> but all other users will be unaffected by this change.
This is untrue for the simple reason that you will be unable to apt-get install this software directly from Linux distros with a policy of including only FOSS.
Or, more generally - the value of FOSS is in the opportunities for public collaboration and redistribution. If you think you're doing the vast majority of the development work anyway and you want people to get packages from you anyway, great, there's no need for an open-source license at all: just provide source, allow people to make private modifications, and allow people to send fixes back to you. If you value the open source ecosystem, though, cutting yourself off from it is a bad plan.
They mention later on that redis core will always remain BSD. I share your sentiment, though it seems like this is an effort to not totally isolate the project. Their goal appears to be clamping down on straight up resale of integration components & modules.
If they're concerned about brand dilution via resale of "Redis"-as-a-Service RedisLabs could easily trademark the term Redis and prohibit its use in this way. This mechanism is much the same way Mozilla controls the Firefox trademarks. I do wish they hadn't made their Open Source licence a confusing mess and effectively proprietary for certain modules. That's their right, of course - as copyright holders. However, it's really unhelpful for the rest of the community. We're going to spend a lot of time trying to clarify for people who don't understand the implications of these toxic licence provisions why they make such components unacceptable.
> This mechanism is much the same way Mozilla controls the Firefox trademarks.
That's not the same situation. Firefox is a standalone product; by nature it can't be reasonably sold as a service. And plenty of for-profit Firefox alternatives _do_ exist with different names.
Take MySQL. AWS sells MySQL through Aurora. It's almost certainly the case that they're using MySQL code under the hood along with a bit of secret sauce. I'd have a hard time believing Amazon has made many meaningful contributions back to the MySQL codebase. Even if they removed "MySQL" from the product naming, (is it even, for Serverless Aurora?) they're still making money hand-over-fist selling the functionality of code they didn't write.
I mean.. I'm sure they're concerned far more about corporations making money off their unpaid work by hiding it under many layers of abstraction.
"Use our stuff for free to do new stuff. But if you're making money off our stuff by selling our stuff's features, then we need to talk licensing first."
If this is an accurate summary, I really don't see anything scandalous about it.
Surely this kind of resale of enterprise proprietary software modules is already prohibited by their enterprise licensing scheme. If it's open source, this is precisely what open source is meant to do. It's supposed to be a means to an end to enable new functionality - the fact that it's being sold doesn't matter. The key is that we all gain that ability. If they want to compete in that space with their open source product then they should run a hosting outfit - not try to rent seek from people adding value by actually running their code in production.
This is absolutely not Redis rent-seeking. In fact, what the Commons Clause is designed to protect against, from my lay-reading of it, is in fact rent-seeking.
As for the rest, the Redis Labs post addresses every point you make pretty definitively. I don't think many of the people who are bothered by this business decision read that post. And if they did, and they comprehended it all, but they still think Redis decided poorly, then I think there's a different convo to have. A broader one about values.
Or... hey, maybe they're just not as cynical as me. Maybe they don't think it's plausible companies are out there right now selling their "Redis with a few bells & whistles" product. Then it stands to reason that you'd see the Commons Clause as some kind of enablement to somehow rent-seek from innocent corporations. I mean hell I'd prefer that. If that's the case then I'd probably share that person's opinion about Commons Clause.
I just don't think that's the case. I believe Redis is making this licensing change in good faith. Not because I know anything about Redis that leads me to believe they're honest people. But because a product team lazily putting together a product at AMZN or GOOG or whatever else and not even thinking to look at the Redis license sounds pretty realistic to me!
Occam's Razor would say this is not an elaborate scheme by Redis to extort Fortune 500 companies.
> But because a product team lazily putting together a product at AMZN or GOOG or whatever else and not even thinking to look at the Redis license sounds pretty realistic to me!
I don't think there's anything scandalous here. I'm not Stallman; releasing non-Free Software is a perfectly legitimate and unscandalous thing to do IMO.
Just be honest about it. Don't call it "Apache with this tiny little change that won't affect most people." Call it freeware (or shareware) with source available.
And if you don't want to do that because FOSS has trounced shareware in the enterprise sales market... well, that's for you to figure out. I'm just here to say that it's actual FOSS that can be fully part of the FOSS ecosystem, like being in Linux distros, that trounced shareware. FOSS-but-not-really hasn't. Be honest with yourselves too, as well as honest with the world.
Actually it seems that Redis Labs wouldn't be able to trademark "Redis" in this sense (at least without Antirez's permission) as they themselves are making money on a fork of Redis called "Redis^e" or something like that. Granted Antirez works for them now -- but this is downright confusing.
Title of the page is "Amazon ElastiCache for Redis"; it's also the main header. The phrase "Amazon ElastiCache for Redis" appears on the page a total of 24 times.
The "Get Started" button is labeled: "Get started with Amazon ElastiCache for Redis".
This is untrue for the simple reason that you will be unable to apt-get install this software directly from Linux distros with a policy of including only FOSS.
Or, more generally - the value of FOSS is in the opportunities for public collaboration and redistribution. If you think you're doing the vast majority of the development work anyway and you want people to get packages from you anyway, great, there's no need for an open-source license at all: just provide source, allow people to make private modifications, and allow people to send fixes back to you. If you value the open source ecosystem, though, cutting yourself off from it is a bad plan.