Why Redis Is Re‑Opening Its Source: License Shifts, Community Fallout, and What It Means for Developers

After years of being open source, Redis unexpectedly moved to a closed‑source model, then a year later announced a return to open source, reigniting widespread discussion in the tech community.

In March 2023, Redis CEO Rowan Trollope published a notice that Redis would abandon its long‑standing BSD‑3‑Clause license starting with Redis 7.4, adopting a dual‑licensing scheme: RSALv2 (Redis Source‑Available License) and SSPLv1 (Server Side Public License). Both licenses are not approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and each imposes significant restrictions—RSALv2 forbids commercialisation and the removal of copyright notices, while SSPL requires that any service offering the software disclose its source code.

Consequently, Redis no longer qualifies as open source under OSI definitions.

During the recent May holiday, two key figures in the Redis ecosystem—founder Salvatore "antirez" Sanfilippo and CEO Rowan Trollope—published separate posts titled “Redis is open source again” and “Redis is now available under the AGPLv3 open source license,” announcing that Redis 8 would be officially re‑opened.

In a blog post, CEO Trollope admitted that choosing SSPL was a mistake that damaged the relationship with the Redis community. He explained that cloud providers such as AWS and GCP profit from open‑source projects without giving back, prompting companies like MongoDB and Elastic to adopt SSPL to protect their interests.

Redis had previously introduced Redis Stack, placing advanced features in a separate distribution under a more restrictive license, which doubled development effort and fragmented the community. After a year of evaluation, the company decided in March 2024 to switch entirely to SSPL, but this move further alienated contributors who felt betrayed.

Developers responded with criticism, many switching to forks such as Valkey, KeyDB, and Garnet. The community split, and even antirez returned to the project as a developer evangelist to help steer its future.

Redis now offers developers three licensing options for Redis 8 and later: RSALv2, SSPLv1, and AGPLv3. New developments include the introduction of a vector‑sets data type designed by Salvatore, integration of Redis Stack technologies (JSON, time‑series, probabilistic data types, and the Redis Query Engine) into the AGPL‑licensed core, performance optimisations boosting command speed by up to 87% and overall throughput, and stronger community engagement, especially around client ecosystems.

While the re‑open‑source move is significant, many developers consider it too late to restore trust, with some permanently adopting alternative forks. The long‑term success of Redis now depends on rebuilding community confidence and delivering on the promised open‑source roadmap.