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by tejasbaldev 824 days ago
If anyone is still debating about fairness, philosophical view point, business viability of OSS projects, competition from cloud providers - please click on the link below and check it for yourself.

Link - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/red-ug/...

Context : Redis Inc (fka RedisLabs) started creating ''Redis Modules'' later known as Redis Stack to start differentiating with cloud provider's managed Redis. The idea was to keep Redis Core BSD licensed (one of the most liberal licensing model) but at the same time build a layer on top of this BSD layer to keep differentiating the service.

One of these modules was Redis JSON which allowed you to use Redis as a JSON store. One cloud provider copied the whole codebase (even though it was protected by all the licensing clauses) and it doesn't stop there. JSON.FORGET was a cool command created by one of the exes at Redis & the ''cloud provider'' ended up copying that command as well!

If you're still debating whether a company should continue with a liberal licensing like BSD only to allow cloud providers or other service providers to blatantly plagiarise the codebase, think again.
1 comments
lmz 824 days ago
If there was a license violation they should sue. Otherwise, writing a compatible reimplementation of something should not be something "open" fans are against.
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sofixa 824 days ago
I think OP's point is that AWS have the resources to reimplement all the differentiation you can try to add with an open core model like Redis tried, which makes the whole attempt at open core useless. Therefore the choice is either to try to partner with AWS like Grafana Labs managed to do (only ones I'm aware of), move to a license with restrictions on them reselling your code, or accept defeat.
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lmz 824 days ago
Well even if they moved to a restricted license it would not stop reimplementations of the same protocol (I assume the extra non-open-core bits were already under a more restrictive license). I think that was just a poor example.
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tejasbaldev 823 days ago
Good luck with suing a ~2 Trillion USD marketcap company. It will drain all your resources to a point of no return.
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