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Redis Labs & the tragedy of the Commons Clause

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Redis Labs & the tragedy of the Commons Clause
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561
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CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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In August 2018, Redis Labs relicensed a number of AGPL-licensed Redis modules with the "Commons Clause" amendment on the grounds that it prevents abuse and therefore ensures the sustainability of its development. As this renders the software no-longer free and open source, GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian and Fedora are unable to ship Redis Labs' versions of the affected modules to their users. This talk from a long-time (2009) Redis user & developer will outline the history, background & response to this flavour of license, as well explain how this it at odds with communities in which they participate in and are ultimately are a short-sighted & retrograde step for the companies and individuals that are advocating for them. Furthermore, this talk will ask some thought-provoking questions about how the the conversation around "sustainability" in open source is being co-opted by foregrounding of financial elements to the detriment of the principles & people that have so clearly and demonstratively served us so well in the past four decades.