Redis Changes Its Open Source License -- Again (zdnet.com)

"Redis Labs is dropping its Commons Clause license in favor of its new 'available-source' license: Redis Source Available License (RSAL)," reports ZDNet -- adding "This is not an open-source license." Redis Labs had used Commons Clause on top of the open-source Apache License to protect its rights to modules added to its 3-Clause-BSD-licensed Redis, the popular open-source in-memory data structure store. But, as Manish Gupta, Redis Labs' CMO, explained, "It didn't work. Confusion reigned over whether or not the modules were open source. They're not open-source." So, although it hadn't wanted to create a new license, that's what Redis Labs ended up doing....

The RSAL grants, Gupta said, equivalent rights to permissive open-source licenses for the vast majority of users. With the RSAL, developers can: Use the software; modify the source code; integrate it with an application; and use, distribute, support, or sell their application. But -- and this is big -- the RSAL forbids you from using any application built with these modules in a database, a caching engine, a stream processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine, or a machine learning/artificial intelligence serving engine. In short, all the ways that Redis Labs makes money from Redis. Gupta wants to make it perfectly clear: "We're not calling it open source. It's not."
Earlier this month the Open Source Initiative had reaffirmed its commitment to open source's original definition, adding "There is no trust in a world where anyone can invent their own definition for open source, and without trust there is no community, no collaboration, and no innovation."

And earlier this week on Twitter a Red Hat open-source evangelist said they wondered whether Redis was just "clueless. There are a lot of folks entering #opensource today who are unwilling to do the research and reading, and assume that these are all new problems."

Comments

Redis alternative in 3,2,1 ...

[Qbertino]

Does anyone know any neat Redis alternatives/forks?

Re:Redis alternative in 3,2,1 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

One issue you’re ignoring is that a lot of us open source developers would love to spend more time on open source, but have signed "inventions" contracts which force us to turn over any "inventions" we make, in our spare time or not, over to our employer (California has a "on your own time, with your own computer, as long as it is not related to what your employer makes" exception, but some companies argue they make everything, so the third clause means they own everything a developer can possibly do in their free time).

I know a lot of companies use Redis, so hopefully there are enough with managers with some clue who are willing to allow some of their developers to take the time to maintain an open source fork of it. Or, maybe the US can be like Germany and mandate the employees must have six weeks of paid time off every year; that would allow developers to contribute to open source during those six weeks.

It's a question of money, and whether we want to benefit the 1% (more proprietary software) or the 99% (more open source software libre) when all is said and done.

What a load of bollocks

[drinkypoo]

Earlier this month the Open Source Initiative had reaffirmed its commitment to open source's original definition, adding "There is no trust in a world where anyone can invent their own definition for open source

Uh, bullshit. Open Source means you can see the source. That's all it means. That's why we have all these various Open Source licenses, and also why Free Software is different from Open Source. When you don't invent the term, which was provably in use before the leading lights of the OSI claimed to have coined it, you don't get to define it.

Redis IS Open Source. It is NOT Free Software. Equivocating the two is corporate whoredom.

Re:What a load of bollocks

[drinkypoo]

Stupid bleeping...I'm not sure how I wrote "probably". A specific person, ESR, definitely used it first.

First, ESR doesn't actually claim (any more) to have invented it, he claims Christine Petersen invented it. He changed his story.

Second:
1993: Jerome Schneider
1996: Caldera (Written by Lyle Ball, whom I queried on the subject)
1998: Christine Peterson (Writing in 2006, mind, and providing zero citations)

So you tell me, who you gonna believe? The citations which prove that its use predates OSI claims by five years, provided by a person (me) who has nothing to gain by continuing this argument except the credibility which naturally comes from supporting the facts, or someone with something to gain economically from making such claims, like Christine Peterson or Bruce Perens? The only dog I've got in this fight is the truth.

Sustaining this argument over the years (literally over more than a decade) has cost me substantial credibility, but only among people who value prejudice over fact. I'm okay with that. Better to suffer for the truth than promote a pack of lies. Buying into bullshit is why we can't have nice things.