@kytta

Redis Ltd. were right (April Fools)

Heads up!

This is not a serious blog post, but rather my attempt at a funny April Fools joke.

When the news about Redis®, a registered trademark of Redis Ltd, dropped, I have held my urge to comment on the situation. For one, because I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts, but also because I knew I would not be understood by the other members of our community. I was afraid of mean comments coming my way. But now, I have finally got to writing about it.

I never understood the concept of all these freedoms connected with open source. Like, when I first got introduced to the concept, I thought of it as of a bad joke. I have to work my ass off writing superb code only to then let everyone else look at and use it for free? What sense does it make? I thought people were doing this only because Microsoft® GitHub® made you pay for private repos, but it hasn’t been the case for years now.

And then come all these licences. “Anyone can do anything with this code, and even more”, like, or even making others use the same licence for their modifications? Who would ever want that? Imagine designing an innovative piece of clothing only for others to sell the same thing without you getting any of that money. Or making a car that anyone could download. You wouldn’t! And even “free as in ‘free beer’” makes zero sense — where have you seen free beer?

As such, I can understand that Redis Ltd. were just not having it with other people claiming a part of Redis®, a registered trademark of Redis Ltd, for themselves. So, it was their legal and moral rights to close the gates. Nothing personal, just business as usual.

But oh my God, the backlash! All these tweets and blog posts and videos of people rebuking Redis Ltd. for having some nothing wrong. And then the hard forks; I mean, if you need a KV database, then either buy it or write one yourselves. Someone, who made a groundless replacement for the totally fine Microsoft® GitHub® and an Easter-themed programming language, will sure find time for another project like this.

The situation has shown me that open source (especially the ‘libre’ subsection thereof) is nothing but a bunch of life-offended folk who can’t do anything but whine about stuff not being free. I didn’t want to be a part of this any more.

Thus, an announcement. Starting today, I am taking all my source code repositories offline. All projects of mine, no matter the licence, will be relicensed to a new invention of mine: Anti-Public Righteous Irrevocable License without Freedoms and Openness and Other Legal Slang. Its conditions are pretty simple: You ain’t getting my code, suck it!

It’s not all bad though, as I will not remove my PyPI® and Microsoft® GitHub® npm™ packages. Those remain free to use, you’re just not getting any source code for them.

I hope this decision of mine will not strike any controversies online. And if it would, then so be it: The truth is always controversial. 😉


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