> the conditions today are vastly different than they were 20 years ago when there was no AWS to resell your FOSS to the whole world
No, its not. SaaS has existed for more than 20 years and reselling FOSS has been something it has done as long as there has been FOSS to resell.
What's changed recently is people launching venture-funded startups centered on gaining popularity through the appeal of FOSS with initially no clear monetization plan or one centered on selling services that were essentially just the FOSS, hosted. That’s the new thing, and why there is so much energy going into trying to figure out how to retain the marketing appeal of FOSS with the new licenses that lack the value proposition of FOSS.
> What's changed recently is people launching venture-funded startups centered on gaining popularity through the appeal of FOSS with initially no clear monetization plan or one centered on selling services that were essentially just the FOSS, hosted. That’s the new thing,
That isn't new either. What has changed is some have found what looks like a path to monetization that seems like it might actually work. 20 years ago they never found a path to monetization at all. You just forgot about the other failed ones because they never went anywhere (though the source code may still be out there).
> No, its not. SaaS has existed for more than 20 years and reselling FOSS has been something it has done as long as there has been FOSS to resell.
Not from a single vendor everyone is already using (AWS, GCP, Azure).
> What's changed recently is people launching venture-funded startups centered on gaining popularity through the appeal of FOSS
Redis aren't a venture-funded startup.
> one centered on selling services that were essentially just the FOSS, hosted
Many companies tried open core and hosting, like InfluxData, and it still didn't work. It's a hard sell when the big cloud providers' services are right there, a click/tf resource away, with integrated billing just a line item you don't have to haggle over. Honestly the only one I can think of that is kinda working with that business model (but still losing money) is GitLab.
> That’s the new thing, and why there is so much energy going into trying to figure out how to retain the marketing appeal of FOSS with the new licenses that lack the value proposition of FOSS.
BSL/SSPL don't lack the value proposition of FOSS. You can still see the code, you can still contribute to it, you can still fork if it the company goes under or you disagree with their direction. The only thing you can't really do is compete with the company behind it, which most users actually don't care about and is hardly a part of the value prop.
No, its not. SaaS has existed for more than 20 years and reselling FOSS has been something it has done as long as there has been FOSS to resell.
What's changed recently is people launching venture-funded startups centered on gaining popularity through the appeal of FOSS with initially no clear monetization plan or one centered on selling services that were essentially just the FOSS, hosted. That’s the new thing, and why there is so much energy going into trying to figure out how to retain the marketing appeal of FOSS with the new licenses that lack the value proposition of FOSS.