| ▲ | Redis is trying to take over the all of the OSS Redis libraries(twitter.com) |
| 99 points by tasn 10 hours ago | 36 comments |
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| ▲ | deathanatos 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Twitter essentially hasn't loaded for me since Musk took over, so: https://archive.is/c5lnW or, > Looks like Redis is trying to take over the all the OSS Redis libraries. > Jedis, Lettuce, and redis-py are down, they are now threatening redis-rs (link in reply). There's no link in the post, and I don't have a link to the referenced reply, but I'm guessing the link is https://github.com/redis-rs/redis-rs/issues/1419 |
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| ▲ | tredre3 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Use xcancel instead of archive.is and you will see the replies. https://xcancel.com/TomHacohen/status/1861137484249252093 | | |
| ▲ | toxinu 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Damn it, thank you for the link, sir. Can we please make this SNS disappear? |
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| ▲ | EdwardDiego 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What does it mean by "redis-py" is down? It's still on Pypi? | | |
| ▲ | gurchik an hour ago | parent [-] | | I think they meant to say the maintainers for redis-py, lettuce, and jedis have already relinquished control to Redis Inc. The libraries are still online, but their repositories have been moved to the official Redis organization and are "controlled" and "owned by Redis" according to an email quoted in the linked Github Issue. |
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| ▲ | greatgib 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm obviously not a lawyer, but from what I can see, a project like redis_py is way older than any trademark registration from Redis lab. If I'm not wrong looking at the trademark, database, they have registered them recently (2018,2019, and a lot very recently 2023) in a very predatory move. In my opinion, this usage should be considered legitimate based on prior art or something like that. Anyway, in all case I hope that projects will not give up to this asshole move from redis lab. Maybe it might be possible to rename the project, but also forbid redis lab to use the name of the projects it had targeted. Like a poison pill. I think that it is legitimate for them to consider that an usage of name s like redis_py by Redis would be counterfeiting of well known brand of these projects.
In the end, it might be assumed that it is the fault of Redis to have not enforced any copyright or branding on these projects for more than 10 years despite the fact that they couldn't have ignored their existence and success. I'm even quite sure that we can find a publication of Redis lab with how-to use any of these open source projects... |
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| ▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is this going to become a trend? Project starts making trademark claims years after a downstream library has been using it without issue. Bit rich, given how accessible libraries can bootstrap an initial product ecosystem. Is it ever safe to use a trademark name? Will all packages now have to be generic enough to imply the product for which they connect? It”s not a Java/AWS/Redis/Wordpress/Shopify extension, but a thingbob, which just so happens to connect to That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named. |
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| ▲ | SAI_Peregrinus 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can mention a trademark. You can't use the trademark in the name of your own product. Even in cases where you're legally OK (e.g. mentioning your product is better than <trademark>, or is made for <trademark>) they can still sue you, though it'll be much easier to win the case. | | |
| ▲ | eurleif 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is called nominative fair use. But Redis's own guidelines for nominative fair use acknowledge that there are cases where you can "use the trademark in the name of your own product": https://redis-doc-test.readthedocs.io/en/latest/topics/trade... >you may only name it "XYZ for Redis™" However, I'm not sure where courts would land on a name like "redis-rs". There are arguments on both sides, and I'm not sure if there's enough case law to make the legal outcome clear. |
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| ▲ | bhouston 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I suspect Redis is going to pull in the various popular Redis libraries under their umbrella and make them incompatible with Valkey. It seems like a defensive move against Valkey. If I was in charge of any of these libraries, I would replace any mention of Redis with Valkey and move on. |
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| ▲ | nurettin an hour ago | parent [-] | | And what prevents valkey devs from maintaining their compatibility layer to accommodate those changes? |
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| ▲ | ac130kz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I switched to Valkey, and not looking back. It's actively maintained and compatible with Redis so far. |
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| ▲ | angry_octet 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This serves as a lesson when naming projects -- call it something different to the core product. If you must have a package called ${name}-rs make it a wrapper around your repo. |
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| ▲ | Attummm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | suffix the language name plus name would give us redis-py. Which in turn would create the filename redis_py.py Which would immediately raise the question why not a dot. redis.py > There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things. | | |
| ▲ | wmf 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Lawyers won't allow any of those. It has to be something like Client for Redis™ in Python™. |
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| ▲ | Aeolun 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can’t do that and expect it to be used. When someone needs a redis client library they search for ‘redis’ not ‘thingamabob’. | | |
| ▲ | ramon156 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Lots of projects do it. I look at starts and update frequencies. My toml parser is called taplo, for example. | |
| ▲ | eviks 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Since search isn't limited to names, but includes description, they will still find it |
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| ▲ | nybcvc 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Trademark claims are also defended by the otherwise useless PSF. Here GvR objects to someone continuing Python-2 uńder the name "python-2.8" as well as "py28". Informally, bringing in lawyers was threatened at one point: https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon/issues/47 The project was renamed to "tauthon". |
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| ▲ | echoangle 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I would love for someone to fight out these bullshit trademark claims. Are you seriously going to win against a crate author for using your business name after letting them do it for 10 years and even featuring and recommending them on your own website? (Referencing https://github.com/redis-rs/redis-rs/issues/1419 ) |
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| ▲ | 0cf8612b2e1e 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Who is going to pay to defend? The rust author is making it clear they want no part of this legal mess. Which is going to be true for nearly any open source contributor. The only people with legal representation are going to be the VCs looking for value extraction. | | |
| ▲ | echoangle 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, that’s the problem. I understand the perspective of the maintainers but it leads to a situation where the large corporation can do illegal stuff and bully people around because it’s too much effort to fight back. | | |
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| ▲ | znpy 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This looks a lot like the wordpress issue… i think the oss wars of the 2020s will be fought around trademarks? One more reason to move to valkey i guess. |
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| ▲ | wmf 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| At least they offered to buy it. |
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| ▲ | Aeolun 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is that any different from someone offering to buy a browser extension to add malware? | | |
| ▲ | dartos an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, if they don’t add malware. I doubt redis will add malware to specifically their rust client. OSS authors can add malware too. | |
| ▲ | tanduv 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | the library would most likely remain OSS even after the take over |
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| ▲ | RadiozRadioz 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While it's difficult to compare the pettiness, this is definitely sillier than the WordPress thing as far as trademark enforcement goes. Trademark-as-a-Weapon is becoming too common now. Are we going to be forced to use legally distinct (and confusingly different) names for all our libraries now to defend against this nonsense? Pick projects based on the brand protection posture of the licensors? What a waste of time. |
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| ▲ | perryizgr8 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What are they hoping to get out of it? Wouldn't this just inconvenience their own users? |
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| ▲ | a_vanderbilt 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Consolidation of control and brand recognition. As soon as Redis revealed their hostile intentions, forks split off. Valkey seems to be the favored one, and in my direct experience is what projects are using moving forward. If we don't intend to use Redis' commercial services we have no reason to use them given the license fuckery. Like IBM with Redhat, they tried to overstep their position and exert undue control, so the community rejected their status as BDFL. Now IBM has Rocky and Liberty to deal with, and Redis has Valkey rapidly gaining credibility as the go-to solution. The social contract of FOSS goes both ways, and greed is righteously punished with the loss of power. | | |
| ▲ | stult an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m sure most of it is trademark preservation. Trademarks are enforce it or lose it. | |
| ▲ | theideaofcoffee 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This was the obvious play when the original Garantia Data-now-Redis Labs went on their acquisition spree and subsequent buttoning up of the ecosystem via their cloud/hosted enterprise offering even before 2013 and then taking the Redis name for themselves. I believe it was only slowed down because of the community aspect pushing back against the stupid licensing changes of it, otherwise they would have gone full steam into it to get even more control. It's so sad to see a good product like that be hung out on the whims of some scummy leeches. |
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| ▲ | foobarian 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sic transit gloria mundi |
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| ▲ | imhoguy 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Looks like Mysqlization tragedy, the best would be when FOSS maintainers join their corporate agile sprints to meet roadmap demands, with naming rights gun aimed under table lol.
First time I hear about Valkey, it acts as MariaDB in this drama. /s |
