It especially bugs me when company blogs call out “abuse” when they only exist as a company because others gave them the permissions needed to build a business on software they did not author themselves!
There are different FOSS communities that hold different values. I come from the copyleft camp because I want to advance Software Freedom objectives for end-users. Others are more interested in advancing software developer freedom, and they find the obligations that are designed to advance end-user rights are unduly burdensome to the software developer. Articles like the one on the FreeBSD website [1] explain why they take a different position
I choose to believe that both of these sub-communities of the larger FOSS community are principled in their beliefs. I don’t see whining from FreeBSD folks about competitors, or for-profit companies using all the permissions they give with their choice of license.
AWS never offered the AGPLv3 licensed version of the MongoDB server as part of any managed service. There were large cloud providers in China that _did_ offer MongoDB as a service. They also provided the corresponding source code [1]. Despite signs that they were complying with the obligations of the license, they had the SSPL drafted anyway.
Because once it was clear that software as a service was a compelling model, it was no longer appealing to give everyone the permissions needed to offer the software as part of a service (as AGPLv3 was always designed to do).
Changing the license seemingly worked, as a partnership was eventually announced [2].
> Because a big company like Amazon has produced almost no open source work
This may have been true a decade ago, but things are quite different now.
> compared to how much it has benefited from open source.
This is the nature of digital public goods. We are all going to disproportionately benefit from digital public goods relative to what can be produced as new digital public goods. No one will ever, EVER be able to "contribute proportionately" given the endless bounty of software made freely available for all to use.
> If that was the standard, so many of AWS services will spend all their reinvent time giving credits to their source OSS projects.
The observant should notice a change in this over the years. For example, the announcement for Amazon Q Code Transformation [1] acknowledged that OpenRewrite was used under the covers, even though it was an implementation detail that didn't have to be disclosed...
Of course these disclosures and good-faith intentions to engage on open-source community terms under long-established community norms don't always work out the way we hope. [2]
The LWN article is examining the 976 commits made after the 7.0.0 release. I don't think you had any commits during that time?
As is typical for software projects, early authors will be disproportionately represented in revision histories. I am still the #4 contributor to the Anaconda installer [1] originally used by Red Hat Linux, then RHEL, then Fedora, and others, despite not contributing to the code base for two decades.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
In theory, one would not be able to offer a combined program under other licenses (in particular, RSALv2 and SSPLv1), as those licenses have conflicts with GPL obligations.
Direct contributions to the Redis project avoid this issue via a separate Contributor License Agreement. It would only mean that Redis developers could not unilaterally copy code from Valkey.
I'm not saying that the Valkey community should do this. Personally, I think it's better off as a BSD-3 licensed project, with the community fulfilling the promise made by others that it would always be that way.
RMS was not convinced that the Affero clause was a good idea as a general rule, though he approved the Affero-sponsored fork of the GPL that created AGPLv1. Hence, he did not support the addition of network copyleft obligations in GPLv3 during its drafting.
RMS has long expressed concerns about "Service as a Software Substitute" [1], and I think he hesitated to endorse the AGPL because it would conflict with his philosophy on the dangers of "Service as a Software Substitute".
Henry Poole should be given credit for raising the concern; Bradley M. Kuhn and Eben Moglen should be given the credit for advancing the license to address the concern.
It took a long time for the Free Software Foundation to accept Affero versions of the GPL under their stewardship with the release of AGPLv3.
So, perhaps he did understand before many people that services posed some challenges for his social movement. But it's my belief that he favored self-reliance and maximum "freedom" by running computer programs on hardware you own yourself as the remedy, rather than extending copyleft obligations to reach over the network.
This exchange makes me sad. I know we can do better.
I don't understand why so many people think that it's impossible to have open source in your heart while working for a big company in your day job. I don't understand why people who have dedicated a lot of their time and emotional energy to keep open source ways alive and help build a community effort are attacked because they work for a company that needs to be made the villain in the narrative.
Of course Redis is free to copy BSD licensed code that Valkey contributors add to the project [1]. I only wish that the blog post about this advancement in Redis would give some credit, rather than claiming "We also improved the performance of CRC64 calculations" [2].
We can all do better, and engage with one another with mutual respect and admiration for what has been freely given.
My personal opinion: we shouldn't let Google's bad policy poison our brains. The people who wrote that policy had their reasons for taking this position. It might have been the right thing for Google at the time the policy was written.
That doesn't mean it's the right position for you, or for every situation. Many organizations with a higher levels of maturity in open source matters will take a more nuanced approach when it comes to AGPLv3 licensed software.
AWS never offered a service based on the AGPLv3 version of the MongoDB server. Therefore the change of license terms to SSPLv1 was not directly caused by Amazon’s use of the software as part of an offered service, and had no impact to Amazon DocumentDB as an independently developed interoperable protocol implementation.
There were cloud providers headquartered in Asia that did offer AGPLv3 based MongoDB server as a service.
There is more Free Software produced today than ever before, even if some firms are deciding they no longer want to produce it. There are far more who are continuing to add to the commons of public software unnoticed; those who publicly quit get far more attention.
I’m all about increasing the private provision of public goods. I don’t think that licenses that give firms exclusive rights to monetize the goods they produce advances that goal. That’s just the status quo of firms being landlords of their intellectual property, extracting rents from others who want to enjoy them. That’s just proprietary software, which is clearly a useful thing for society to have.
The thing that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth is when you apply your resources to produce common goods, and then one party declares that you are somehow a “bad actor” while changing the terms to enclose the goods and exclude you from enjoying that common good.
Luckily with FOSS, those who are excluded can move their efforts elsewhere. But the future goods will not be the same. And I think that’s a shame.
The needs of those who want to capture the majority of the value they create when they author digital goods like software haven’t been the concern of either the Free Software movement nor the Open Source movement. These movements are rooted in the nature of digital goods: they cannot be “exploited” (like strip mining for extracting materials from a mountaintop does) because they are naturally abundant. “Create more value than you capture” was the mantra.
The “free rider problem” has been used to justify licenses that protect the interests of software authors since before we called it “open source”, long before Amazon was made a scapegoat.
“The free rider problem is when someone is allowed to package free software in non-free or less-free bundles, and that's precisely the area of the GPL that I thought I needed to do something about in making the Aladdin license”—Peter Deutsch, October 1998 [1]
The point I am trying to make is that legal tools like the Aladdin Free Public License and SSPL do not protect FOSS, or advance the social movements that have produced a bountiful commons of digital public goods. Those that craft those tools and apply them to their works have every right to do so, but they do so because they choose to do so, not because a company like Amazon “forced them” to.
The article ignores that the two previous core team members that didn’t work for Redis Ltd, along with other active contributors, are gathering around a different project. They just don’t have a name yet.
Disclosures: I work for Amazon, but my positions as a long time Free Software advocate and copyleft supporter are my own. I do not speak for Amazon here. I served on the board of directors for Software Freedom Conservancy at its inception, but now I am only a financial supporter in an individual capacity. I do not speak for SFC either.
The SSPL isn’t the same as the GPL. The GPL is a tool that was invented to advance the Free Software movement agenda: protecting the freedoms of users of software. The SSPL does not do that. It protects the interests of companies that want to maintain exclusivity in offering software services.
On the “downstream” side of this equation (managed services), the goal is to build a business that delights customers to the point where they part with their money to enjoy it. The ultimate goal there is naturally revenue and profit margin oriented, but _how_ you advance that goal matters a lot. In my experience, focusing on the customer first increases the chances of success.
When such a line of business has a core component that is open source, the growth and health of the “upstream” project, its developers, and the user community is an essential component in its continued success. This is why folks on the ElastiCache team has been increasing their investments in both the upstream project code and in helping to maintain it as a “community-led” project under the previous governance structure.
Those investments increased the provision of digital public goods (as open source licensed software is generally considered to be a “digital public good” even if it is not technically in the public domain). Increasing the provision of digital public goods is generally seen as in service of the public good, as it (more often than not) makes the world a better place.
No, the goal was to make Redis better for its community, which has positive downstream effects for everyone (users, Redis as a service providers-including Redis Ltd, etc.)
And these efforts involved more than one developer. It is only that one of them happened to be a core team member (which required working in good faith for the interest of the Redis community as a whole—a “commitment to the project”).
It especially bugs me when company blogs call out “abuse” when they only exist as a company because others gave them the permissions needed to build a business on software they did not author themselves!