[immibis]

I hope Redis's license being changed makes more people wake up to the reality of the differences between copyleft and permissive.

Permissive is, in practice, public domain. Any corporation can take your code and use it as closed-source. All they have to do is credit your name somewhere deep in the documentation, a completely meaningless gesture. They also can't sue you for copying "their" library. But that's about it.

[lenerdenator]

To me, this is, over the long-term, a self-solving problem. Especially for simpler projects.

It took a decade for GNU/Linux to get to the point where CTOs would throw it in the same category as commercial UNIXes, but when that happened, well... when was the last time you logged into a brand-spankin'-new HP-UX machine?

And that was an operating system, one of the more ambitious types of software projects.

Redis is trading short-term profit for their sustainability as a business. There are already forks that are FOSS; there will be more. Cloud service providers have every incentive to not have to pass on Redis license fees to the customer.

TL;DR: you can't effectively compete over the long-term with the FOSS branches off the trunk that your now-closed-source software branches from.

[immibis]

> There are already forks that are FOSS.

FWIW Redis is still FOSS since SSPL is FOSS - very strong copyleft. It's not a proprietary license, it's rather "more AGPL than AGPL."

Even if [the OSI](https://opensource.org/sponsors) disagrees.

[lenerdenator]

If I'm understanding the changes Redis made, it's FOSS until you decide you want to use their server to create a cloud service offering. Am I mistaken?

[Sander_Marechal]

Then it isn't FOSS, because it violates freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish

[lenerdenator]

That's my view of FOSS as well; was asking for clarification on that.

[immibis]

It still is, you just have to publish the whole derived work that you created under the SSPL - not just the source to create redis.exe but also the whole source to create the backend of myhostedredisservice.com

[lifthrasiir]

I have also personally moved from non-PD permissive licenses for my own works, preferring an explicit public domain dedication or equivalent, and occasionally using a full copyleft license. I do know they are technically different (one important aspect being the patent clause), but the value added by those permissive licenses is not really significant.

[Mystery-Machine]

Can you please clarify what's the difference between the two?

[tlocke]

The way I think of it is that with permissive licences the freedoms can be removed from the code, but with copyleft the freedoms can't be removed from the code. By freedoms I mean the freedom to study the source code, to run it for whatever purpose you want, to make modifications and to share the code with other people.

[TheChaplain]

GPL forces you to always supply the source code but only if you distribute the application.

E.g. if you fork Nano and sell or make binaries available for download for free, people have the right to ask you for the source code.

If you don't distribute it in any form, then you don't need to.[1]

With MIT you can fork, distribute and people can't demand anything.

[1]: Contrary to popular misinformation, modified GPL software can be used by businesses as long as it is not distributed.

[mlichvar]

Another way to look at it is that MIT gives freedom to the developers and GPL gives freedom to the users. It's a conflict between the two groups.

[worthless-trash]

> people have the right to ask you for the source code.

People you distributed binaries to have a right to the source code via the same method that the binaries are provided in. Or at least that was my understanding.

[immibis]

If it's a non-commercial affair, you can give them a "written offer valid for at least 3 years" and then you don't have to actually supply it unless someone asks.

In practice, this isn't a very good option to take. Much better to provide it on a "network server" as they were called at the time the license was written.

[worthless-trash]

This sounds like a very sane option to take, id like it to be codified in a license. Eternal availability sounds like a real hassle to maintain.

[immibis]

It is codified...