• Redis Inc's Move: Redis Inc, whose core product is the formerly open source Redis in-memory database, has approached the maintainers of the popular Rust client library for Redis with the intent to either control or fork it, causing unease in the community.
• Email and Call: Armin Ronacher received an email and a call from Redis product manager Mirko Ortensi. The company expressed the desire for a Rust client with official support and proposed taking over redis-rs to add "enterprise-grade features" while maintaining community contributions and compatibility with the official community edition of Redis.
• Trademark Concerns: Ronacher understood from the call that the name of the library might be a trademark violation. He didn't want to be in a trademark dispute and expressed concern for those using the library with Valkey.
• License Change: In March 2024, Redis changed the licensing for its core code from open source BSD-3 to Redis Source Available License v2 or Server Side Public License v1, restricting code use. This led to the formation of Valkey based on Redis 7.2.4 with the BSD-3 license.
• Ortensi's Clarification: Ortensi posted that while he didn't call the name redis-rs a trademark violation, companies consider protecting their trademarks when their reputation is challenged. He also said the Redis crate should be for Redis and Valkey should have its own crate.
• Valkey Maintainer's Hope: Valkey maintainer Madelyn Olson hoped to support both Valkey and Redis in rust-rs due to product overlap.
• Other Comments: Another rust-rs committer asked why Redis couldn't contribute pull requests instead of acquiring or forking. Apache Software Foundation member Xuanwo raised concerns about potential breaking changes if the repository is transferred.
• Redis Creator's Offer: Redis creator Salvatore Sanfilippo offered to talk to the company about authorization for open source client libraries to use the name "Redis" without issues. He made Redis open source in 2009 but stepped down as maintainer in 2020.
• Updated Position: Redis later retreated from its original position and said it wants to work together with the maintainers, posting a statement in the thread. This is a developing story and updates will be linked.