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Comment by wvenable | Hacker News Reader

> Apache Common Clause license

As other's have pointed out, but it bears repeating, this is not a thing.

There is actually nothing particularly shocking about what Redis is doing here; it's been done by many open source companies in the past and present and nobody cares. Yes, it can be considered a somewhat less tasteful way to make money from an open source platform but not enough to get a big thread on HN.

What they did to stir this debate is confusingly and unnecessarily tie this move to open source licensing and "commons" naming. This is what brought all this attention to something that is otherwise not very controversial.

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Seriously, there is nothing controversial about layering proprietary offerings on top of your own Open Source software. Tons of companies do this. They've done it for ages.

It's only controversial because it's been phrased as an evolution of the Open Source model. We have articles like this getting thrown around about how the Open Source community needs to grow up and accept Open Core, right next to articles about how the Common license is going to be the death of Open Source.

This is only a debate because Redis doesn't know how to write a decent press release.

But in reality, most people already accept Open Core. We're not getting a ton of articles on Hacker News about how Gitlab is evil. Just don't act like it's something new or innovative. It's not some brand new problem for us to solve, or a sign of the Open Source community's immaturity.

We really don't need a new license for Open Core, and even if we did need some kind of shared source available/proprietary license, it probably wouldn't look like the Commons license.

The problem is the association with the Apache license. Apache has a positive brand that you can attach to your project if you license it as such.

It ok if you want to say we have Apache open core and then non-free extensions, but you shouldn't associate the non-free extensions with Apache.

> It's only controversial because it's been phrased as an evolution of the Open Source model.

It would have been controversial anyway because they've taken existing software and put a more restrictive license on it; this will always generate headlines. The error was trying to avoid the inevitable backlash by spinning it like it was an original improvement on the first principles of licensing. Now they have a double backlash: against the new restriction, and against the concept of this being the New Frontier of OSS licensing. By trying to be clever, they've shot themselves in the foot.

The trick worked - people are conflating these and making it sound like it’s coming from the Apache Foundation.

I hope the Apache Foundation speaks out against this horrible potential for confusion. Could this possibly be turning into a case of trademark dilution (of the "Apache" trademark)?

It almost certainly is, and I sure hope the Apache Foundation starts to enforce their trademark. Otherwise, they might lose it.

They have a trademark on "Apache" and even a lot of software under the "Apache Commons" brand. This is extremely confusing and clearly dilutes their branding.

I have no problem with Redis Labs prioritizing (although I think an AGPL dual license would be more appropriate). I have a serious, serious problem with the intentional confusion they're spreading.

On the whole, I think this will backfire. Redis Labs undercut their credibility. I'm unlikely to do business with a company I don't trust. The main value-add of being the official developer of an open source product is that trust. A lot of that is likely to spill over on Redis itself.

It also does signal a financially weak position.

Not Redis, RedisLabs. (Redis is the software project, still BSD, not a company)

I updated the language in the post for clarity. However, I wasn't confused by the Redis post and I didn't for a second think this was an official Apache Foundation thing. I seriously doubt that others thought that either. I suspect that even if they had called it RedisLabs' Open License, they still would have been met with the same level of vitriol.

The confusion isn't whether it's an official Apache thing. The confusion comes from trying to a tie an non-open source license to an actual open source license and confuse matters further with this "common" naming scheme. It's purposefully obfuscating and maybe even teeters into purposely dishonest.

I stand by my original disagreement. Removing the open source license from some of their own software would have been met with some discussion but not anywhere near "the same level vitriol" that you seem to believe. The proprietary module business model is used by plenty of open source companies including Nginx. So why would you think Redis would be exceptional here?

I still don't see how they were obfuscating anything. They stated very clearly that those parts of code had restrictions and the purpose of those restrictions were to enable them to profit from providing them as part of their offering. There was no subterfuge here. You're taking the extremely uncharitable view on the language because you don't like the message.

You have it completely backwards; I have absolutely no problem with them taking the software that they've written and making it proprietary. No one should be forced to open source anything and we should all be thankful those modules were open sourced before now. If they own all the copyright (which they must to change the license) they are free (and welcome) to do what they want.

But this whole Commons Clause licensing thing is absolutely bizarre. The naming itself is obfuscating the fact that this actually removes this code from the commons which is the exact opposite of the similarly named Creative Commons licenses. Secondly, it's highly questionable whether or not you can simply attach an external rider like this to existing open source license; Apache License + something else is no longer the Apache license.

I don't understand why any company would go through this awful mess except obfuscation. I don't think they have any intention to defraud; I think they just wanted to make their proprietary plan sound better. And I think that is a mess but their actual business model is both sound and reasonable.

You wrote an article about how open source must "get real" and accept these business models and I'm sorry that the entire premise is undermined by the hundreds of other open source projects that have a variety of business models either closely or exactly matching what Redis is trying to do here. The only thing Redis did poorly was try and hide it under flowery language and poor legal advice.

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