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Comment by KZerda | Hacker News Reader

The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis. It would have been much easier to perform the rugpull if Redis had initially been GPLed.

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And how exactly did the BSD license make creating Valkey easier? GPL and BSD licenses both have the source in the open. Anyone creating a fork, can easily do so for either BSD or GPL licensed projects. Since Redis is a database, which the user won't be using a binary of, even using a fork of a supposedly GPL-licensed Redis would not require you to share your modifications with your user, same as BSD.

The BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing. The GPL, especially with contributor license agreements and the like, makes it much more easy for a single party to control the direction of the product. For another example of this happening, look at MongoDB. It started out under the AGPL, but was rugpulled to a non-free license.

The BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing

equal footing on the license is what allowed AWS to crush the original creators of the products they host.

it's a trade off.

the AGPL does not prevent a hosting service. it only prevents creating non-free addons. i see no problem with that. see also my other comment

Mongo was already a centralized project. Technically open source agpl but I don’t remember it having a large developer community or really many contributions from outside mongo. When the rug pull happened I think simply most people didn’t care or moved on to equal (or better) alternatives. It’s not beloved software like Redis is.

It feels like your actual beef here is with CLAs, which often are designed to allow the current maintainers to relicense.

CLAs are not an attribute of the GPL. They're an agreement that can be applied to contributions to any codebase with any license.

On top of badreligion42’s point, that both licenses allow forking just as easily - don’t you have the rugpull part backwards?

Afaik BSD licensed stuff can be re-licensed under any more closed licenses at any time, where as to re-license GPL, you need consent from every single contributor.

But i’m not familiar with the redis-valkey story so, maybe there is some nuance i am missing?

Redis started off as Free Software, but was switched to a source available license in version 7.4. The community promptly forked to Valkey, which is still under the BSD license. Since then, Redis shifted to AGPL 3, with contributor agreements, to try to ensure that they're the only ones who can attempt to commercialize Redis.

AGPL makes commercializing harder only for people who fear the AGPL because they want to keep stuff for themselves. there is no problem commercializing it if you don't mind sharing all your connected code. the only benefit redis has is that they can integrate non-free code in their hosting service, while the rest of us could not. since it is their work, i think it is reasonable that they have an advantage. it does not reduce my freedom as a user. it only hinders AWS and other big players from crushing redis.

How would you rugpull a GPL Redis?

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