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Comment by keepper | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is all of the comments saying

   "Well, I was going to use RedisLabs.. but because of this, i'll use AWS/elasticache"

Which is just such a weird statement. So instead of supporting the OSS creators and main contributors, who want a way to monetize their "value add" modules, while still giving the core software freely; you rather support a huge corporation that gives almost zero back to OSS ( AWS has a history of extend and embrace, make it a service/black box, with open source, that would make Microsoft of the 90s/00s proud!)

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“...gives almost zero back to OSS...” This is not true as Amazon not only releases it’s own projects but contributes really broadly [0].

I can’t speak for others, but I understand the decision to choose ElastiCache over CC software as I understand Amazon’s model a lot better than projects that change their license.

So if I’m going to hinge on something non-OSS, I prefer the logical points where a utility that sells cloud compute so doesn’t care about software than for software companies that change their license, really substantially.

My org allows AGPL as we can easily comply. But we can’t comply with CC. This shift is a big deal and kind of hoses me.

You mention Microsoft in the 90s. They shared source code all the time, but you couldn’t use it and there was zero community. So if you want that, CC is way more likely to get us there as community contributions will dry up. I’d rather depend on companies that are explicit (ie, “this is open source, this is not”).

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/opensource/

> But we can’t comply with CC.

Why not? The point of the CC is literally "pay us to use it commercially." You can't just... pay them to use it? Even when that's exactly what you'd be doing by using an AWS service?

You could offer to pay them today, yes. And get a license. But is your license that handles your use case today still going to be valid and useful a year from now? Five years from now? What if redislabs decides there are some more loopholes in need of closing?

I'm not a fan of the AGPL. I think it's problematic as an example of copyright maximalism, and I think it's counterproductive in that it basically took a bunch of ideas that used to be FUD and said "yeah, what if we actually did that". But I can say this for it: you know what you're getting and you know that for all the burdens it puts on you, it (like the GNU GPL) was designed to make sure certain rugs can never be yanked out from under you.

Part of CC is that it’s unclear how it operates with the myriad of other project licenses we use.

But the main issue is that we contribute back to projects, even as minor patches or fixes. Contributing source to a proprietary, commercial code base has legal issues of nonpaid work and contribution.

And finally, “pay them to use it” is very ambiguous. How much to pay them? Is it the same amount today as tomorrow? I pay for support for substantial projects like RedHat, but is support included in licensing CC?

These questions are ambiguous. Perhaps in time they will get easier to answer. But this is exactly why I would rather use AWS with its “so clear its confusing” pricing [0] where I know exactly what I’m getting.

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/elasticache/pricing/

One reason from a corporate standpoint is dependency. You can assume AWS will continue to host the core Redis indefinitely, but if you use Redis Labs and your developers begin to use any of the the new proprietary modules, you are locked into the RL platform only. No other platform will be able to use those modules, the only option being rolling your own.

If RL quadruples their pricing, you'll just have to bear it. Definitely makes it more risky than it was.

But can’t AWS pay RedisLabs for those modules? That’s exactly what RL are after - a cut from the big hosting providers. If the demand is there (for the modules) then you’ll be able to license them via AWS.

I don't think that's the problem. Real Open Source (at least for me) means that you can trust that's there's an unbiased commitment to make solutions widely available and implementable. It also means that you can switch between managed providers and/or between OS implementations and expect to have a similar experience.

There are so many ways to make money out of open source that are totally compatible with this approach. I don't see how keeping an iron grip on open source software (just because you're afraid that other people would make money out of it or whatever) would help you at all to monetize your own value-adds.

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