306
Redis is no longer OSS
(fosstodon.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
306 points (93.2% liked)
Programming
17314 readers
178 users here now
Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!
Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.
Hope you enjoy the instance!
Rules
Rules
- Follow the programming.dev instance rules
- Keep content related to programming in some way
- If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos
Wormhole
Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Didn't they switch to a license with stronger mechanisms to keep the source available? SSPL, is basically AGPL but have even stronger protection from large corperations to use the code in their data centers without contributing the changes back. This is basically a move to prevent AWS/Google/Microsoft/et al, from leaching on the contributors work without giving anything back.
Or am I reading this wrong?
EDIT: Note, that the Mastodon account is to an AWS employee.... so for him, this might be bad, since it no longer allows them to have their own internal fork without contributing back. Now, they will need to use a real for and maintain that them selves without leaching on the redis contributors.
I suggest an alternative title to this post: AWS employee is mad since Redis change license to prevent them from leaching
The restriction doesn't only apply to large corporations, it applies to everybody. It restricts what you can do with it so it breaks the fundamental freedoms that make up "FOSS". As an immediate result it will be removed from Fedora and Debian because they don't consider SSPL/RSAL to be FOSS:
https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/497
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15
Why? All the license says is that if you provide it as a service you must release the source code.
It says that you must release all your source code, even the stuff that isn't covered by the license. From Wikipedia:
Fedora and debian support the corporate definitions of FOSS, so their opinions do not matter here.
I don't think most of us want to offer services by hosting a service without contributing back the code. If they do, I am happy that it is a requirement that they give back. Only for-profit companies will have an issue with this.
They could just use AGPL. Amazon would need to contribute back, but with no restrictions on who and how can run it. Current licence has a clause that prevents any providing of the software on the network.
Does that prevent my managed Mastodon instance host from providing Redis over the network to my Mastodon, or does that count as them providing Redis to themselves and then providing Mastodon to me?
The wording says "third-parties as a service", so as long as Redis isn't accessible by people outside your organization, it's fine. But paid Redis hosting wouldn't be allowed on the new license.
Where does it say this? I can't see that in the SSPL
It's in the RSALv2:
Ah right. You could do a paid Redis service if you use the SSPL license though, right?
That does seem to be the case. As long as any modifications to the source are publicly available. Which is pretty reasonable.
Weirdly OSI doesn't classify the SSPL as an open-source license because it doesn't guarantee "the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor", calling it a fauxpen license. I don't think the FSF has commented on the license, though I would be curious what they say about it.
I imagine they consider it to not give the right to make use of the program for any field of endeavor, because providing the source of the entire stack needed to run the service you provide makes it impossible for users to host their service on stuff like AWS, since it is proprietary.
I think checking the sponsors page for OSI will be informative.
I mean aws can suck it