The Linux Foundation last week announced that it will host Valkey, a fork of the Redis in-memory data store. Valkey is backed by AWS, Google Cloud, Or

Why AWS, Google and Oracle are backing the Valkey Redis fork

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2024-03-31 19:30:04

The Linux Foundation last week announced that it will host Valkey, a fork of the Redis in-memory data store. Valkey is backed by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson and Snap.

AWS and Google Cloud rarely back an open-source fork together. Yet, when Redis Labs switched Redis away from the permissive 3-clause BSD license on March 20 and adopted the more restrictive Server Side Public License (SSPL), a fork was always one of the most likely outcomes. At the time of the license change, Redis Labs CEO Rowan Trollope said he “wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon sponsors a fork,” as the new license requires commercial agreements to offer Redis-as-a-service, making it incompatible with the standard definition of “open source.”

It’s worth taking a few steps back to look at how we got to this point. Redis, after all, is among the most popular data stores and at the core of many large commercial and open-source deployments.