The race to replace Redis

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Open-source funding and VC tension

  • Many discuss whether venture-funded OSS is structurally misaligned with communities; VC expectations (100x returns, exits) push projects toward “enshittification” or shutdowns.
  • Several argue the best “funding” is customers and modest/lifestyle businesses; VC is seen by some as net-positive “subsidy,” by others as source of zombie companies and rug pulls.
  • Examples raised: Linux kernel being mostly corporate-funded; “passion-only” FOSS seen as insufficient for large, reliable infrastructure.

Redis license change, trust, and ethics

  • Strong backlash because Redis the company did not originally create Redis, yet now controls the name and has relicensed to SSPL/BUSL-style terms.
  • Many frame it as bait-and-switch: years of unpaid community and corporate contributions under BSD, then a lock-in move once ecosystem is built.
  • Others defend the right to relicense future work and argue engineers “need to eat” and cloud providers were undercutting Redis’ hosted offering.

Forks and replacement projects

  • Multiple forks and alternatives mentioned: Valkey (Linux Foundation, backed by AWS/Google/Oracle/etc.), Redict (LGPL, “community-first” fork), KeyDB, DragonflyDB, Garnet (Microsoft), Kvrocks, Pelikan, dynomite.
  • Some see Valkey as the likely “Linux-like” successor due to multi-vendor backing; others like the ideology of Redict but worry about copyleft adoption in enterprises.
  • Several suggest many users can simply stay on the last BSD Redis and wait for a winner to emerge.

Cloud providers vs. OSS vendors

  • Debate over whether AWS and peers are “leeches” or legitimate users under BSD.
  • Evidence from the thread: clouds contributed nontrivial portions of Redis commits and employ maintainers, but vendors argue the cash flows (managed services profits) are lopsided.
  • Analogies to Elastic → OpenSearch and MongoDB → SSPL are frequent; some think license switches mainly hurt the original companies by encouraging serious forks.

Licensing and CLAs

  • Extensive debate over BSD/MIT vs GPL/AGPL vs SSPL/BUSL and “source-available.”
  • Concern that CLAs + permissive licenses let a single company relicense community work; some advocate copyleft without copyright assignment to prevent this.
  • Others push for new “no-Bezos” or “natural-person-only” licenses, while traditionalists insist discriminatory licenses are not open source by OSI definition.

Ecosystem and tooling impact

  • Distros like Fedora must drop Redis due to non-free license, reinforcing the need for forks.
  • Docker → Podman is cited as precedent: ecosystem can pivot to a compatible replacement when licensing or technical directions diverge.
  • Some argue Redis is functionally “done” for 99% of use cases; long-term maintenance and security, not new features, are what matter for any successor.