Did the two Israeli dudes violate the Redis license?
“I’m going to chose to do Z and A with your software.”
“Moral hazard! Moral hazard!”
Picking a license indicates what you are willing to have others do with your work. If you don’t want people to be able to monetize it, pick a different license.
Picking a license indicates what you are willing to have others do with your work without going after them with a threat of handcuffs and prison bars. I might not be willing to do or threaten (government-mediated) violence to someone for being an arsehole, and yet consider them an arsehole.
You could simply choose to not pursue legal action against license violators. Choosing a permissive license and then complaining when people do what you gave them permission to do is just ridiculous.
No. Willful copyright infringement for commercial game is a crime. See 17 U.S.C. § 506(a).
He didn't seem to have a real choice, maybe an illusion of choice since (from an external point of view) as he was pinned against the wall.
They were using his software commercially and even using the trademark of Salvatore (he was complaining about such uses occasionally). He was broke, I guess that's why he didn't register the trademark. Literally while they raised 40M USD, he was explaining struggling on this board:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12506743
This is actually one year after the first Redis Labs deal :/ Totally not the speech of someone with a multi-million exit in sight.
Fast-forward several years later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203596 (with already >1B valuation)
If Salvatore just got 10% of the company he would get 100M+ USD. 1%: 10M+ USD.
Something must have happened.
If I'm wrong and he is super rich, then it's my mistake, but in general it's incredibly easy to get screwed up in a hostile shareholding / corporate environment when in front of you you have experienced lawyers and bankers.