Redis is forked
Redis’s shift from a permissive BSD license to a more restrictive, cloud‑unfriendly model has triggered competing forks, most prominently Valkey under the Linux Foundation, as users seek a truly open successor. Commenters weigh how much this matters in practice—many expect Valkey to become the de facto “new Redis,” while others plan to stay on older versions or alternative implementations like Microsoft’s Garnet. The debate broadens into questions of how open‑source projects can survive in the cloud era, whether relicensing is a betrayal or a necessity, and how much influence hyperscalers should have over core infrastructure software.
Redis, vectors, and GenAI
- Some were surprised Redis is leaning heavily into vectors/GenAI; others argue this is just a continuation of “answer queries faster” and caching, now with embeddings.
- Several comments clarify what vector databases are: primarily for similarity search over high‑dimensional vectors, not just simple key–value pairs.
- Debate over whether most users really need a dedicated vector DB versus “just store embeddings locally” (e.g., with ONNX for local inference) and whether specialized vector DBs are overhyped given Postgres/Redis/ES extensions.
Valkey, Redict, and other Redis-compatible options
- Many expect Valkey to become the de facto open fork: backed by the Linux Foundation, many core Redis maintainers, and major clouds (AWS, GCP, Oracle, etc.).
- Redict is seen as more ideologically driven; some are relieved Valkey stayed independent rather than merging communities with different priorities.
- Microsoft’s Garnet is noted as a high‑performance, Redis‑protocol‑compatible server, but it’s not a literal fork.
Licensing, cloud providers, and business models
- Strong debate around Redis switching from a permissive license to more restrictive terms (e.g., SSPL/BSD‑plus‑restrictions style).
- One side sees this as necessary self‑defense against hyperscalers reselling managed Redis without giving back financially.
- Others see it as a “rug pull” or “enshittification”: using open licensing to gain adoption and contributions, then closing off future versions.
- Discussion of alternative models: AGPL+commercial, BSL/SSPL from day one, open‑core, or licenses that only restrict very large companies.
Open source ethics and economics
- Some argue free software often amounts to wage theft when corporations build profitable services on top of unpaid labor.
- Others emphasize FLOSS as primarily about benefiting humanity and preserving user freedoms, not maximizing revenue.
- Personal anecdotes: maintainers pulling projects after companies monetized them without compensation, then making more money with proprietary licensing.
Practical impact and user responses
- Some plan to freeze on pre‑change Redis versions or switch to Valkey once stable.
- Concerns about loss of competition in hosted Redis offerings and potential price hikes when only the vendor can license “official” Redis.
- A few argue the safest long‑term path is minimizing dependencies or using only standard libraries to avoid future licensing surprises.