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Comment by federationfive | Hacker News Reader

Heroku cant use OSS Redis anymore because of the license change to prevent Cloud vendors from running OSS Redis and charging for it

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My point was that Redis' bet on cloud vendors paying them seems to be failing.

It is unfortunately not failing them ("unfortunately" because I very much dislike the path they took). They lost Heroku, which also didn't pay them before the license change, but they got others. I don't know if the information is public.

I'm torn on the moral issues of the re-licensing, but I'm firmly happy about the practical implications. Redis vs. Valkey is as competitive as it gets, since users can switch between the two so seamlessly (for now, at least). That's good for the industry. I expect to see a flurry of improvements to both in the coming years as they try to come out on top (some may be redundant, but I nonetheless think the pace will be faster).

Yeah, I guess I'm speaking from a sample size of 1 here since they don't share this information (and I'm too lazy to look around at what other cloud vendors are doing i.r.t. Valkey vs Reddit).

What "others" did they get, that you're aware of?

* Google added support to Valkey: https://cloud.google.com/memorystore

* AWS says they are moving: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/why-aws-supports-val...

* Aiven added Valkey: https://aiven.io/blog/introducing-aiven-for-valkey

* Instaclustr mentioned moving: https://www.instaclustr.com/blog/redis-to-valkey/

* Oracle indicated support: https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/oracle-su...

Azure is the main one sticking with Redis: https://azure.microsoft.com/de-de/blog/redis-license-update-...

I might edit this if I remember some more.

The azure post is very hand wavy, and it looks like azure isn’t even supporting redis 7, let alone redis minor version after the license change.

When will these money hungry vultures realize that you cannot transition a foss "brand" into a proprietary system no matter how you pitch the tree tier? You can't have your name recognition and eat it too. These groups don't realize that "NewThing from the developers of Redis" holds so much more weight than "Redis is now closed source and you have to pay for it"? There is a net negative value in detonating the bomb that is a license change versus making something new and throwing the existing name's support behind it. Just look at literally every well known license changed software becoming irrelevant while the foss fork with a new name has no problem getting traction? Just look at the graveyard of Solaris, OpenOffice and others. The open source community deeply despises these relicensing scams and has proven time and time again not to fall for ignorant consumer brand identity marketing tactics?

These companies are backed into a corner. Even if they "realize" that they are doomed the investors won't allow them to just shut down.

"NewThing from the developers of Redis" holds so much more weight than "Redis is now closed source and you have to pay for it"

I disagree with this part. The problem we're now seeing with open core is that almost everybody just wants the core. They don't want enterprise. They don't want the new thing.

In this case, it's "Valkey, from the developers of Redis", and everybody wants the new thing. Because the people working on Valkey are in fact the people who worked on Redis before it went proprietary.

I don't think that was kelsey98765431's point. Of course people want the free thing. If Redis Labs released a new commercial thing, people do not want it regardless of the name.

I'm not suggesting it was kelsey98765431's point (though the thought crossed my mind that they might have been going for that). I was observing the irony that

> These groups don't realize that "NewThing from the developers of Redis" holds so much more weight than "Redis is now closed source and you have to pay for it"?

is in fact exactly what happened in this case, because NewThing is Valkey, it is from the developers of Redis, and that has indeed carried so much more weight.

My guy, the money-hungry vultures are more so the ones exploiting open-source without contributing anything back -- not even financially, let alone development or maintenance.

It's high time permissive OSS licenses died together with free maintenance and support.

Both sides are leeching off somebody, one off a project that picked the wrong license, and the other off contributors who were mislead about a project's licensing intentions.

Oh, by no means am I belittling the rug-pull performed on the unpaid/non-commissioned? contributors.

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