[antirez]

1. The fundamental idea was mine. Ideas can be improved, of course, and that's good. That was my point. However, allow me to say that Redis is fundamentally a "software of ideas" than anything else. Technologically it is far from impressive (Redis, ValKey, all the forks).

2. Redis 8 improves the same idea, too, released today.

3. If you claim [in a different comment here] you provided a lot of code to Redis, why you didn't send a pull request for that? So, you are practically saying you were using, at Amazon, all the BSD code we provided, but could not provide an important part of the code to us? You see how broken such model was? At least stop defending it.

4. We can now copy the implementation: the parts are reversed (the irony!), and your code is BSD as our was for 15 years. When we avoid doing things like that, is because we have issues with how certain things were made.

5. I don't understand the motivations of you and other AWS people commenting here today. You work for a company that is creating issues to the OSS ecosystem: this is hard to deny. You cloned (and, yes, the license allowed for it) the code of Redis, and work on it so that hyperscalers can continued to do what they used to do. We bring Redis back to AGPL, and you are here to do the interests of Amazon in the comments. Did you see me commenting your stuff, when you release your things, with comments like "ah! But this is unfair"?

There is to make choices. I understand that it was cool to continue to work at a Redis fork, and part of the incredible thing open source is, is that forks survive in the hands of different teams (but design ideas can be misunderstood and projects may turn into other projects). So if you are happy to hack on ValKey, I hope you'll have the best experience out of it. But there is to make choices on how/when to interact.

[_msw_]

This exchange makes me sad. I know we can do better.

I don't understand why so many people think that it's impossible to have open source in your heart while working for a big company in your day job. I don't understand why people who have dedicated a lot of their time and emotional energy to keep open source ways alive and help build a community effort are attacked because they work for a company that needs to be made the villain in the narrative.

Of course Redis is free to copy BSD licensed code that Valkey contributors add to the project [1]. I only wish that the blog post about this advancement in Redis would give some credit, rather than claiming "We also improved the performance of CRC64 calculations" [2].

We can all do better, and engage with one another with mutual respect and admiration for what has been freely given.

[1] https://github.com/redis/redis/pull/13638

[2] https://redis.io/blog/redis-8-0-m03-is-out-even-more-perform...

[crop_rotation]

Do you really want to know?

> I don't understand why so many people think that it's impossible to have open source in your heart while working for a big company in your day job.

Because a big company like Amazon has produced almost no open source work(yes some random collection of repos and 2 PRs here and there is not the same thing) compared to how much it has benefited from open source. (I know I know OSS allows for all that so not claiming anything wrong). But it does show what the company policy must be towards open source (Consume all you can, contribute only when absolutely essential for the company barring exceptional circumstances).

> I don't understand why people who have dedicated a lot of their time and emotional energy to keep open source ways alive and help build a community effort are attacked because they work for a company that needs to be made the villain in the narrative.

Antirez is not attacking anyone above. English is not his first language and he is just putting out some of his thoughts (which people are free to disagree with but those are what he thinks), like how you casually slipped that you didn't get credit for one commit copied from valkey (where the copier is giving due credit in the PR by linking the source PR and the authors inline). So they copied a PR from valkey, and the redis blog post should give lots and lots of credits? If that was the standard, so many of AWS services will spend all their reinvent time giving credits to their source OSS projects.

[_msw_]

> Because a big company like Amazon has produced almost no open source work

This may have been true a decade ago, but things are quite different now.

> compared to how much it has benefited from open source.

This is the nature of digital public goods. We are all going to disproportionately benefit from digital public goods relative to what can be produced as new digital public goods. No one will ever, EVER be able to "contribute proportionately" given the endless bounty of software made freely available for all to use.

> If that was the standard, so many of AWS services will spend all their reinvent time giving credits to their source OSS projects.

The observant should notice a change in this over the years. For example, the announcement for Amazon Q Code Transformation [1] acknowledged that OpenRewrite was used under the covers, even though it was an implementation detail that didn't have to be disclosed...

Of course these disclosures and good-faith intentions to engage on open-source community terms under long-established community norms don't always work out the way we hope. [2]

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/upgrade-your-java-applicati...

[2] https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-tools/issues/1443

[blibble]

> No one will ever, EVER be able to "contribute proportionately" given the endless bounty of software made freely available for all to use.

so it sounds like we need a license mechanism that enforces this, fairly, based on potential ability to contribute

idea: a benchmark to give a required level of contributions, maybe a logistic function of revenue generated/company size and time since initial usage

and if you fall beneath it, your license is terminated

carefully calibrated such that a burden is only placed on very large companies

[theamk]

Just make it closed source (or source-available) and give out no-cost licenses how you see fit. You are the author, you decide what to do with your code. This is a well-supported model too, plenty of products are like that.

There are plenty of licenses around, lack of alternatives isn't why people use MIT or Apache.

[jimbokun]

> I don't understand why so many people think that it's impossible to have open source in your heart while working for a big company in your day job.

The employment contract you signed.

[francasso]

My friend, Amazon being legally allowed to behave like a schmuck doesn't imply the community can't point that out and complain about it. AWS (legally) exploits open source projects, and that's a fact.

There are many actions and behaviours in life that are not illegal but actively worsen society at large if you do them. That companies that are the main contributors to OSS are forced to take drastic measures is just consequence of AWS not being a team player, you should have at least the decency of not commenting here.

PS. I don't have a horse in the race, I'm not a Redis user, I'm just appalled by your behavior.

[reconditerose]

> So, you are practically saying you were using, at Amazon, all the BSD code we provided, provide an important part of the code to us? You see how broken such model was? At least stop defending it.

I'm not defending it, I'm trying to fix it. I want Amazon to contribute back. That's what I spend most of my time doing, but I can't just sit in a meeting and tell people we should give away code. It takes time to convince people that we should collaborate on the core and just compete on what we want to differentiate on. It takes time to convince people that building open-source in a vendor neutral space makes software that is better for everyone.

I hope that makes sense.

[antirez]

Yes, makes sense. Thanks for the reply.

[_Wintermute]

This comment has inspired me to switch to Valkey, thanks.

[antirez]

You have all the rights. Usually I do my best to avoid confrontations of that kind, and to respect the work of others. But I see certain communication patterns that are, for me, too much, and I needed to tell it. I think go on HN, and comment in an aggressive way the work of competitors, during announcements days, is something fundamentally wrong.

[crop_rotation]

On the contrary it has made me appreciate antirez even more not just as a developer but as a true champion of open source who really wants open source to prosper and is willing to voice his opinions whenever required.