{"id":14310,"date":"2019-02-21T18:24:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/redis-labs-changes-its-open-source-license-again.html"},"modified":"2019-02-21T18:24:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:24:21","slug":"redis-labs-changes-its-open-source-license-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/redis-labs-changes-its-open-source-license-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Redis Labs changes its open-source license \u2014 again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Redis Labs<\/a>, fresh off its latest funding round<\/a>, today announced a change to how it licenses its Redis Modules. This may not sound like a big deal, but in the world of open-source projects, licensing is currently a big issue. That\u2019s because organizations like Redis, MongoDB, Confluent and others have recently introduced new licenses that make it harder for their competitors to take their products and sell them as rebranded services without contributing back to the community (and most of these companies point directly at AWS as the main offender here).<\/p>\n

\u201cSome cloud providers have repeatedly taken advantage of successful opensource projects, without significant contributions to their communities,\u201d the Redis Labs <\/a> team writes today. \u201cThey repackage software that was not developed by them into competitive, proprietary service offerings and use their business leverage to reap substantial revenues from these open source projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

The point of these new licenses it to put a stop to this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is not the first time Redis Labs has changed how it licenses its Redis Modules (and I\u2019m stressing the \u201cRedis Modules\u201d part here because this is only about modules from Redis Labs and does not have any bearing on how the Redis database project itself is licensed). Back in 2018, Redis Labs changed its license from AGPL to Apache 2 modified with Commons Clause. The \u201cCommons Clause\u201d is the part that places commercial restrictions on top of the license.<\/p>\n

That created quite a stir, as Redis Labs co-founder and CEO Ofer Bengal told me a few days ago when we spoke about the company\u2019s funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we came out with this new license, there were many different views,\u201d he acknowledged. \u201cSome people condemned that. But after the initial noise calmed down \u2014 and especially after some other companies came out with a similar concept \u2014 the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn\u2019t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The way the code was licensed, though, created a bit of confusion, the company now says, because some users thought they were only bound by the terms of the Apache 2 license. Some terms in the Commons Clause, too, weren\u2019t quite clear (including the meaning of \u201csubstantial,\u201d for example).<\/p>\n

So today, Redis Labs is introducing the Redis Source Available License. This license, too, only applies to certain Redis Modules created by Redis Labs. Users can still get the code, modify it and integrate it into their applications \u2014 but that application can\u2019t be a database product, caching engine, stream processing engine, search engine, indexing engine or ML\/DL\/AI serving engine.<\/p>\n

By definition, an open-source license can\u2019t have limitations. This new license does, so it\u2019s technically not an open-source license. In practice, the company argues, it\u2019s quite similar to other permissive open-source licenses, though, and shouldn\u2019t really affect most developers who use the company\u2019s modules (and these modules are RedisSearch, RedisGraph, RedisJSON, RedisML and RedisBloom).<\/p>\n

This is surely not the last we\u2019ve heard of this. Sooner or later, more projects will follow the same path. By then, we\u2019ll likely see more standard licenses that address this issue so other companies won\u2019t have to change multiple times. Ideally, though, we won\u2019t need it because everybody will play nice \u2014 but since we\u2019re not living in a utopia, that\u2019s not likely to happen.<\/p>\n

\n

Redis Labs raises a $60M Series E round<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/3P5ZlfQk9cI\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Redis Labs, fresh off its latest funding round, today announced a change to how it licenses its Redis Modules. This may not sound like a big deal, but in the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t