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You can now use Debian without Linux (www.theregister.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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The GNU project was started in 1983 and in 2025 you can finally use a pure GNU operating system. Not that you'd want to but that is some serious perseverance.

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[–] 13 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Except they didn't relicence to AGPL initially, they switched to dual licensing under the RSALv2 (a proprietary licence) and SSPLv1 (a non open source, non-free licence). So essentially they made it proprietary, that's what everyone was annoyed about. If they went straight to AGPL I'm sure there would've been some people who were annoyed, but most developers would understand why and I doubt there would have been the valkey fork.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    I realize I oversimplified a complex set of moves and “shared source” is its own can of worms. My post was already too long.

    But my core point is that the code (as Valkey) remained available and remains available under the same free software license that it has always been available under.

    The only consequence of what Redis did was that they stopped giving away their “new” code to service providers like Amazon. Even Amazon can continue to use what was there before. And the community can continue to collaborate on the same code base that they were collaborating on before. The licence Redis chooses for its “new” code is largely irrelevant.

    We talk about permissive licenses like they represent some massive risk. I just do not see it that way. And they have many advantages including often attracting more corporate participation (more free code for me).

    I am a very happy user of Clang/LLVM. It is the product of collaboration between Google, Apple, Sony, Microsoft, academia, and other nerds. I am very happy we have licenses that encourage companies to create quality software for me to use.

    I am sure Redis chose BSD to begin with in case they ever had to make a move like they did. If the only option was GPL, they may never have released it as Open Source to begin with. Again, I am glad they did.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The difference with llvm is that nobody is selling a hosted llvm as a service, nobody is making money off llvm without contributing back (directly, I know a bunch of companies use llvm to make a product that makes money).

    Redis clearly thinks that using the BSD licence was a mistake. I agree with you, using BSD attracted more people/companies to use it than if they had chosen AGPL, that's the trade-off you make when choosing a copyleft licence.

    I think I agree with you on a lot of this, let me know if this is a fair summary of your argument:

    Permissive and copyleft licences both have advantages and disadvantages, if a project chooses a permissive licence then that's their choice, and if they later decide to re-license then the project will probably get forked and carry on under the original licence, so as a user you can just switch to the fork and the only thing that will is the name of the package you install.

    That seems pretty reasonable to me, let me know if I made any mistakes summarising your point.

    The caveat I would add to that is that the project shouldn't complain about freeloaders if they choose a licence that explicitly allows freeloading. They chose a permissive licence for its advantages but they won't accept the consequences that come with that decision.

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