In March 2024, Redis announced that it was dumping the open source BSD 3-clause license for its Redis in-memory key-value database for a “source-available” Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). That made both developers and users unhappy.
So, as open-source people do, community members immediately forked the code into Valkey with the support of the Linux Foundation. The release has garnered support from major tech companies like AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle, indicating strong industry backing for this open-source initiative.
Valkey has been one of the quickest moving forks for open source. On top of this, the new fork seems to have already surpassed the original in terms of new features and performance.
It goes to show that open source forks can actually be a very good thing.