If they try to sell their software, by your own admission, you won't consume it. That's the point. The fantasy is the idea that some of these open-source products would even work as a closed-source proprietary business model.

Then don't try to sell it. Or make something else that people can't live without and are willing to pay for and can't just pay themselves to write an equivalent instead of paying rent to you forever, whatever, what's it to me or anyone else?

Do whatever you want but it's no one else's problem if you can't figure out what.

Ya got no argument here.

I disagree with you on a lot, but you're bang on the money here.

If you want a business, build a business. One key aspect of building a business is understanding what your IP and trade secrets are, how they affect your bottom line, and then controlling them appropriately.

The point is that if there was no business behind projects like Redis and ElasticSearch you wouldn’t be using them either. You’d be using some random Microsoft or Oracle product.

I’m guessing you don’t want that either, so come up with a way to make sure Redis has the financial support it needs to hire engineers to do the full time work that part time contributors like us don’t want to.

The point is I don't have to come up with any such thing.

It is not true that if redis didn't exist then I'd be using some MS or Oracle product. I might, if it was practical. Or someone might have invented redis, or I might if that was a space that still needed filling and somehow no one else did it.

It's like saying if linux didn't exist we'd all be using NT.

That's completely ridiculous. No we would not. BSD already existed and if not that then a minix clone or someone else would have started some other unix clone. There were several small unix clones and other full OS's made by completely small developer teams by then, even single people, commercially. If a single guy can do it at all (regardles that they were doing it to sell), it means the job is not infinitely big and so perfectly doable by a few self-motivated volunteers, especially given how that kind of work has no deadline.

Except "volunteer" is the wrong word because they aren't some kind of weird saint doing something just for you or me. They are doing it for themselves, and you get to have it too.

Everything is like that. Redis is no different. There is nothing magic about redis. Things exactly like that get created when the need for them arises every day. If redis didn't exist is a nonsense invalid premis because 12 redis-alikes will always exist any time the need for it exists. It doesn't matter that I didn't already do it muyself, and I don't have to now either, and that is not just beacause redis happens to exist.

This goes back to my original point. You’re living in fantasy land.

In reality, that’s not how it works. If to use Redis your company had to assign someone to do maintenance work then you just wouldn’t be allowed to use Redis. And yes, you would be using MS Redis, because none of the clones would be secure and supported enough for you to feel good using them.

So what? What do I care if some company does not use redis or any other piece of software?