Redis, the company behind the popular value-key database of the same name, has returned its main system to an open source license, although the move failed to satisfy some critics.

Adding the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) as an additional licensing option for Redis, starting with Redis 8, the business said it is moving to a licensing model approved as open source by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) – as the Server Side Public License (SSPLv1) it switched to in March last year has remained outside the accepted definition of open source software.

Rowan Trollope, CEO of Redis, said: “There hasn’t been any movement towards really accepting SSPL as a valid open source license. What we had hoped would happen is that people would see SSPL as a good license, that it ticked all the boxes, and that even perhaps OSI would reconsider their designation. It seems to us that they weren’t going to do that.”

Redis’s source code had been available under the BSD 3-clause license, a permissive agreement which allows developers to make commercial use of the code without paying. But in March last year, the Redis company — formerly Redis Labs — announced that starting with Redis 7.4, it would move to dual-licensed approach under both a Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and a Server Side Public License (SSPLv1).

Trollope later justified the shift by saying the SSPL license only really “applies to Amazon and Google” – fellow cloud provider Microsoft has agreed commercial terms with Redis. He said if a third party wanted to deliver the Redis open source as part of a cloud service offering that is directly competitive with Redis, it should publish all of the source code or get a commercial agreement with Redis Incorporated.

That position still holds true for the AGPL it will move to from Redis 8: if a cloud provider or a third party makes a service using software under AGPL, it has to open source that service or there is an option to pay Redis and not release code.

This article appeared in The Register here