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Comment by tinco | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is insane. This is basically what was already happening, i.e. cloud companies offering a Redis service under some generic name. It barely slows them down. I can't understand how legal counsel would not have objected to adding this clause, and who would push for such a clause? It effectively removes the innovation from it. Why choose EUPL over GPLv3 if it can just be relicensed?

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right now Valkey is a separate project, not just "Redis service under some generic name"

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic. Valkey is literally a fork of Redis with a generic name.

Valkey is a fork of BSD Redis under a different name. That makes a difference.

It makes a difference in that it allows the cloud providers to monetize Redis without having to deal with the Redis team. Which is fair and in the spirit of the original license of Redis, but don't paint it as some great achievement of open source ethos.

What Redis did by embracing a bad license shouldn't be applauded either. But the problem is that there isn't a great copyleft license that prevents embrace, extend & extinguish of great cloud projects. EUPL might've been it, and this weird clause just kills what would have made it perfect.

Alternatively, maybe redis wouldn't have seen great adoption if it was under any non-compete license.

That is, to be able to be hosted by someone else is a necessary factor in widespread adoption and success.

The open source ethos is to give code that you are allowed to do as you wish with, including forking. The idea that there should only be one canonical project is... just wrong.

It's not about non-compete, it's about copyleft. What's blocking redis and and with them a whole generation of open source based startups from embracing true open source licenses is that there is no copyleft license for the cloud age. GPLv3 is 18 years old by now, and the big cloud providers have captured the OSI to prevent a GPLv4 from ever happening.

The open source ethos is not to give code to do as you wish with. It's to ensure users have control over the software and are not controlled by it.

It's not about blocking competition, it's about levelling the playing field. You are supporting the cause of trillion dollar megacorporations in their campaign of capitalizing on open source software over the backs of passionate trailblazers.

The maintainers of Valkey are being tricked by these companies to continue to develop for a project that can be easily exploited.

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