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Comment by PeterZaitsev | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps. I've seen people seen/write all kind of stuff when serious money are involved, and I also was offered to just just that on number of occasions.

I appreciate your honesty in disclosing what you still have Redis Labs stock, and assuming it is anything reasonable their value at future IPO would be much larger than any cash compensation which you might be getting as the part of the deal.

Reality is you did not fulfil (chose to or could not, I do not know) your public promise to keep Redis Open Source https://antirez.com/news/120

I hope your return will positively impact Redis as Open Source Project. Yet I'm disappointed to read your position on the Redis License - seeing cloud non compete license "basically as good as open source", as I far as I'm concern for many users which want to have software ran for them, and consume it as DBaaS it is no different to proprietary license, as it prevents competition.

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It's wild to me that the prevailing opinion seems to be "It is only TRUE Open Source if megacorps can modify the software and resell it without sharing their modifications".

The hosted vs. distributed loophole is just that, a loophole. If, when the GPL was first published, the world was cloud-hosted and SaaS-ful, the GPL would either have included some provision like the SSPL, or it would have had relatively little impact on the world.

I understand complaints about a lack of clear boundaries or overreach in these licenses. But acting like these aren't attempting to close a loophole being abused seems crazy to me.

> If, when the GPL was first published, the world was cloud-hosted and SaaS-ful, the GPL would either have included some provision like the SSPL, or it would have had relatively little impact on the world.

Well, no on the first one. We know exactly what the GPL looks like to protect users against proprietary network hosted software: the GNU Affero General Public License.

But SSPL is already a modification of AGPL, so its terms don't seem to have be sufficient.

The SSPL's network provision also requires SaaS companies to release the source of any other services and APIs they made the original software dependent on; hard to tell if that's still a valid copyright licence or more of a contract.

Contrast them with EUPL, which represents the strongest copyleft the EU commission thinks a licence, as opposed to a contract, could get away with under EU directives (ignoring its compatibility clause). I'm personally wary of AGPL/SSPL not because their terms, but because the viral claises are likely to be a legal fiction where I live.

This opinion seems to require the idea that targeted license changes that are intentionally devastating (going from "do anything" to requiring relicensing all/some of your stack) will only ever be used against "the bad guys" tm and OF COURSE we agree on who "the bad guys" tm are and OF COURSE that will never be me or you _trust me bro_.

Feels like a cliche "first they came for the richest saas providers and we said nothing..."

This argument about "evil megacorp" is problematic because you can't really isolate those from the small and wonderful startups.

Specifically I've been directly involved in MongoDB ecosystem with FerretDB and there are so many small indie providers worldwide would love to offer MongoDB Atlas alternative to their customers, but can't because of SSPL license.

I know, for many it is hard to make piece with it - Open Source, for real means EVERYONE can use it for ANY PURPOSE, and this means for good and for evil, both "good guys" and "bad guys"

Small indie providers should absolutely be able to sell their MongoDB / Redis / XYZ as a service, but they should absolutely also be required by the license to contribute back their modifications to the software.

Like I said, I understand the complaints about the line-drawing issues with these licenses. I don't understand the viewpoint that the current state of OSS, where hosting != distribution, is acceptable.

So just use AGPL. It covers hosting, it requires providing modifications, it's actually Open Source without caveats.

AGPL covers users interacting with the software remotely through a computer network which is not the same as covering hosting. There's often overlap but if it really is hosting that a project doesn't want to allow then they need something other than AGPL.

If you want to prohibit hosting then yes you're going to need a non-OSS license (by definition), but that's moving the goalposts: I was replying to a post that said others should be allowed to sell the software as a service, but that they should be forced to share their changes even if they're "hosting" and not "distributing"... AKA the exact point of the AGPL existing.

AGPL's tying that to users remotely interacting with the software over a computer network still leaves a lot of uncertainty about when it applies.

Consider this case. Suppose there is a chess server that users can interact with remotely over a computer network to play chess against other users or against a chess engine.

On the same host that is running the chess server there is a database server, which is only accessible via a Unix domain socket on that host. The chess server uses that database to store game scores, an opening database, and some endgame databases.

The database server is AGPL. Are users of the chess server entitled to the source to any local modifications that have been make to the database server?

Does it depend on whether it was the people running the chess server who modified the AGPL code or of the modified AGPL database was provided by the hosting company?

Most of the incidents I remember where a software developed was unhappy with someone offering a hosted version of their software were cases where the hosted version was mostly being used by clients of the hosting service and being accessed over the hosting services internal network rather than cases were someone was hosting a version of the software to provide that software's services to end users.

Yep. It is exactly the same as with Oracle - you can use it IF you buy the license... but this also has requirements of playing the Vendor game and as provider you really use freedom to really take care of your customers

I think the "root" of the problem goes to what is the purpose of Open Source ? I see a lot of VC Funded founder convinced what Open Source should make their business model easy, hence licenses such such as SSPL should be called Open Source.

I believe Open Source is about software users and maximizing their freedom, which among other things choice of truly independent vendors in all circumstances, as such non compete licenses as SSPL are not

Are they better than Oracle-like proprietary licenses ? Of course! but they are not Open Source

Meanwhile, it’s wild to me that you seem to think open source means “free for everyone… except them - they make too much money.”

That's not even remotely what I'm saying.

I'm saying if a company modifies open source software and distributes it, they should be required to distribute the modified source as well. I'm further claiming that providing a hosted service is a form of distribution.

> “free for everyone… except them - they make too much money.”

Free for everyone, and if you make changes to improve it, and let others use the software you changed, you contribute those changes back. That's the basic principle of OSS, no?

> That's the basic principle of OSS, no?

No, only for GPL. If the project has a BSD or MIT licence you may distribute the compiled version and keep the changes secret.

Apologies for the caricature.

It’s clearly up for debate, but I’ve always thought that imposing obligations for how people use the product/code, or implying obligations for what the project is “owed” by users, isn’t free as in freedom, or beer. So I don’t think it’s a basic principle of open source. I think some people want it to be though.

I get it though. People see aws et al making a business model of hosting FOSS and making boatloads of money doing it, and they don’t like it.

What loophole was being abused that caused Redis the company to pull the proverbial rug?

The "big evil corporation" that usually gets referenced is AWS. One of the core comitters to the Redis project when it was open source, was paid to do so, by AWS, and continues to be paid to do so, on the open source fork, ValKey.

It's fine to make an argument about "take it and give nothing back" when comparing the potential differences of permissive vs copyleft licenses. I likely wouldn't agree with you about which is ultimately a better choice, but I think it's fine to make that argument there.

But this isn't a hypothetical. It's an actual situation, where a permissively licensed project had significant outside contributions... and still people are screaming about "the evil mega corp"... who is now even more involved in maintaining a permissively licensed fork of said software.

I'm far from an AWS fan. I avoid it whenever possible, and I've made good money migrating customers off of AWS' overpriced services, but I've yet to see a single example of them doing anything that fulfils the "evil mega corp" shoe, w.r.t Redis.

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