source Summit’ on April 7, 1998 in Palo Alto.

                    What's with your hatred of the woman? That just a quir

                    • What's with your hatred of the woman? That just a quirk of yours?

                      I hate liars. She puts herself forward as some kind of expert, but if she were then she'd have heard the term. Everyone else who encouraged her can also fuck right off for the same reason.

                    • I included her quote because I anticipated this line of reasoning.
                      The crediting of the term "Open Source" to her is done by other people, not her. Specifically, the largest names in Open Source and Free Software.
                      I can't find an instance of her directly claiming she invented the term.
                      However, a couple of things are hard facts.
                      The term that pre-existed her meant a different thing.
                      The term that is used today, 30 years in the future, is hers.

    • Re:Copyright owners can change the license (Score:4)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @03:30PM (#64351951)

      If a company requires you to assign copyright to them when you contribute to an open source project then that's always a risk you run.

      It's a risk, but it is also one with a time limit. Copyright assignments can be revoked; assuming the contributor did not develop and get paid for their submission under a work for hire contract.

      A contract requires some kind of consideration to begin with, and,

      The US copyright Act also has a Termination clause that allows the author, or the author's heirs to terminate copyright assignments. Which means that If the company obtain contributions under copyright assignment -- It is likely that at some point in a future decade they will lose the rights that were previously assigned and Have to negotiate with the authors' heirs for a continued license to further distribute the code.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dyfet ( 154716 )

      Sometimes copyright becomes exclusive because nobody else even cares or bothers to contribute.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dyfet ( 154716 )

      This is a legal right of an uncontested exclusive copyright holder (or a group of copyright holders assuming no additional parties or contributors are involved). However, the past remains legally immutable. If something was GPL, that version (and any derivates / future changes to that or prior versions) remain GPL, for example.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Yes. However Redis or any copyright holder is under no obligation to continue to host archives of old source code on their servers.

  • There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this. (Score:3)

    by galabar ( 518411 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:14PM (#64351719)
    Folks can fork and maintain the previous version. A company can decide which license it will release its latest software under. I feel like there is a lot of entitlement floating around. Why are we entitled to software that Redis develops? Whether a company releases their software under a free license like BSD or a restrictive license like GPL, they can always change it in the next version.

  • ... for companies supporting open source projects to get paid for their efforts without using the copyright nail-studded bat to coerce their users.

    Perhaps by offering excellent paid support for people who need it, and can't wait for the Open Source Fairy to flitter by and fix their issues?

  • SSPL is still very open of a source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moglito ( 1355533 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @02:23PM (#64351759)
    What all these haters miss to point out is *why* these companies need to change their license: to prevent AWS and other cloud providers to offer a directly competing service on the source that the company, and not AWS, maintains. Sweet deal for Amazon, ruinous for the company that *actually* pays employees to maintain the open-source project. So the solution is to minimally reduce the rights granted under the license to prevent exactly that. In fact *most* uses people care about are still permitted under the Server Side Public License. So claiming that this would now be closed source is garbage. It's similar to the old fight over "GPL is the only real open-source license" because it is militantly open-source: forcing all derivatives to adopt the same license. So please stop claiming that you are the judge of what is open-source and what isn't. The discussion needs to be more nuanced. Does Redis' license change *really* stop you from building on it the way you have been, or are you just arguing an ideological case?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Excellent point. I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted.

      The cloud providers and big data companies have been taking advantage of the work done by smaller businesses for a long time now. I believe the AGPL license is supposed to address the software-as-a-service loophole.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by lordlod ( 458156 )

      This evil cloud exploitation argument rests on two assumptions, which aren't true in Redis' case.

      1. That the company created the software and thus has a moral right to profit from it. That's not true in this case, Redis was created by Salvatore Sanfilippo. The company Garantia Data provided a cloud hosted version of Redis. Garantia Data then employed Salvatore and changed their name to Redis Labs, apparently Salvatore objected to them changing the company name to Redis. Salvatore then left the company,

    • What all these haters miss to point out is *why* these companies need to change their license: to prevent AWS and other cloud providers to offer a directly competing service on the source that the company, and not AWS, maintains.

      You have that completely backwards. AWS only offered competing services *after* copyright was changed. These companies are bitching about people using their product that is all. A user using an open source piece of software is the fundamental point of the software. These companies just wish they were a commercial software company to begin with when they saw bigger companies with actual money using their software.

      But in terms of competition, to be perfectly clear AWS *is* competing with Redis... now. Pretty

  • All open source software should be GPLv3 to stop shit like this from happening. If you get it for free, you should also be forced to give it for free. You can charge for support and services, but not the code or any derivative of it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      To whom are you referring, Redis or the big companies using Redis' software for free? And who should be forced to "give it for free?"

      There is a license designed for a SAAS scenario, the AGPL.

      • Referring to both. Redis started with free open source code. If that code had been GPLv3, then they would not have been able to change to another licensing scheme unless they dumped all of that GPLv3 code and started from scratch. But also with people using redis would also be forced to keep it free.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          This is a common misconception it seems, and is wrong. It doesn't matter what license the code was under. Since Redis holds the copyright they can change it to whatever they want whenever they want. They could completely close the source even.

          This is one reason I choose to use the GPLv3 by default. If someone needed a different license, I can charge them a fee and grant them whatever license they require. Whereas had I chosen BSD or some other similar license, this avenue would be closed to me.

    • All open source software should be GPLv3 to stop shit like this from happening. If you get it for free, you should also be forced to give it for free. You can charge for support and services, but not the code or any derivative of it.

      The GPL is becoming a legacy license, few new projects choose it. Especially v3. Modern developers have overwhelmingly moved on to more permissive licenses.

      • Yes, the OSI succeeded in doing the bidding of their corporate masters and deprecated Free Software just like I've been saying was their goal for years now. They convinced people that a) they invented the term "Open Source" which has been in use in this context since the eighties, b) that they therefore had the right to define it, and c) that it protected developers' interests as well as does Free Software. All of those things are falsehoods, and in my opinion, they are all deliberate.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Yes, the OSI succeeded in doing the bidding of their corporate masters and deprecated Free Software just like I've been saying was their goal for years now. They convinced people that a) they invented the term "Open Source" which has been in use in this context since the eighties, b) that they therefore had the right to define it, and c) that it protected developers' interests as well as does Free Software. All of those things are falsehoods, and in my opinion, they are all deliberate.

          Nothing to do with the OSI. I used to use the GPL for code that I wrote, back in the GPL v2 era. But when the FSF created v3, I no longer agreed with their vision of what freedom meant, because the new versions of the license became toxic to a lot of companies — even companies that regularly participated in GPLed projects and faithfully gave back their changes to the community.

          At that point, I abandoned the GPL. I very deliberately chose *not* to add an "or later" clause, effectively making my code

          • Given a choice, I'd rather have something more like GPL v2, but I'm not willing to keep using what has effectively become a legacy license, because I know that anybody who looks at it will just see "GPL" and mentally associate it with the tarnish that is v3.

            Anyone who matters knows the difference between the two licenses.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by drnb ( 2434720 )

              Given a choice, I'd rather have something more like GPL v2, but I'm not willing to keep using what has effectively become a legacy license, because I know that anybody who looks at it will just see "GPL" and mentally associate it with the tarnish that is v3.

              Anyone who matters knows the difference between the two licenses.

              And they overwhelmingly choose neither. MIT, Apache, ISC, BSD, CC, etc being preferred nowadays.

              "or later" is an insane blank check.

              • "or later" is an insane blank check.

                So take it out. This is not a problem. Lots of people have done so. The GPL is still valid if you remove that. It is still the GPL. That is why the GPL specifies in section 9 the following:

                If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

                Take responsibility. Advocate for yourself. Don't blame your problems o

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by drnb ( 2434720 )
                  "or later" is not a big part of the GPL's problems. It is however evidence of the absurd logic that the FSF and many supporters embrace.

                  As for taking responsibility or ad advocating for myself. I have, I use far superior FOSS licenses than the GPL. Just as the vast majority of developers do today.

  • I love it when companies do this because it usually means everyone jumps ship while AWS forks the product and makes it better.

    In other words, antirez can suck a fat one.

    • Isn't "grabbing cash" why companies exist? They aren't, after all, non-profit organizations just trying to benefit humanity.

  • Is there any project originally released under GPL or LGPL or AGPL that has been re-released under a less free-as-in-freedom license?

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