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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> “When we came out with this new license, there were many different views,” he acknowledged. “Some people condemned that. But after the initial noise calmed down — and especially after some other companies came out with a similar concept — the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it.”

So, is it true that HN now understands and is cool with Redis Labs "fixing" the concept of open source?

From reading previous threads on HN this seems like a mischaracterization, but it's quite possible I missed the relevant thread(s).

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I think it's fair to say that people are acknowledging the problem: it's possible for a large company to use the rights offered to them by an open source license to create products that effectively end the financial viability of smaller companies that lead core development of the project.

There's definitely not yet agreement on the solution, and Redis Labs alone is not going to solve it.

Roughly I think different people believe several things such as:

1.) The purity of open source (no restrictions on use) trump the needs of a company that does core development to profit, and so nothing should change.

2.) Its ok for companies doing core OSS development to "build a moat" that protects their revenue stream, but it shouldn't be done at the license level. Instead companies should look somewhere else like their expertise/reputation, building products on top of their open source code, etc

3.) Adjusting licenses is a reasonable way to allow interesting code to be available for use by anyone (under a not-quite pure open source license), and we are figuring out the best way to do that

I appreciate you taking the time to explain, Julian.

> I think it's fair to say that people are acknowledging the problem: it's possible for a large company to use the rights offered to them by an open source license to create products that effectively end the financial viability of smaller companies that lead core development of the project.

That's been true since the MIT and Apache license came into existence.

Your third item just reeks of justification. "not-quite pure open source license" is nonsense. This is not an open source license, at its core. The goal here is to prevent use.

So I don't think the third is a valid option when we're discussing "fixing" open source. It's a valid option for protecting a companies revenue stream, but in doing so that company is no longer an "open source company" by definition.

This isn’t a solution to building business models on open source software by definition, but it’s potentially a solution to building business models on proprietary software where your customers want to be able to fix bugs and make improvements on their own.

Note that “source available” licenses aren’t new - they used to be the norm, even around the time the Free Software Foundation was started, and still are the norm in some industries. Even Microsoft will sell you a “shared source” license for some of its software. The defining feature of open source software is not that you can freely see the code, it’s that you can freely modify and use the code for any purpose.

The issue isn’t that these business models exist, it’s that there’s a new wave of companies that wish to take advantage of the vast amount of work that FLOSS advocates and activists have done over the decades in order to push proprietary software, and that’s not ok. This isn’t “fixing open source” - this is creating proprietary software using a proven business model and lying about what it is.

I’m not exactly sure why you’re being down voted, but from my perspective, hey it’s your code use what license you want.

That’s fine.

It’s not fixing anything, it’s just more arbitrary proprietary software.

Just don’t call it open source, and keep your hands away from the Apache brand.

> Just don’t call it open source, and keep your hands away from the Apache brand.

Thanks! So it sounds like you're personally okay with this solution?

Sure. Why not? There are lots of companies in the world that sell proprietary software. Nothing wrong with that. A lot of great software in the world, from a user experience perspective, is proprietary. Think about the devices, computers, and websites that you use on a daily basis - most of these are probably proprietary. I don't think there's any moral obligation for someone to give their work away for free as open source.

Let's just not confuse proprietary software with open source software.

Let's not confuse proprietary software, open-source software and free (as in freedom) software.

I acknowledge that sustainability is a problem in Open Source.

I strongly disagree that this is a problem with the original concept of Open Source, and I strongly disagree that Redis's solution is applicable.

Redis is talking out of its butt with this claim. The solution it proposes is throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- saying, "we can't figure out how to fund Open Source, so let's just agree that it was a mistake and make something else that's vaguely adjacent to it."

I personally think it's massively egotistical for them to claim to speak for all developers, or even most developers. Redis hasn't proposed anything new or revolutionary. Source Available licenses have been around for ages. I don't see what's new here.

I personally feel like Redis is stepping into a general debate over Open vs proprietary software that is older than their company; and I don't feel like they're bringing anything new to the table. They've clearly decided that proprietary is the way to go. Now they're acting like this is some kind of significant decision, and that the entire Open Source ecosystem should change to accommodate and bless their specific business model.

It rubs me the wrong way. I often disagree with decisions that companies make, but this press release actually gets under my skin. I'm not dumb enough to try and speak for anyone else other than myself, but if their goal here was to spark dialog in the Open Source community, I am personally way less interested now in hearing what they have to say.

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