This is a feature, not a bug. Different developers (and their respective employers) want different things. The Valkey community will build a great product, and Redis will build a great product. Both open source. Everyone wins.
Would Trollope have preferred a smoother path to this point? Of course. “We…didn’t meet the open source community—and our community—where they are. I wish we had done better.” Fortunately, “that’s something that Salvatore has helped with a lot,” both giving us “a credible voice in the open source community” while also being “an incredible advocate for the company.” Oh, and he’s also an exceptional engineer: Sanfilippo is responsible for introducing Redis’ first new data type in years (vector sets). He’s a behind-the-scenes heavy influence on the thinking that led the company back to an open source license, which has meant they can now fold in features from the Redis Stack modules (search, JSON, Bloom filters, etc.) to unify their internal development processes while creating a one-stop, real-time data platform.
“We think [changing to AGPLv3 is] the right thing to do for our users, and it’s the right strategic direction for the company,” says Trollope. It should ensure an even better Redis, while the Valkey fork, steered by an increasingly diverse array of contributors from Alibaba, Google, Ericsson, Huawei, Tencent, AWS, and others, promises to give developers a strong alternative. Neither Redis nor Valkey are guaranteed success. Both bring strengths and weaknesses. Developers (and their enterprise employers) will ultimately decide, but at least they now have a clear choice between two great alternatives.
