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Redis is no longer OSS
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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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Programming
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There's generally an understanding (the GPL folks think it's naive -- and this makes their case) that if you use open source software you should give back to it.
And yet fuck all people do. Ever.
If you're random Joe Schmoe who happens to need a database, I don't expect you to contribute. But when you're of the largest tech firms in the world...
People, maybe. Corporations though? They absolutely contribute:
https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/
Oracle, AMD, Google, Intel are all well represented.
Absolutely not true. I know this is just my experience, but I've worked with plenty of devs who've contributed prs and/or donations back to OSS projects in the past, and all my former employers have opensourced at least some of their software
The GPL people are naive too because GPL doesn't always prevent it either.
It does, AGPL for servers, GPL for applications... If you make changes they have to be made available or you're breaking the law.
You only have to give back if yours literally redistributing a modified version of the thing.
If you use the software without modifying it directly (such as building on top of it, or building something that uses it), then that's allowed.
Also if you make use of the software commercially, without necessarily distributing it, then that's also allowed. For example, Google could (I think they actually already do) modify the Linux kernel, and use it all across their company internally. They don't have to give back, since they don't distribute it.
And last, if you don't modify the software but charge people using it, that's completely allowed.
(IANAL)
Not in the case of AGPL (use over the network ~~and IPC~~ counts as distribution -- presumably proxying the request is insufficient to disable this clause) and even in the case of GPL that's a very problematic position to put yourself on. You're basically talking about invoking a foreign process from your primary process to avoid licensing constraints and that comes with a lot of limitations as to what you can do.
You can modify the GPL program to support more things via IPC but then if that program needs to touch a customer's computer, you have to contribute at the very least those notifications and any related improvements you made to make that possible or any new feature which makes more sense to be in the tool you're calling than your tool building on top.
Yes, but who's paying for that? If it's a server hosting company, they'll pay the hardware rental fee, fair enough. However, you can't reasonably sell that software itself, people will just build it themselves.