[chipdart]

> So the contributions from collaborative effort is still usable under the same terms in those versions. So what’s this “bait and switch”?

It's undoubtedly bait and switch.

You have a company that portrays itself as the host of a project that relies on community contributions for maintenance, and all of a sudden that host unilaterally forces a licensing change where all users, including those who have been directly and indirectly contributing to maintain the project, are faced with an invoice-or-lawyer threat.

Yes, the source code is still available. Yes, anyone can pick up the last release and run with it. But it isn't business as usual anymore.

It disrupted day-to-day operations of all companies that have been using the software. Managers of all levels had to hold meetings, internal and across organizations. They had to ask lawyers questions and decide what to do and how to act based on their answers. People scrambled to react to this change.

To make matters worse, this change was overtly designed to extort money from it's users. There is no two ways around it. The first step is a sudden change in licensing terms, and expectedly the second step of sending in the lawyers to collect payments under threat of legal action.

[clvx]

Which is included in the as is part of the license.

A ton of projects have stopped working which forced to fork or replace completely due maintainers not caring anymore, getting sick or just switching priorities. Why is this different. For all the licenses change cases, contributors who disagreed forked and stablished a new route. This is 100% the spirit of the license.

[chipdart]

I have no idea what you tried to say. Your comment sounds like machine-generated garbage.

[pizza234]

> forces a licensing change where all users [...] are faced with an invoice-or-lawyer threat.

You're spreading misinformation. See other comments about RSAL/SSPL.

[chipdart]

> You're spreading misinformation. See other comments about RSAL/SSPL.

I think you are commenting on things you know nothing about.

Take the time you need to read through the license you are quoting.

Here's a link to the Redis Source Available License 2.0 (RSALv2):

https://redis.com/legal/rsalv2-agreement/

With RSALv2 you do not need to reach very far in the licensing terms to read the part where it explicitly prohibits users from providing Redis as a service, or even a modified version of it.

With Server Side Public License (SSPL) it's an even bigger shit show, as it forces any business that uses the software to release under the very same license all software and systems and even user interfaces (?!) that directly or indirectly interact with their project. As it is very easy to understand, this prohibits any company from adopting any software released under that license.

And of course it's so very convenient and an incredible coincidence that the same company that tries to force-feed these licenses to the world just so happens to sell proprietary "enterprise" versions of the same project.

[graemep]

> With Server Side Public License (SSPL) it's an even bigger shit show, as it forces any business that uses the software to release under the very same license all software and systems and even user interfaces (?!) that directly or indirectly interact with their project. As it is very easy to understand, this prohibits any company from adopting any software released under that license.

Not "any business", only a business that offers a hosted version of the software. AWS has a problem offering a hosted Redis service, but no one who self-hosts (including running it on a cloud) is affected.

[growse]

> Not "any business", only a business that offers a hosted version of the software. AWS has a problem offering a hosted Redis service, but no one who self-hosts (including running it on a cloud) is affected.

Does "hosted version of the software" mean that the hosted service has to exactly match the API semantics to count? Or does it mean any service that's semantically similar (and powered by) the software (e.g. simply storing and retrieving data on a user's behalf)?

Or does it mean something else?

Where is this actually defined?

[evanelias]

The license defines it: "Making the functionality of the Program or modified version available to third parties as a service includes, without limitation, enabling third parties to interact with the functionality of the Program or modified version remotely through a computer network, offering a service the value of which entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version, or offering a service that accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version."

I'm definitely not a lawyer; but as a layman I would interpret that as meaning you can't just change a few cosmetic things in the API to get around these terms, since that clearly still "entirely or primarily derives from the value of the Program or modified version" as well as "accomplishes for users the primary purpose of the Program or modified version".

There's certainly edge cases here which I assume will remain a gray area unless they're eventually worked out in court as part of some lawsuit. But given the intent of the license terms and motivation for adopting it (preventing cloud providers from reselling infrastructure software as a managed service), I would really not expect to see lawsuits against non-cloud providers. I mean there's no logical motivation whatsoever for vendors of SSPL-licensed software to start suing random users who aren't competitors. If they wanted payments from all self-host users, they would have used a very different license.

So my guess is the only way this goes to court is if a cloud provider blatantly violates those SSPL terms, which seems unlikely to happen.

[growse]

> There's certainly edge cases here which I assume will remain a gray area unless they're eventually worked out in court as part of some lawsuit.

Alternatively, I could just use Valkey and not worry about being sued.