[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