Redis left BSD for a license aimed at cloud providers

The workload

Redis Ltd. moved the Redis database's own source code away from the permissive BSD 3-Clause license starting with Redis 7.4. Verified: per the company's own 20 March 2024 announcement, all future Redis releases are dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License v2 (RSALv2) and the Server Side Public License v1 (SSPLv1), and 'Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution.' For a founder already running Redis, the workload is version-specific: checking whether a planned upgrade past 7.4 crosses into the new license terms, since releases before the change remain BSD.

What the documents show

Self-reported: Redis's own post states the change targets cloud providers, since 'the majority of Redis' commercial sales are channeled through the largest cloud service providers, who commoditize Redis' investments.' Verified: the RSALv2 text itself states two operative limitations: 'You may not make the functionality of the Software or a Modified version available to third parties as a service,' and 'You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices.' Verified: Redis's own FAQ item in the announcement states plainly that neither RSALv2 nor SSPL is OSI-approved, and that the company will refer to the freely available code as 'Community Edition' rather than 'open source' going forward. Verified: the Linux Foundation's own 28 March 2024 release confirms the industry response: former Redis contributors founded Valkey, a BSD-3-Clause fork of the last open-source Redis version, under Linux Foundation governance, with AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson and Snap named as founding supporters. This entry does not assert how widely Valkey has actually been adopted, only that the fork exists and is documented.

The operating cost

Neither license states a fee for ordinary use; RSALv2 and SSPLv1 both permit free use outside their stated limits. Estimated: the cost that applies to a specific business is the price of a commercial agreement with Redis, which the announcement says is required only for a 'competitive offering,' a term the FAQ defines as a paid product that significantly overlaps Redis's own commercial versions; no public price list for that agreement is cited here.

The stop condition

Per the announcement, the license change is not retroactive: source and releases published before the change remain under the original BSD terms indefinitely, so long as their own conditions are met. Going forward, the practical stop condition on encountering the new terms is staying on pre-7.4 releases, or migrating to a differently licensed alternative such as Valkey, a documented option rather than a recommendation this entry makes.

• Is the Redis version in production from before or after the 7.4 licensing change?
• Does anything the business builds on Redis compete with Redis Ltd.'s own paid offerings under the FAQ's definition?
• Would migrating to the BSD-licensed Valkey fork cost less than a commercial Redis agreement, given the actual workload involved?

The Redis relicensing is a documented, dated change with a stated commercial target, not a blanket restriction on using Redis. Whether it reaches a specific deployment depends on the version and the use, both checkable against the text itself.