Majority of Redis users considering alternatives after less permissive licensing move Around 70 percent of Redis users are considering alternatives after the database company made a shift away from permissive open source licensing. According to a survey by open source database support biz Percona, the move to the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1) has motivated …
Why, when it looks like Terraform (IBM) didn't suffer much?
At <current client>, where all downloads go through more "protective" layers than the Berlin Wall, including Artifactory, I can't even get opentofu!
Corporate inertia is powerful and these companies count on just that: the *techs* may think of switching, the MBAs just go "oh well, we'll just lay off some more folks to make up for the financial hit".
I warned you guys about this. Give free stuff...and people start expecting it to be free, always, no matter what they do.
FOSS is working off the backs of (aging) volunteers that believe in both an altruistic outlook of computer usage and, often, sharing of a project that they needed solved for themselves. But the volunteers are indeed aging out and their younger replacements are too busy struggling against a economic-political system that intentionally squeezes the workers for maximum gains to the capitalholders, and those same capitalholders see free-for-use projects that they can monetize for their own gains without a bit of responsible reciprocity. It is, only thanks to that aforementioned system, a long-term toxic relationship of the top being able to take from the bottom with no recompense nor guilt. The volunteers will continue to do it but only for so long and then they'll burn out...by then, all the monetary and functional gains will have been squeezed out by the top and they won't care anyway.
Fundamentally but quite sadly, allowing unregulated use of FOSS developments by money-making constructs is a form of usury, because those making money and in power will only seek more when they can get it for cheap, or even free. It didn't really have to be this way: if the world is very intent on raising "capitalism" (in reality we're now pretty close to corporatism) to almost a religion, then the licensing structure of FOSS should have reflected this reality because greed with always prosper. Damn sad but damn true, and why I hate this modern world. We can't have nice things because there are those that will always abuse it.
"He said the decision was designed to prevent AWS and Google charging for Redis in their database services without paying for it."
That's not why open source exists and demonstrates a complete lack of imagination. GPL would have sorted this problem out but instead they went for the trendy BSD jobbie that is beloved of Apple and co.
The GPL requires you "give back" in return for the free stuff. If you improve it, your improvements are required to be shared. Its all a bit communistic but it does work rather well. The Linux kernel is a GPL licensed project and who can deny how effective that has been?
My company makes quite a lot of dosh out of supporting open source software. We always try to give back with knowledge (we are not programmers). We try to engage with wikis and the like for all the projects we use.
We take and try to give. That's what open source is all about.
A lot of the action in open source is off-GPL, with more permissive licenses. From the trendy JS frontend stacks to things like Postgres. Github... mostly non-GPL. BSDs. Python.
If you are a software company, basing your code on GPL means a certain narrowing of your revenue options: training, support, etc... It also means that many other software companies will ignore your offerings as they want to remain GPL-free. If you're not a software company, and just an individual dev, scratching an itch, you may want more people to use your precious, rather than saddling them with a restrictive license.
The GPL can work, but how would say a games studio make money? Is the success model being Red Hat and going public? MySQL and being bought out? Count out Linux and what is so uber-convincing?
Ultimately, if you've made it big enough to get mooched off by Amazon, you've already hit the big leagues.
This isn't to say there is no problem to be fixed. Nor that the GPL has no place. Nor that Redis' solution was optimal: they are scaring off their users here, to spite Amazon. Only that saying "the answer is the GPL" seems rather reductive.
the mpl lgpl are used more frequently because they dont affect the larger work. they do require reciprocation to an extent. I mean Netscape when they opened their browser only had asymmetrical terms, meaning it was like a CLA CTA all in one license, you can use their stuff pursuant to the NPL but they dont have to reciprocate when they use your code.
The big problem I, and I suspect many others, have with GPL is that you can take a teeny-tiny bit of GPL code, link it to gigabytes of non-GPL code (which may be proprietary or freely available BSD-licenced or anything) and the GPL will want alll those gigabytes converted into GPL as a result. Which is a nonsense
It’s probably the only thing I ever agreed with MS on when they described GPL as a cancer
If you want the code, you abide by the terms of the license. If you don't want to abide by the terms of the license, you can't have the code. This is not a complicated proposition, it's only portrayed as complicated by people who want to ensure that the benefits of copyright protection only ever move in one direction.
I wouldn't call the GPL communistic. It's making a clear statement: This is my code and if you want to use it you must abide by these conditions. Don't like the conditions or don't think the cost of abiding by them is worth it? Use someone else's code or write your own. While the "cost" is in a different form to that for using, for example, Microsoft's code in your product, it's the same principle.
The GPL wouldn't make any difference - indeed, using the GPL is quite explicit that you cannot stop anyone charging for your software. (The only thing about the GPL is that you require modifications to be published, but even that doesn't apply to services hence AGPL.)
> The GPL requires you "give back" in return for the free stuff. If you improve it, your improvements are required to be shared.
Not if you're hosting the modified version of the free stuff. This is what Amazon et al were doing.
The AGPL however removes this "SaaS exemption".
On top of what I already said about the GPL, you don't really even seem to understand the probable issue for Redis.
Let's say they were on Affero GPL, the one that shuts down hosted exemption.
Hah! Now Amazon has to "share its improvements"!
Do you think that is really what concerns Redis, that they are "missing out on those improvements"? What if Amazon doesn't change anything? Many companies which initiated open source products still contribute the majority of the coding effort and may in any case be shy at taking in much outsider code, making this even more of a non-issue.
Quite likely, Redis, the company, is just miffed that they are not getting any share of the profits Amazon makes from hosting Redis, the software. That's what I anticipate most businesses would be concerned about.
How does GPL help with that???
Unfortunately you have over simplfied how software works.
Most software doesnt become popular because its best in class, eg Facebook is not the best social media platform from a technical perspective.
Redis as you infer simply wants all the money for their code. The value in the project is not the code its the mindshare and public visibility that is now has. There are probably better redis equivalents out there, that we simply dont know and yet by luck Redis became popular and they are unknown.
Even if AMZN did contribute a lot of code, that doesnt matter because it was never about how much or little anyone contributed, its about the money for their mindshare nothing more and nothing less.
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