Redis is transitioning to a dual licensing model, switched its licensing from an open source BSD license to both a Source Available License and a Server Side Public License (SSPL), no longer allowing cloud providers to use its source code for free.
As a result, Redis may be removed from some Linux distributions, limiting installation on private servers. This shift away from open source is kinda disappointing.
@Allan_Zimmermann i see that openflow docker use redis, this new changes will impact your product?
NodeRED: NodeJS foundation “sold out” and allowed one of the core developers of NodeRED to “hijack” the products in their new company flowforge. That is one of the reason i started to tone down NodeRED and focus more on agents.
MongoDB: decided to fight back toward some of the big cloud providers and change their models so only THEY are allowed to host mongodb. Problem is, the way they wrote the license it could potentially be read in a way that it also “hit” openflow. That is why i have been searching high and low for an alternative. I have not found one yet ( closest is FerretDB but it lacks a ton of features most critically change streams ) and maintaining a “hybrid” openflow with 2 database backend is going to be super hard work for me, and will not give any “real” value for anyone else. Feels like an uphill battle.
elasticsearch: decided to do like mongodb and made the product useless for most open source projects. So that is why i shifted to cassandra. Amazon decided to fork the last free version and continue development in the name OpenSearch. On one hand i love that, and on the other it scares the sh*t out of me. Anyone could do the same with my solution and i could not do anything about it. If you read the story behind Redis it was almost also happening to the developer who initially wrote it.
Redis: Have followed in mongodb/elasticsearch’s footsteps, for the same reason. I never got to invested in that, but it works better for caching that mongodb does, so was a natural pick. I believe it will be easy for me to replace it with something else. I have not looked for alternatives yet, but the way i use it, I could probably built something that would do the job i nodejs my self ( I really do not use many of the redis features, i just use it as a key value store )
I always tell my customers who built bigger installations to also buy support from the open source vendors behind the components ( traefik, mongodb, grafana etc. ) and some do, when it makes sense for them.
I have always recommended my customers to use mongodb atlas for the increased security of knowing the experts are making sure it runs.
But 1) I’m running out of money, so i cannot do that myself any more 2) it’s getting more and more hard convincing people who don’t want to get into all the details of open source, to trust open source vendors. This is hurting everyone when the big players either abandon the OSS licenses or open wash as it’s called, by marketing a product as “open-source” when in reality, the open-source component cannot operate effectively without proprietary additions.
On the other hand. 7 years later, 2 million in debt and my wife might leave me soon. I would sell out in a heartbeat if someone offered me money and way out of this hell I’ve been living in the last many year. I completely understand the motives behind other vendors. I would just wish there was an alternative route, that could keep open source alive and make it so the people behind it could put food on the table as well.