I agree with basically everything you say, and I agree that developers should be able to choose the SSPL, because usually the choice is between SSPL-and-maintained and open-but-languishing.
I don't think you can say "yes but you can just fork it", because that ignores the reality that, sure, maybe eventually that fork will win, but right now the main fork (Redis) has a huge head start.
Con't comment on the fact that what was promised was not maintained, since I'm away for four years at this point. But I believe that in business sometimes, as the situation changes, or correction for monopoly positions are not likely to be taken by governments in the near future, changes are more or less forced. This is just speculation on my side as I was very little involved in the business side already when I was part of the company. Now zero involvement for four years. But the fact here is that many OSS projects needed to go towards this path one after the other. So I believe it is more useful to understand why they are willing to take this risk, what are the conditions that determine the bizarre fact that the main player in the development takes a marginal part of the cut.
I agree, that's why I don't ever want to say that something "will always be X". Otherwise people might be upset when I have to break the promise.
I'm not saying this to you as the creator of Redis, by the way (you already said you've been away too long for that), just as one random HN commenter to another.
Yep, these are problematic statements, since what they actually mean is "as long as I'm in charge" from the POV of project managers, CEOs, ... depending on the context. And even when people don't change conditions change. Indeed it is much better to say something like: we will take the BSD license as long as possible. And actually it must be observed that Redis was one of the latest to change the license.
Yeah, exactly. And people take them at face value ("you promised it'd always be so"), without realizing that, over long enough time frames, all promises will be broken.
I guess on one hand, be careful what you promise, on the other, be careful what you believe.
I think many people's disagreement here is that Redis broke its promise to always remain BSD (https://redis.com/blog/redis-license-bsd-will-remain-bsd/).
I don't think you can say "yes but you can just fork it", because that ignores the reality that, sure, maybe eventually that fork will win, but right now the main fork (Redis) has a huge head start.