Didn’t they switch to a license with stronger mechanisms to keep the source available? SSPL, is basically AGPL but have even stronger protection from large corperations to use the code in their data centers without contributing the changes back. This is basically a move to prevent AWS/Google/Microsoft/et al, from leaching on the contributors work without giving anything back.
Or am I reading this wrong?
EDIT: Note, that the Mastodon account is to an AWS employee… so for him, this might be bad, since it no longer allows them to have their own internal fork without contributing back. Now, they will need to use a real for and maintain that them selves without leaching on the redis contributors.
The restriction doesn’t only apply to large corporations, it applies to everybody. It restricts what you can do with it so it breaks the fundamental freedoms that make up “FOSS”. As an immediate result it will be removed from Fedora and Debian because they don’t consider SSPL/RSAL to be FOSS:
https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/497
it breaks the fundamental freedoms that make up “FOSS”
Why? All the license says is that if you provide it as a service you must release the source code.
It says that you must release all your source code, even the stuff that isn’t covered by the license. From Wikipedia:
anyone who offers the functionality of SSPL-licensed software to third-parties as a service must release the entirety of their source code, including all software, APIs, and other software that would be required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves,
Fedora and debian support the corporate definitions of FOSS, so their opinions do not matter here.
it applies to everybody
I don’t think most of us want to offer services by hosting a service without contributing back the code. If they do, I am happy that it is a requirement that they give back. Only for-profit companies will have an issue with this.
They could just use AGPL. Amazon would need to contribute back, but with no restrictions on who and how can run it. Current licence has a clause that prevents any providing of the software on the network.
Does that prevent my managed Mastodon instance host from providing Redis over the network to my Mastodon, or does that count as them providing Redis to themselves and then providing Mastodon to me?
The wording says “third-parties as a service”, so as long as Redis isn’t accessible by people outside your organization, it’s fine. But paid Redis hosting wouldn’t be allowed on the new license.
Weirdly OSI doesn’t classify the SSPL as an open-source license because it doesn’t guarantee “the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor”, calling it a fauxpen license. I don’t think the FSF has commented on the license, though I would be curious what they say about it.
I imagine they consider it to not give the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor, because providing the source of the entire stack needed to run the service you provide makes it impossible for users to host their service on stuff like AWS, since it is proprietary.
For the record. The SSPL that Redis switched to while technically not recognized by the OSI really isn’t bad at all.
It’s exactly like the AGPL except even more “powerful”. Under the SSPL if you host redis as a paid service you would have to open source the tooling you use to manage those hosted instances of redis.
I don’t see why anyone but hyper scalers would object. It’s a shame that the OSI didn’t adopt it.
From what I’ve understood SSPL is a ridiculously ambiguous license, it’s extreme copyleft. It’s not just “open source the tooling you use to host the software”, it can also be interpreted to mean “open source all the hardware and firmware you use to host the software”. No one wants to risk going to court for that so corporate wants to use SSPL licensed software.
AGPL is the best license you can go for IMO.
The ambiguity is a valid concern. Hopefully the next version addresses this a bit better. This being said mega corps will call anything they can’t abuse for profit “extreme”. So if they think it’s extreme that just means we are on the right track.
lmao imagine allowing to run your software only on RISC-V boxes basically, pretty based but also a shoot in the foot in terms of acquiring any major funding
Regardless of whether it is too strong or too ambiguous, it is absolutely an open source license regardless of whether the OSI and/or FSF approve of it.
https://redis.com/blog/redis-adopts-dual-source-available-licensing/
This is the announcement.
This is a disappointing outcome but one that I think has been coming for a while. Amazon has profited off of Redis without giving much back for quite a while (at least I recall this being a complaint of the Redis folks, perhaps others have evidence to the contrary).
This is pretty clearly an effort to bring AWS to the table for negotiations.
${CORPORATION} has profited off of Redis without giving much back (…)
I don’t understand this blend of comment.
If you purposely release your work as something anyone in the world is free to use and change to adapt to their own personal needs without any expectation of retribution or compensation, why are you complaining that people are using your work without any retribution or compensation?
More to the point, why are you singling out specific adopters while leaving out the bulk of your community?
It makes absolutely no sense at all.
There’s generally an understanding (the GPL folks think it’s naive – and this makes their case) that if you use open source software you should give back to it.
The GPL people are naive too because GPL doesn’t always prevent it either.
without any
expectationrequirement of retribution or compensation
I won’t require you to upvote my excellent comment, but I sure expect it!
Paragraph three is solid on Wiki: reciprocity - we needs it!
ElasticSearch tried this and lost hard already. OpenSearch has already out paced it in features and performance and ES is effectively dead. Such a braindead exercise to see Redis follow suit
Opensearch outpaced elasticsearch? This article from April 2023 states otherwise
OpenSearch saw over 3 times less code commits on core, and 14 times less work on important modules
I wouldn’t touch ES with a barge pole. They wrote their own gravestone imo. Check out the quality of the docs today between the two, and the SQL support. commits != quality or features
Such a braindead exercise to see Redis follow suit
I agree, this sounds like a desperate cash grab.
I mean, cloud providers who are already using Redis will continue to do so without paying anything at all, as they’re using stable versions of a software project already released under a permissive license. That ship has sailed.
Major cloud providers can certainly afford developing their own services. If Amazon can afford S3 and DynamoDB, they can certainly develop from the ground up their own Redis-like memory cache. In fact, Microsoft already announced Garnet, which apparently outperforms Redis in no small way.
So who exactly is expected to pay for this?
Can someone explain the benefit of letting AWS use your product, then throw resources at it to improve it to get and advantage over your product, basically providing a much better product to their users than you would be able to. But they do it without any need to contribute back. I don’t see the benefit of this to the opensource community at all, but people here seems to be quite passionate about it so you must see this differently than I do. So, please explain your view on how such a situation is beneficial to the OpenSource community.
If you think this is bad, then you should make sure to use copyleft licenses.
EDIT: Just read the details, and it seems that this is just what they did. SSPL is like AGPL with a stronger SAAS is distribution claus. That might not be valid, according to the OpenSource definition, but unless you are planning to modify the code and provide it as SAAS I think this is no a problem.
This is not as bad as they didn’t make the whole thing totally proprietary. But FOSS community definetly would have to seek for alternarives unfortunetly.
Or just keep using the FOSS versions. These license changes by definition can not be retroactive.
You may not make the functionality of the Software or a Modified version available to third parties as a service or distribute the Software or a Modified version in a manner that makes the functionality of the Software available to third parties.
🫡
x = “make the functionality of the Software or a Modified version available to third parties as a service”
y = “distribute the Software or a Modified version”
You may not X, or (Y in a manner that X)
Perfectly normal legalese. Just like “included but not limited to…” it sets a condition and adds a more specific version of that condition, which seems redundant but helps during actual litigation.
I don’t see anything wrong with the quote? Other than the policy itself being a ridiculous change, the wording is pretty standard legal speak. Not sure why you’re jumping to “ChatGPT Lawyer”
You may not X in a way that X
Definitely reads weird to me. It should suffice to say “you may not X”.
