Comment by kennywinker
1 day ago
Is this not the paradox of tolerance restated in different terms?
BSD license is unrestricted, it tolerates taking open source and closing it, thus always being at risk of things closing down.
GPL license doesn’t tolerate taking from open source and closing it, thus ensuring things stay open.
The BSD license is why we have Valkey and not a purely closed-source Redis. It would have been much easier to perform the rugpull if Redis had initially been GPLed.
And how exactly did the BSD license make creating Valkey easier? GPL and BSD licenses both have the source in the open. Anyone creating a fork, can easily do so for either BSD or GPL licensed projects. Since Redis is a database, which the user won't be using a binary of, even using a fork of a supposedly GPL-licensed Redis would not require you to share your modifications with your user, same as BSD.
The BSD license made forking Valkey easier because it ensures that everyone has equal footing. The GPL, especially with contributor license agreements and the like, makes it much more easy for a single party to control the direction of the product. For another example of this happening, look at MongoDB. It started out under the AGPL, but was rugpulled to a non-free license.
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On top of badreligion42’s point, that both licenses allow forking just as easily - don’t you have the rugpull part backwards?
Afaik BSD licensed stuff can be re-licensed under any more closed licenses at any time, where as to re-license GPL, you need consent from every single contributor.
But i’m not familiar with the redis-valkey story so, maybe there is some nuance i am missing?
Redis started off as Free Software, but was switched to a source available license in version 7.4. The community promptly forked to Valkey, which is still under the BSD license. Since then, Redis shifted to AGPL 3, with contributor agreements, to try to ensure that they're the only ones who can attempt to commercialize Redis.
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How would you rugpull a GPL Redis?
The paradox clears itself up if you look at what tolerance actually is. It's simply not interfering with people's agency over themselves. Given that your right to self-agency doesn't entitle you to restrict others' self-agency, behavior that does try restricting others' agency is automatically not included in "tolerance."
Sure, yeah - like most “paradoxes”, it’s not actually a paradox unless you only look at it from one specific viewpoint.
> BSD license is unrestricted, it tolerates taking open source and closing it, thus always being at risk of things closing down.
There is no such risk. If someone wishes to make a closed source derivative of the BSD-licensed original, it does not deprive anyone of the original. That remains there, just as open as before.
It deprives for example the LLVM community to profit from PlayStation compiler optimizations.
It deprive us of their improvements, while they get to build off other people’s work.
With the GPL, if you want to modify, and built on others work, you have to share.
Share and share alike, vs take if you like share if you like.