[snotrockets]

> Many of these recent forks are being done because people won't want AWS/GCP/Azure to slap a UI on top of their free open-source product and resell it, making tens of millions of dollars per day in the process. I can't really blame them.

I won't blame them for regretting their past actions, but I hope the lesson would be learned: if you want to put limitation on the use of your software, you shouldn't have licensed it in a way that doesn't allow such. You can't recall a gift because you don't like how the recipient is using it. Though you are more then welcome not to gift them ever again.

[bloppe]

> Though you are more then welcome not to gift them ever again

That's actually an accurate description of what's happening with these re-licensing dramas. Redis versions from before the split are still BSD-licensed. They can't recall those gifts. The re-licensing only applies to newer versions.

Of course, it wasn't just people employed by Redis, Inc. who were providing the gifts. My (vague) understanding is that a lot of contributions came from people at AWS, etc. Technically, AWS was providing those "gift" contributions to Redis -- because Redis, Inc. maintains the copyright for community contributions -- and Redis was then re-gifting those contributions to the world, via the BSD license. That's all fine and dandy until the big contributors realized they're actually fiercely competing with each other for cloud customers, and it's not realistic for Redis, Inc. to compete with the largest cloud provider on Earth without any technical moat whatsoever. Hence the re-licensing.

I think the breakdown in trust for Redis, Inc. is overblown. By far the biggest contributor to valkey (madolson) is employed by AWS. Does the OSS community really think that's a better organization to back in the long term?

[sanderjd]

First of all, you can "recall a gift", if it is legal. I don't think I've seen people arguing that these re-licensing actions are not legal.

But if you mean that you can't recall a gift without making people mad, then yep, that's true! But keeping people from being mad is not the only thing that matters.

But the real problem I have with, "I hope the lesson will be learned" is that the lesson people are learning is "don't try to build ambitious software requiring a lot of work from a dedicated core team using an open source license; you're going to find yourself damned if you do and damned if you don't".

And I think that really sucks! And sadly the ship has already sailed here. I'm certain we're going to see way fewer products with open source licenses because of all of this. And I think it's unlikely we'll even see as many products with "source available" licenses because, how is it worth the hassle to release source when the community has shown more good will to projects that are entirely proprietary?

I really think I'm going to look back at the last 15 years or so in awe at how often I had the luxury of digging into the behavior of software I rely on, by reading the code.

[snotrockets]

We're living in a society, with certain systems baked into it.

Fighting to change those systems and norms is a Good Thing™, but I'm too pessimistic to act today as if the change is coming tomorrow. I'll both work to change those systems, AND act as if they're here to stay.

[sanderjd]

I'm not sure if this was a purposeful allusion or not, but I entirely agree that you "can't recall a gift" in exactly the same sense that you can't keep talking on a payphone for a long time when someone is clearly waiting; because, you know, we're living in a society!!

[snotrockets]

Unlike the payphone analogy, where there is metering rules, and as long as you abide by them, you can keep talking, even if it's impolite, there is a legal definition for gifts (it is, after all, a transfer of ownership, and such things are regulated), which, as far as I know, matches the social norm of not being able to claw those back.

[sanderjd]

Ha, except, to go full circle, then if you're using that legal definition of a "gift" requiring a transfer of ownership, it's clear that open source software is not actually a gift, because there is no transfer of ownership.

You can't have it both ways! If it's a "gift" in the colloquial sense of something freely given, then it breaks social convention to claw it back, but it is not illegal. If you want to use the legal definition of a "gift" - ie. for tax purposes, implying a transfer of ownership - then contributions to open source software are not at all a "gift" in that sense.

[bornfreddy]

> And I think it's unlikely we'll even see as many products with "source available" licenses because, how is it worth the hassle to release source when the community has shown more good will to projects that are entirely proprietary?

This, thousand times. Looks like FOSS advocates feel so threatened by "source available" licenses that they will do everything possible to keep them from gaining momentum (see Commons Clause).

It's a shame really. It would be nice to have a standard and well known license that would both allow users to use software freely (for using and adapting) and still protect makers from their competitors (AWS comes to mind) undercutting them with their own product. Oh well.

EDIT: ...and here comes the first (anonymous) downvote. Proves my point about FOSS sentiment, I guess? Come on, it's a discussion, you can do better than that.

[pas]

what's the best version of the argument that these new BSL/SSPL licenses are bad, or that they are not in the spirit of FOSS?

[snotrockets]

FOSS originalists insist on no limitations on use of the software.

The FSF prohibits such in what they call freedom 0:

> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

And OSI explicitly forbids it in their open source definition:

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor > > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a > specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from > being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

This rules out no-CSP licenses from those definition, as well as the original JSON license, as it used to read something like "this software shouldn't be used for evil". Those rules would also block banning software from being used for war crimes, human rights abuse, etc. And while I can understand the legal minefield with prohibiting some use, I'd really wish we had a good license that would indeed try to also curb using software for committing real atrocities (and not just possibly reducing shareholder value). But I digress.

[pas]

Sure, I know, but I mean that's just their subjective line in the sand. (Their maximal-freedom in this kind of infinite dimensional space.)

After all wouldn't a user be more free if they were able to just do whatever they want with it, not just run it? Ie. free to copy/modify/sublicense it in any way? Why is program execution more important than other use of the intellectual property?

If they want to maximize freedom for all potential users, then they ought to think about sustainability of the software. (As in economic incentives and market share and whatnot.) To me it seems they have a static worldview, the only thing they care about is that current set-in-stone version of the work, but that's basically putting their head into the cool refreshing sand of ignorance.

(That said, I'm nowhere near FSF/OSI circles (duh! :P), so I have no idea what's their current thinking of this. Maybe they are fully aware of this, but ... based on HN chatter it seems that they realized it's a hard problem and picked an oversimplified worldview as workaround, and now it's institutionalized denial.)

> And while I can understand the legal minefield with prohibiting some use, I'd really wish we had a good license that would indeed try to also curb using software for committing real atrocities.

I'm very skeptical of the practicality of it (after all if there's one thing states in general are good at, it is waging large scale wars and appropriating everything required for it), but if adding naive sounding clauses to FOSS-ish projects can prevent at least a few drone attacks it will have worth it.

Also, if people want to somehow put these use-restrictions into "the right context at the right time" then they can add a clause for that.

Ie. add a clause listing categories of uses and/or users (military, law enforcement, surveillance, and any state, state-owned, significantly state-sponsored entity) that require express written authorization from a named organization/institution, and folks could simply pick this when they start a project. (From Apache2-NATO to AGPL-ChaosComputerClub and so on.)

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> But the real problem I have with, "I hope the lesson will be learned" is that the lesson people are learning is "don't try to build ambitious software requiring a lot of work from a dedicated core team using an open source license; you're going to find yourself damned if you do and damned if you don't".

Yeah, for things running server-side that could be used by Amazon and Microsoft, they should use SSPL from the start. In this case everything is clear and everybody knows what to expect. For regular users, there is absolutely zero difference between SSPL and OSI-certified licenses.

[sanderjd]

Yes, they definitely should use something like that from the start, in my view. But I think they won't, because there is now a lot of evidence that this will result in a bunch of bad press, whereas just making it proprietary will go without comment.

What incentive do companies have to do this?

[pas]

the best strategy is still to start out with something that's press-positive (Apache2) and switch to BSL/SSPL after funding is secured. bad press will happen, but at least later, after the good press phase.

[sanderjd]

What is the advantage of that, over just building proprietary software?

[slashdev]

With the noise people make when you don't use an OSI open-source license, little wonder. But when Redis started I think we didn't yet boardly understand the limitations of OSI licenses in the era of big tech cloud computing.

To people starting projects today, you have no excuse, we know better. Don't use OSI open-source unless it's entirely a labor of love that you're giving away free.

OSI Open-source business models are dead. Don't make that mistake.

[snotrockets]

> But when Redis started I think we didn't yet boardly understand the limitations of OSI licenses in the era of big tech cloud computing.

According to antirez, he understood the implications of licensing Redis as BSD: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39863371

[bornfreddy]

But not in "the era of big tech cloud computing":

> That is, if I was still in charge, would I change license? But that's an impossible game to play, I'm away from the company for four years and I'm not facing the current issues with AWS impossible-to-compete-with scenario.

Not saying he would have decided any differently, just that cloud computing has changed open source situation for the worse.

[jrochkind1]

It looks to me like people start with open source licenses because that's helpful to get them market-share (and in some cases community contributors and maintainers), and then they switch to a non-open-source license reserving certain rights to profit to them hoping to maintain the users that they wouldn't have gotten if they started with that license.

I am curious for examples of any projects now *starting( with one of these non-open-source rights-to-profit-reserved licenses, now that is clearly "understood". Are there any examples? Are they successfully attracting users? Contributors?

[growse]

Cockroachdb started with BSL I think.

[jrochkind1]

Wikipedia suggests it was initially apache, changed to BSL in 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CockroachDB. But still perhaps an example of fairly quick switch to BSL before it had gotten wide market/mind share? I don't know the history.

[orangechairs]

That's correct - CockroachDB's license changed in 2019, from Apache 2.0 to a permissive version of the BSL: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/oss-relicensing-cockroach...

"We’re adopting an extremely permissive version of the Business Source License (BSL). CockroachDB users can scale CockroachDB to any number of nodes. They can use CockroachDB or embed it in their applications (whether they ship those applications to customers or run them as a service). They can even run it as a service internally. The one and only thing that you cannot do is offer a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license."

[Pet_Ant]

> Don't use OSI open-source unless it's entirely a labor of love that you're giving away free.

Well, know what your secret sauce is. I think performance is really the best differentiator. Make a fully behaviourally compatible (maybe not bug for bug) version available and then sell a proprietary faster version.

Think an compiler that doesn't due any optimisation and outputs naive code. You know have a useful OSI project, and a clear value add, and a clear boundary between the two.

This is really applicable for databases, and it still leaves you with something useful for learning small projects, and for developers to run locally on their own machines.

[wing-_-nuts]

>I think performance is really the best differentiator.

I don't understand this at all. Most open source projects start out equally as a means to give back to and collaborate with the community as well as showcase one's skills. You're asking me to purposefully publish badly optimized software? I don't have it in me. That offends my sensibilities of craftsmanship. A 'slow' open source project will never get traction. Even if it did, I also don't know how an open source project wouldn't immediately have it's obvious performance bottlenecks fixed.

Far better to go the VSCode route. Release a useful project, then release paid extensions for it.

[pas]

this is the open core model, it works well for things like GitLab (as far as I know)

and in effect GitLab is doing a BSL-like thing by after a few years they release features to the free tier

but it rarely works if you need to decline contribution from people who would eat into your profit margins. I think ElasticSearch had this problem (and the community basically ended up with a few forks, because people sent the patches for security features that were in the enterprise version, and to no one's surprise they did not get merged ...)

so, I guess it works if there's a huuuge scope with plenty of things to contribute, to shoot for the moon together, without hurting the business side too much.

[snotrockets]

It ain't performance, it's cost (which increased performance can improve, but it's far from the only factor).

[lenerdenator]

They're not dead, just mostly dead.

You can probably set up a decent privately-funded venture to deal in OSI software. The problem comes (as it always does) when the founders think they're the reincarnation of Steve Jobs and deserve a nine-or-ten-figure net worth for making a few nice, but ultimately not earth-shattering, software tools. Then they have to enshittify to get ready for the IPO.

[snotrockets]

nit: s/founders/executives/ (sometimes they are the same, but not always)