[undoware]

I'm frustrated that when the HN editors deduped the original story, they apparently deleted ALL the instances, leaving only this one. I wanted to read the discussion on the subject of Aphyr's research, not Antirez' response.

It looks bad, HN. We all know that VMWare is litigious as (try looking up benchmarks sometime.) But to (presumably) cave so quickly and effortlessly suggests... well, I'm not sure.

The other possibility is that Aphyr yanked them himself, probably under duress (or else there'd just be an 'update' at the bottom of the research's page.) Aphyr, is this what happened? I figure you probably can't talk freely if so, but say something.

[antirez]

Hello,

1) I no longer work for VMware, but Pivotal. Redis is open source and copyright is of the original guys that wrote the code: I, Pieter Noordhuis, other contributors.

2) I posted the link to the original article in the first very lines of my reply. Actually thanks to my reply the exposure the Aphyr research had about Redis is the greatest, compared to the other data stores mentioned. I publicly said thank you to Aphyr on Twitter, and posted its blog post.

So I really don't understand your theories here.

[undoware]

Sorry, to clarify -- I was suggesting that it was possible that VMWare (a sponsor of Redis, correct?) leaned on someone. I didn't mean to besmirch you or redis, antirez, and I enjoyed your response.

It wouldn't be the first time a reputable news site was forced to bury a story by a litigious company. Sponsoring FOSS does not make any organization beyond doubt. Especially if they, say, have a history of suing anyone who benchmarks them.

[andypiper]

As Antirez says, VMware were formerly a sponsor of Redis, and he now works for Pivotal (as do I), who are the current sponsor of the project. Either way, I'm highly skeptical that anyone at either company did such a thing.

[undoware]

I have a background in ethics and law so I've seen too much to make apologies for being suspicious. :) In fact, this sort of suspicion is a good reason NOT to establish a track record of litigating away freedom of speech (as VMWare notoriously threatens to do if someone publishes their benchmarks). But again: nothing to do with Redis, if (as you say) VMWare is no longer a sponsor.

[aphyr]

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=aphyr.com

HN stories on my original posts are still there, as far as I can tell. They just never hit frontpage.

[antirez]

Aphyr, this is very lame, it's not common to see a work like what you did, and none of your stories hit the HN front page? I don't know what to think, but I hope that at least my post will help to show more people your awesome work.

[hendzen]

I think Aphyr's series was a little too meaty for the general HN audience (of today).

Talking about things like the FLP impossibility result, CAP theorem and specifying protocols with TLA+ may be a bit over the heads of many HN readers - clearly, people would rather read stories about the latest funding round, acquisition or frontend UI framework than a substantive article on distributed systems.

[pyre]

It's not fair to imply that these thing are over the heads of HN readers. There are plenty of smart people that just might not care about distributed systems enough to read through. Does my lack of reading medical journals speak to my ability to read/comprehend them?

[undoware]

Yes, they did -- I saw them do so. There were several, in fact. And then they were gone. You've been robbed?

[tptacek]

It is extremely unlikely that any pressure was put on the HN admins by VMWare or anyone else to get stories scrubbed. It's almost as unlikely that VMWare gives a shit about stories about Redis.

[jacquesm]

It's not unlikely they got a bunch of (unjust) flags.

[tptacek]

Based on pressure from VMWare? No, that's extraordinarily unlikely.