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**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Okay, this is one of the best sides of capitalism. I believe that inside VMware there were two persons - basically Derek Collison, was one, and Mark Lukoski was another one, that realized that I did some good work, and they just did this for me without return. I believe it was like a gift. I w... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[24:15\] Yeah, grateful. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** I don't know if I ever said clearly thank you to these two persons... Because they didn't reason back then in terms of just "What's better for our company", but "Our company is big, and this money don't change anything. And what's a good thing for the software landscape, for the underground so... |
**Jerod Santo:** That's amazing. And Pivotal was similar? |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Initially yes, but they were probably a bit less happy about this setup. And so because Pivotal and Redis Labs had the same VC, they talked and said "If somebody has to pay this guy, let's pay you, that is Redis Labs, and not us, that do something else." And so I switched. |
**Jerod Santo:** I see. So the Redis Labs one is the confusing one, because Redis is your baby, and this is a third party that named themselves Redis Labs and hired you? Or did you start it? Can you explain that, how that worked? |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Basically, they started the company and approached me immediately after starting the company in Germany. We were in Germany, there was some kind of conference, a NoSQL conference of some kind... And they asked if I wanted to join the effort earlier. But I was in a too good situation, basically... |
**Jerod Santo:** So all three pretty good setups, some better than others. Obviously, the VMware one was the most, I don't know, philanthropic, or less capitalist. They just decided to do that and let you do your thing, which is awesome. Eventually, you grew tired of Redis? I mean, you left - was it 2020, as lead maint... |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Not of the system. I was very happy of the work that I was doing. However, till the very last day, even if I had -- inside Redis, the company, there are many gifted people in the Tel Aviv side. There are very strong programmers that are in the company. Since I started Redis, they never left, a... |
\[28:12\] So when Redis \[unintelligible 00:28:10.08\] performs for 10 years or even more a memory check of the system it is running on in order to report broken memory. And now it's of no use, because most memory is error protected. But back then, a lot of cheap memory created problems. |
So basically, it was a life completely dedicated to this system. And I said, "I want to stop." Also, when I saw GPT-2, and then GPT-3, I said "This is going to change everything", so I wanted to write a novel about this thing. And I started to write while working, but I realized that the writing thing was a full-time s... |
What's happening - for example, in the novel, there is, I believe, the first description to date of prompt engineering... Because it was written in the novel before ChatGPT and -- there was just GPT-3 without the instruction tuning models... But it was obvious that we were headed in this direction, so I had the urge of... |
**Jerod Santo:** So along the way Redis went through some license changes with various feedback from community members, and non-community members, from open source, to SSPL, and AG... There's lots of stuff we could talk about here. How interesting is licensing to you, Salvatore? Do you like this topic? Do you dislike i... |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** I believe that we that formed ourself in the '90s were extremely aware of the licensing stuff. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Now I see younger developers not really caring about this, but we basically started to write code, and starting to be mini lawyers, understanding all the subtle things about GPL, BSD, MIT... So yes, I care about license, because the way that you express your willing about what others can do or... |
Also, I think that without the copyleft idea, the computers technology could not accelerate to the point that it accelerated. Because when open source was created, basically in order to create a startup, you had to buy complicated workstations, Unix licenses, database licenses... So it was impossible to have the landsc... |
Initially, what I did with my software was to use GPL. Then I started to realize that GPL had two problems. It created problems to myself, because sometimes I thought -- and if this becomes big, I want to have a business model. And I don't want to get some paper signaled by all the contributors that I had so far. So I ... |
\[32:00\] When I started Redis, I was very into this BSD stage of my life, so I released the Redis as BSD also because there is also behind that an idea about accelerating society, improving society to be more important than basically what is going to happen to me, in some way. However, then it must be said that the cl... |
And then after AWS everything changed, because there was no longer need of somebody supporting you, because it was handled for you. And also, you couldn't even compete with the others, because in order to compete in cloud services, you have to pay for the instances, and they have them for free. Also, even the billing i... |
So I understood at some point that the BSD license that I picked, with the changing world of the software, created serious issues to create business. Now we can go a step back and say "But why it should create business? It's an open source software." And I believe that more or less every complicated open source softwar... |
And inside Redis, they didn't want to change the license, and I didn't want for a long time... But there was this discussion, but it was some kind of taboo. So it never happened as long as I was there that somebody asked me "But what do you think? We want to change the license." It's a conversation that didn't happen. ... |
Then when they changed the license, I understood that it was basically some kind of a forced move in some way, because with BSD it was too complicated to compete in this market. However, now we are realizing - me and also inside Redis - that SSPL was not accepted by the community in some part. And we care about this th... |
\[35:52\] Also, one important thing is that because of that, we are going to add in Redis a lot of the features that are now only for the paying users. For example, now I'm working a lot to vector sets, which is the first fundamental data type that Redis gets after many years... And it will be released in the community... |
**Jerod Santo:** So you probably heard that Elastic went there and back again. They are fully open source, with Elasticsearch specifically, once again. And we had Shay Bannon on the show last year, talking about that decision, and he says that he thinks nowadays, in today's culture, the AGPL license, which is accepted ... |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Exactly. I believe so as well. There was, I believe, some -- I was not part of the company when this happened, but I believe that this was a consideration. But then, you know, sometimes also the legal advice that you get... I will say something a bit maybe unpopular, but I think that the legal... |
Many times when I had to do contracts, I skipped the lawyers that were in between and we could not understand each other, and said "Okay, I will write the contract. This is the contract. If you want, you can fix the form", and immediately, the thing started to immediately to work, the conversation. And I believe that s... |
**Break**: \[40:09\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So you said that you guys are considering licensing updates, let's just say, to paraphrase it... Is AGPL back on the possible table? Since the SSPL and the AGPL is so similar, do you think - to be culturally fit again, let's just say - that's a wise consideration? |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** There is, I believe, a part of the company that wants to do some change in this direction. However, there is to basically find an agreement about that. But personally, for myself, I am positive about doing this switch, and I will keep the conversation going about this. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, I think it'd be a win. I mean, we started off with, you know, basically 15 years ago, and your journey to create it, and how it prospered in the community. Obviously, BSD license, open source - thrived, beloved, to this day. And many mourned its license change because it limited their ability ... |
**Jerod Santo:** It'd be awesome. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Redis, open source again. |
**Jerod Santo:** There you go. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Yeah. To be honest, I'm investing my time, both in creating the cultural conditions inside the company, but I don't want to stop there. Also, with the vector sets, with \[unintelligible 00:45:24.22\] I want to in some way show the company also back the Redis way from the point of view of simpl... |
So pressing about the license, pressing about the different vibe in the community - in general, this changes. I want to be in some way the flag of this new revolution inside the Redis company. And I see that I have many, many people that are aligned with this vision. For example, today I received the second pull reques... |
**Jerod Santo:** Mm-hm. Was this one of the reasons for your return, or did you find this once you got back, that you wanted to make this cultural change inside? Or did you see it as a reason to come back to Redis and Redis Labs? |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Honestly, I started to think that my comeback could be useful from the point of view of recovering what was created in so many years. And I didn't want -- you know, after I left Redis, I didn't watch again the commits, whatever. Zero. Because I said "Okay--" During my term I tried to take the ... |
\[48:06\] But then, when I saw the conflict inside the community, I thought that since I know a lot of people inside the company, and I was sure that many of the technical staff, for example, it's not what they wanted happening, I said "Maybe I can return. And I can return also without feeling too much stress, if from ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let's paint a picture, because you keep saying the company, and I imagine - you've got Salvatore here, you answer as the person we've known since the beginning... And then you say "the company." Can you quantify what that means, the company? How many people? Who's involved? Is there a lot of open so... |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Okay. That's a very cool question, because I believe that Redis is one of the worst communicated companies in the world... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay... |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Because it's much better in the inside than it looks in the outside. Basically, we are 1,000. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** 1,000 people. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** That's a lot. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Holy moly, that's a lot of people. Okay, the company's big. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** A lot of people. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's not Google-big, but it's big. That's a lot of people. |
**Salvatore Sanfilippo:** It's a lot of people, and the development part is almost completely in Israel. A lot of remote work is inside Israel, in many places of Israel, in the North, in the small cities, small villages... And there are truly talented people there. Incredible persons. Also very loyal persons to the com... |
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