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The Redis thing underscores a key point: _open source is not enough_. We need _community built software_ -- free and open source licenses are just one aspect of that.
If a company requires you to assign copyright (or equivalent re-licensing rights) in an asymmetrical way, they will inevitably eventually decide to take that option once they want to cash in on the goodwill you've built for them (let alone the code).
I know the change to source code publishing for RHEL y-streams went over _poorly_, but I'm proud of this:
Red Hat doesn't pull this "open source obligations for you, but none for us!" trick.
There is _nothing_ that gives Red Hat special rights that other organizations or individuals don't get -- if we want special influence, we have to do it by doing the work, just like anyone else.
@mattdm Please do not trot out Red Hat's very narrow interpretation of the GPL as an example to follow.
Every change to RHEL, with the exception of short-lived branch patches, goes into CentOS Stream (and then future RHEL).
There is plenty to argue about in details (so I won't), but the big picture is that Red Hat's approach funds engineering which all ultimately goes to open source available to everyone (even when the licenses are permissive), and does not require contributors to grant Red Hat any special power.
I don't think it's perfect — but it's better than the CLA squeeze.
@mattdm
> it's better than the CLA squeeze.
That's a very low bar to clear.
@vwbusguy @mattdm I pushed back against the CentOS/RHEL source stuff being a *good* example for other to emulate.
I wouldn't argue that what they did is similar to the other "business license" examples you mentioned, because it's not. RH didn't change any licenses.
No one did anything legally "wrong," and what the others did is worse than what RH did, but, IMO, they all acted in bad faith w.r.t. the FLOSS community.
@jbowen @mattdm It's water under the bridge for me at this point. I'm more interested in seeing how things can grow and improve from here. I've said all that I wanted to say about it to the people I felt should hear it and I'm not going to lose sleep over it any more. There's a lot of cool stuff happening now, especially wrt Fedora that I'd much rather give my attention.