[fancy_pantser]

I think the point GP is making is this is a PR that smells like a solo dev working on their own project and not how a community-driven project adds major new functionality, although I'm sure there are docs and descriptions (or at least a discussion of tradeoffs and design decisions if not ADRs) are somewhere, but not linked handily to the PR. There is a lot of explanation in the blog post and PR, but it's unilateral-looking.

c.f. valkey and others

[antirez]

Redis was completely built in this way since the start. I believe this is a better way to create software. Compromise in design is, in my opinion, something to avoid: feedbacks are important, but often times a single person that studied a lot the problem and have design taste, can come up with a great solution. Mediating such solution, even among two stellar A and B solutions, will not produce a C soution that is better, since you can't produce such solution by interpolation. It is simpler to damage A and B. And: it is rare that in a big set of people all have stellar ideas, so you have to mediate, often, also with people having poor ideas. Not worth the effort for the way I'm wired. What works better for me is to provide hints about what I'm doing, then I receive feedbacks, and sometimes there are really great ideas in this feedbacks, and I incorporate the part I like.

[fancy_pantser]

Thanks, I think I'm all caught up now. The timeline is like this if I understand correctly: your successors (Yossi Gottlieb and Oran Agra) explicitly announced a new governance model in 2020, saying the project had "outgrown the BDFL-style of management" and that they wanted to "promote more teamwork and structure". With the relicensing in 2024, however, external contributors with five or more commits to Redis dropped to zero in the first six months (basically, community contribution collapsed). In late 2024, you came back in the role of "Redis evangelist" and a year ago there was an additional licensing change, adding AGPLv3 as an option (8.0's tri-license). So now redis has your steady hand on the wheel again.

I was confused because the last time I checked on things, it was still about fostering community input and advancement but not necessarily consensus. Things have tipped back in the original direction since then. I don't think "Redis was completely built in this way since the start" is completely accurate, but also the community effort under the new governance model never got very deeply entrenched while you were away.