Redis Labs & the tragedy of the Commons Clause
By
Chris Lamb
In late 2018, Redis Labs relicensed a number of AGPL-licensed Redis modules with the "Commons Clause" amendment. This talk outlines the history, background & response to this style of license and explains how this it ultimately a short-sighted & retrograde step for the companies that are advocating for them.
Monday 11 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
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.
Chris Lamb
Currently Project Leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project and a member of Board of Directors for the Open Source Initiative, Chris is a freelance computer programmer, author of dozens of free-software projects and contributor to 100s of others.
He has been official Debian Developer since 2008 and is currently highly active in the Reproducible Builds sub-project for which he has been awarded a grant from the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative. In his spare time he is an avid classical musician with an interest in early music.
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