7 ms·

I have yet to hear a single positive story about this Redis Inc... it's like a giant company full of only assholes. Story after story is just "wow, these people

I have yet to hear a single positive story about this Redis Inc... it's like a giant company full of only assholes. Story after story is just "wow, these people all suck"

MortyWaves 2y ago
Shame because I remember the original author being quite well regarded on places like here and Reddit.
- herrkanin 2y ago
  He still is
- hshshshshsh 2y ago
  Did he start Redis Inc or got hired to work there? I remember something like that for a popular open source project.
karmakaze 2y ago
I agree. At the same time, they're just 'doing their job' working at a for-profit company controlling the brand of open-source (core?) software.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  Yes, you can simultaneously condemn individual behavior and the system that incentivizes it. Both are bad in this case.
  - karmakaze 2y ago
    My point is that the blame is on the system moreso than its expected outcome.
acedTrex 2y ago
They have some of the same people from the elastic license debacle so this makes sense.
paxys 2y ago
Redis the project was essentially taken over by a company that had nothing to do with its development. Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) started Redis and developed it by himself from 2009 to 2015, gaining massive popularity and building a large community in the process. It was FOSS the entire time. A separate VC-backed company called Garantia Data used to make money by offering a hosted version of Redis. That company changed its name to Redis Labs in 2014 (and eventually just Redis), likely themselves violating antirez's Redis trademark at the time. They then hired antirez in 2015 and started officially sponsoring the project. From there began a slow transformation of Redis from a community run FOSS project to a proprietary locked down service. The company also managed to acquire full rights of the Redis trademark and project stewardship from antirez after hiring him and then finally kicked him out in 2020.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  excellent summary (not kidding); thank you for it because i hadn't understood it until what you wrote
- seneca 2y ago
  > The company also managed to acquire full rights of the Redis trademark and project stewardship from antirez after hiring him How did that happen? He must have given/sold it to them, right? I remember him making an announcement that he was done with Redis and stepping away from involvement.
  - reconditerose 2y ago
    The only public record I've seen him talking about it was in https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/544 https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/544, where he mentioned having sold the copyright.
  - paxys 2y ago
    Impossible to know as an outsider. They could have tricked him with false promises ("we'll take good care of the project and always put the community first, trust us"). Or he could have decided that the check was big enough and not really cared beyond that.
cameronh90 2y ago
PE/VC-backed bait-and-switch takeovers of "open source" projects have cost me a significant amount of time and money over the past few years. My rule of thumb now is that I now consider any project that has a pricing page OR requires copyright assignment/CLA to a for-profit company to be effectively proprietary and just using open source as a marketing technique. That doesn't mean I won't touch it, but like with proprietary software, I'll evaluate it against the risk that the price will probably be jacked up in the future.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The important part is the contract the company signs for you. Contacts generally are enforceable in court and lawyers know of standard provisions for weird situations (what if the company goes bankrupt) QT has contracts with KDE around the open source version which gives KDE peace of mind. I use QT in a commercial product - we have some useful contract terms with QT that are not public and I can't talk about them.

I have yet to hear a single positive story about this Redis Inc... it's like a giant company full of only assholes. Story after story is just "wow, these people all suck"

MortyWaves 2y ago

Shame because I remember the original author being quite well regarded on places like here and Reddit.

herrkanin 2y ago
He still is
hshshshshsh 2y ago
Did he start Redis Inc or got hired to work there? I remember something like that for a popular open source project.

karmakaze 2y ago

I agree. At the same time, they're just 'doing their job' working at a for-profit company controlling the brand of open-source (core?) software.

idle_zealot 2y ago
Yes, you can simultaneously condemn individual behavior and the system that incentivizes it. Both are bad in this case.
- karmakaze 2y ago
  My point is that the blame is on the system moreso than its expected outcome.

acedTrex 2y ago

They have some of the same people from the elastic license debacle so this makes sense.

paxys 2y ago

Redis the project was essentially taken over by a company that had nothing to do with its development. Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez) started Redis and developed it by himself from 2009 to 2015, gaining massive popularity and building a large community in the process. It was FOSS the entire time. A separate VC-backed company called Garantia Data used to make money by offering a hosted version of Redis. That company changed its name to Redis Labs in 2014 (and eventually just Redis), likely themselves violating antirez's Redis trademark at the time. They then hired antirez in 2015 and started officially sponsoring the project. From there began a slow transformation of Redis from a community run FOSS project to a proprietary locked down service. The company also managed to acquire full rights of the Redis trademark and project stewardship from antirez after hiring him and then finally kicked him out in 2020.

jjtheblunt 2y ago
excellent summary (not kidding); thank you for it because i hadn't understood it until what you wrote
seneca 2y ago
> The company also managed to acquire full rights of the Redis trademark and project stewardship from antirez after hiring him How did that happen? He must have given/sold it to them, right? I remember him making an announcement that he was done with Redis and stepping away from involvement.
- reconditerose 2y ago
  The only public record I've seen him talking about it was in https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/544 https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey/issues/544, where he mentioned having sold the copyright.
- paxys 2y ago
  Impossible to know as an outsider. They could have tricked him with false promises ("we'll take good care of the project and always put the community first, trust us"). Or he could have decided that the check was big enough and not really cared beyond that.

cameronh90 2y ago

PE/VC-backed bait-and-switch takeovers of "open source" projects have cost me a significant amount of time and money over the past few years. My rule of thumb now is that I now consider any project that has a pricing page OR requires copyright assignment/CLA to a for-profit company to be effectively proprietary and just using open source as a marketing technique. That doesn't mean I won't touch it, but like with proprietary software, I'll evaluate it against the risk that the price will probably be jacked up in the future.

bluGill 2y ago
The important part is the contract the company signs for you. Contacts generally are enforceable in court and lawyers know of standard provisions for weird situations (what if the company goes bankrupt) QT has contracts with KDE around the open source version which gives KDE peace of mind. I use QT in a commercial product - we have some useful contract terms with QT that are not public and I can't talk about them.