[disgruntledphd2]

> In the end, both of these had to revert switching to AGPL licenses.

AGPL seems like the most battle tested solution here, though.

You'd need a CLA from day 1, but if you have that then you can sell commercial licenses to people who won't meet the criteria for the real license.

So I think it's important to differentiate between open source and free software, here.

[tzahifadida]

I believe AGPL3 with CLA is the worst in 2025. Code can be recreated fast in 2025 especially with genAI getting better and better. The problem you'll have is the ownership of the code from day one. Today, people have concerns signing a CLA, so I am not sure redis is repeatable in that regard (though we have n8n). With Apache 2.0, if you are redis, you could have closed source the code in a few months and bury the competition. Why? because you need upgrades, you need CVE fixes, features, documentation, HA, etc... If you don't have a CLA you cannot close source AGPL3.0.

Of course I am taking the stance of the company not the users here :) The table have turned, I believe in 2025 the users should insist on using AGPL3 without signing CLA. But again, with enough cash, the code can be recreated with genAI, it is just a matter of resources.

[disgruntledphd2]

> the code can be recreated with genAI, it is just a matter of resources.

Can it though? Most interesting things (for my values of interesting at least), cannot be re-created with generative AI.

Every time I try to do anything a little bit out of distribution, they fall apart (and they're not great at in-distribution stuff either).

> I believe AGPL3 with CLA is the worst in 2025

I think that you mean best, as with both of these one can sell commercial licenses while remaining open.

Again, from the company's point of view you get both nerd-cred and a viable business (this is what MySQL did, I believe).

You don't get that with BSD/MIT.