So they're moving to a new "community based", "light governance" model. [1]
There are plenty of problems with BDFL-style projects, but I think there are a lot of advantages too. Redis is unique in my experience in that it works the way you'd expect - it doesn't cause outages, it is fast, and it has a vanishingly small number of gotchas. The feature set is well curated and for the most part fits together cohesively.
The most important thing Antirez did, in my opinion, was to say "No" to things. No to new features that didn't make sense. No to PRs that didn't fit the vision. Saying no is one of the most important jobs of a project maintainer. It's a thankless task that upsets a lot of people. But it's critical for a project to stay successful and achieve the leader's vision.
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I predict after a few years of this new model we'll see weird features, more stability issues, and performance regressions as more cooks enter the kitchen. Time will tell.
Ok, so many thank you here, thanks! It's very nice to read the comments here. But I hope to interact more on HN, since basically the idea is to write more blog posts, write more OSS software too. Just totally random :D I'll just do whatever every morning I want to do for a long time. Then maybe I'll find a new long term interest.
I want you to know that your code is a real inspiration to me. Redis is a beautiful C artifact and an excellent reminder of how joyful it can be to create and read code.
Also, congratulations to moving off of Redis. In open source, there is a thing where people look at retiring from a project as some sort of failure of either the project or the maintainer, but I think the opposite is true.
We all have a finite amount of time on Earth, and everything has its natural beginning and end. Moving on to something else means creating the opportunity for yourself to find the next big project for you. And for the project itself, it means bringing in new eyes and perspectives.
I normally don't write about what I come across during my work, but in aggregate I can tell you that Redis, Linux and MySQL are the most common recurring elements across 150+ jobs looking at different companies, and using it rarely if ever leads to trouble.
So even if I don't use it myself directly quite a few of the companies we have invested in do, and an indirect 'thank you so much' is well deserved. I am very curious what it is that you will do next besides blogging. Linus had 'git' as his second major project, arguably it has had just as much effect on the world of free software as Linux did, you've definitely raised the bar for yourself :)
@antirez Thanks man! Maximum respect for everything so far, and for your honesty over the years. I rarely login or post on HN but I have just for this post.
I've been using redis since I think 2.2 and have learned so much from your posts over the years! More than just about redis. Are you able to post links on your site to the videos you're making? I don't speak Italian but I'd love to learn from subtitles.
I'm really excited for you and look forward to whatever fun things you decide to do next!
Greets from NZ
> I write code in order to express myself, and I consider what I code an artifact, rather than just something useful to get things done. I would say that what I write is useful just as a side effect, but my first goal is to make something that is, in some way, beautiful. In essence, I would rather be remembered as a bad artist than a good programmer.
This entered my list of favorite quotes! For this, if not for your huge contribution to OSS, grazie!
Thank you Salvatore! You have been an inspiration to me as a young programmer and have opened my eyes to the wonders of OSS. Excited to see whatever you do next!
Hey man, like a lot of people here, I wanna say "Thanks fort Redis, it's solved a bunch for problems for me at work", but also "Thanks for dump1090, I've had heaps of fun with that, and learned a lot from digging into your code there."
Best wishes for whatever it is you choose to do next.
You are a hero sir and thanks for all the effort that you have contributed for redis. Someday, I too hope to create a project that would touch at least a fraction of as many people as redis did. You are a big inspiration. All the best for whatever you want to do next.
Congratulations on completing such a very successful project!
Also, good decision, and happy to see that you now can finally take a real vacation if you want.
Also, it is good news for everyone, because it means you will be able to concentrate your energy on new creative pursuits if you want. Which, for example, leads to beneficial things like video tutorials, etc.
It feels like people may still kind of be on your back a little bit but this time they may be asking you what the next big project is. I hope you can shake them off and just follow your passion without needing to make a commitment to something new
(especially not anytime soon). This will be best for everyone in my opinion.
I became a sponsor of yours on Github today just to say, "thanks." I know it's not much, but I really do appreciate your work. Hopefully, my small donation will add up some worthwhile coffee overtime!
Your work that’s had the most impact on me isn’t Redis but kilo! It taught me how to have fun hacking on C back in university. Me and a couple friends cloned the repo and started adding fun features.
Massive hat tip for all your work over the years. Redis is a lovely bit of work.
I first used it as the datastore for a flash sale about 8 years ago now. Even though close to 130k people were trying to book rooms at the same time, it performed just as I hoped it would.
I was going to say that I haven’t used it in a few years, but really I’ve just forgotten that it’s running a critical part of our system day in day out because it never causes me any trouble.
Good luck with your next adventure, here’s hoping it’s as fruitful for the community as your last one.
Thank you so much for all that you have done. Redis is a fantastic piece of work. It is everything software is supposed to be: it's simple and it just works :)
I haven't used Redis before, but I have been considering it for a project I'm working on so I've been having a look.
Just wanted to offer you my thanks. I've seen the project a bit from the sidelines over the years out of interest, and I think you should be proud of it.
Hope you will do something that excites you next. My only tip is : don't worry about what other people think is exciting - follow your gut.
Thanks for putting so much effort into Redis! The software itself is awesome (I've been using it one way or another over the span of nearly a decade now), and in my opinion anyway you've handled the project and yourself in an exemplary way. You're the only programmer I can really say I think of as a personal hero. Best of luck in the future!
Your initial post about Redis is one of the first things I remember seeing when I started reading Hacker News. The great thing about Redis to me was that it was extremely clear what it did and what the use cases were, and I always appreciated how you talked about it in such a simple, practical way.
Thank you for Redis, and I hope you can relax and have some fun with whatever is next!
Thank you for all your work these years. Your blog was/is inspirational and I especially learnt a lot from your "writing an editor in 1000 lines" article, when every other example on the net used to use a library.
Thank you antirez! I've used your remote dictionary server from the earliest days and it has been a staple of my tool chest ever since. Three cheers and enjoy your time doing whatever it is you want to do!
Thank you for Redis and some of the other stuff too! I had great fun reading through the small string compression code and learned a lot! Hope you have many decades of happy hacking ahead of you.
Thank You so much for Redis. Looking forward to your next project or hacking around existing OSS project. May be CRuby or Lua given you like both languages?
@antirez - Thank you for Redis! It's been a joy to use across so many projects.
> However I never wanted to be a software maintainer.
And nothing say that you have to be. There's this perverted view that anytime someone creates a popular FOSS project, they need to dedicate every waking minute to maintaining it. That's neither economically feasible nor psychologically reasonable.
> Redis was the most stressful thing I did in my career, and probably also the most important. I don’t like much what the underground programming world became in recent years, but even if it was not an easy journey, I had the privilege to work and interact with many great individuals.
I say this frequently both online and when discussing system design with newer devs, but will repeat here: of all the production issues I've debugged, the culprit has has never been redis. In fact, redis has been a critical piece of achieving cost-effective scaling. It is one of only two pieces of software (along with postgres) that I blindly recommend without any caveats. From following along here and on your blog about how you approach things and think about the software, I think its clear that you and your vision for the project are a large factor of why it has been so reliable.
My thought here. I'm not exactly a disinterested party because I built my own key value store company (possibly the wrong way but that's a different story).
I have a huge respect for Redis, and Antirez, but I have to say my respect doesn't include RedisLabs. They're the ones who started a commercial endevour to capitalize on Redis initially without Antirez, and then later offered him a position. They're the ones that Kyle@Jepsen says is making claims about ACID, not Antirez. I always heard that Clustering was a feature Antirez was very reluctant about.
I hope Redis is, fundamentally, taken away from RedisLabs.
Antirez, you say you want to express through code and open source, and I can't square that with your association with RedisLabs. You've been taking their money for quite a few years now to allow them to put up a billboard saying "the home of redis".
I'm going to stop right there. I've cut my own path through the wild jungle that's Open Source, and it's not yours, and I respect the years you put in to make the product with your vision. I'm sure there are some other first coders of foundational databases on this list, but it's a small club.
As an employee of RedisLabs, I don't think you are free to say what you'd like to say, I hope you follow whatever path does allow you to freely express in the future.
I just want to say thank you to antirez for Redis, for how simple, fast, and rock solid it remains to this day. Redis is one of those things that allows you to tilt your head a little on a problem--thinking of solutions in terms of set operations and lookups. A lot of people use it understandably for a cache but it is so much more than that...for me it's introduced an entirely new way of composing solutions to problems. Cheers for all you've done--you've shown at least one programmer that there is still a place for small, elegant design that will stand the test of time.
While a very different circumstance, the pull between "I write code in order to express myself" and being an "artist" vs. "useful" and the drudgery of maintenance reminds me of famous rubyist _why and why he stopped doing stuff in the community.
Moved the blog in a more decent server :D Faster now. But DNS propagation will take some time. Yet most of the new requests will go in the new server so also the old one will be faster.
> In eleven years I hope I was able to provide a point of view that certain persons understood, about an alternative way to write software. I hope that such point of view will be taken into consideration in the evolution of Redis.
To me this epitomises what Bill Gates meant when he said "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.".
I just wish I had something to show for my last decade that had as much impact as Redis!
As a redis user for more than 8 years, i just want to say thank you. I had embedded redis 2.8 on small IoT system with 200mhz/64Mb of ram to huge cluster as a message bus (redis-as-kafka pattern).
Want a shared memory with a type system? Use redis. Want a queue? Use redis. Want something easy to mock, with an API in all major ecosystems? Use redis.
It's long past due that we should move to software which isn't maintained - because there's nothing to do. Adding features could be done either by writing a new one - because the requests don't really fit the meaning of old one, the creators saw that and rejected; fixing bugs - yes, fixing bugs may remain, but are there many bugs in, say, TEX code?
We don't yet know how to write a completed software well - the one which isn't updated on Github for years yet nobody calls it stale or outdated.
Antirez is an inspiration, for me at least.
Not only because of what he achieved, Redis is a very nice piece of tech, but also because of his programming style.
Thank you! In building Redis you’ve contributed some wonderful software to the world. In addition, I’ve always found your blogs to be interesting reads. I’ve also learned by the examples you set both from a coding perspective (reading your wcode), and engineering perspective. Thank you again, looking forward to whatever is next!
I am struck by how beautifully expressed this letter is. @antirez, thank you so much.
It's really great to see when someone who is totally honest with themselves and what sparks joy in their life/career, and is also respectful to all the people who depend on the work/artifact. So much respect.
Redis is an astonishingly good piece of software. I've always found its beauty to be the reflection of your philosophies, @antirez. Thank you. Here's to you finding joy in your pursuits!
[+] [-] eric_b|5 years ago|reply
There are plenty of problems with BDFL-style projects, but I think there are a lot of advantages too. Redis is unique in my experience in that it works the way you'd expect - it doesn't cause outages, it is fast, and it has a vanishingly small number of gotchas. The feature set is well curated and for the most part fits together cohesively.
The most important thing Antirez did, in my opinion, was to say "No" to things. No to new features that didn't make sense. No to PRs that didn't fit the vision. Saying no is one of the most important jobs of a project maintainer. It's a thankless task that upsets a lot of people. But it's critical for a project to stay successful and achieve the leader's vision.
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I predict after a few years of this new model we'll see weird features, more stability issues, and performance regressions as more cooks enter the kitchen. Time will tell.
[1] https://redislabs.com/blog/new-governance-for-redis/
[+] [-] antirez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munificent|5 years ago|reply
Also, congratulations to moving off of Redis. In open source, there is a thing where people look at retiring from a project as some sort of failure of either the project or the maintainer, but I think the opposite is true.
We all have a finite amount of time on Earth, and everything has its natural beginning and end. Moving on to something else means creating the opportunity for yourself to find the next big project for you. And for the project itself, it means bringing in new eyes and perspectives.
Change is scary, but healthy.
[+] [-] jacquesm|5 years ago|reply
I normally don't write about what I come across during my work, but in aggregate I can tell you that Redis, Linux and MySQL are the most common recurring elements across 150+ jobs looking at different companies, and using it rarely if ever leads to trouble.
So even if I don't use it myself directly quite a few of the companies we have invested in do, and an indirect 'thank you so much' is well deserved. I am very curious what it is that you will do next besides blogging. Linus had 'git' as his second major project, arguably it has had just as much effect on the world of free software as Linux did, you've definitely raised the bar for yourself :)
Much good luck!
[+] [-] _urga|5 years ago|reply
I started using Redis around 2010 and I learned to appreciate so many things from you along the way:
* Data structures are fun.
* In-memory is fast and can be safe!
* Append-only logs are awesome.
* Databases can be more than MySQL.
* Complexity analysis is worth making clear in the documentation.
* Hybrid L1 cache-friendly data structures beat complexity analysis for small data.
* There are only so many hours you can work in a day.
* It's cool to sit by the pool.
* It's cool to have a screen name.
* Above all, code is poetry, not dependencies.
[+] [-] krp|5 years ago|reply
I've been using redis since I think 2.2 and have learned so much from your posts over the years! More than just about redis. Are you able to post links on your site to the videos you're making? I don't speak Italian but I'd love to learn from subtitles.
I'm really excited for you and look forward to whatever fun things you decide to do next! Greets from NZ
[+] [-] vsmhn|5 years ago|reply
This entered my list of favorite quotes! For this, if not for your huge contribution to OSS, grazie!
[+] [-] portroyal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ibrault|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xsace|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytse|5 years ago|reply
I also want to thank you for making this decision while you were still active, Redis didn't skip a beat. Right up to announcing this you made sure that the community made progress. As we at GitLab detail in https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/06/24/scaling-our-use-of-... in April you personally responded to an issue https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/7071 within an hour.
I glad you are choosing for what makes you happy, you more than earned it.
[+] [-] bigiain|5 years ago|reply
Best wishes for whatever it is you choose to do next.
[+] [-] psankar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|5 years ago|reply
Also, good decision, and happy to see that you now can finally take a real vacation if you want.
Also, it is good news for everyone, because it means you will be able to concentrate your energy on new creative pursuits if you want. Which, for example, leads to beneficial things like video tutorials, etc.
It feels like people may still kind of be on your back a little bit but this time they may be asking you what the next big project is. I hope you can shake them off and just follow your passion without needing to make a commitment to something new (especially not anytime soon). This will be best for everyone in my opinion.
[+] [-] olingern|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpittis|5 years ago|reply
Your work that’s had the most impact on me isn’t Redis but kilo! It taught me how to have fun hacking on C back in university. Me and a couple friends cloned the repo and started adding fun features.
Here’s to more 1000 line whatevers! <3
[+] [-] aidos|5 years ago|reply
I first used it as the datastore for a flash sale about 8 years ago now. Even though close to 130k people were trying to book rooms at the same time, it performed just as I hoped it would.
I was going to say that I haven’t used it in a few years, but really I’ve just forgotten that it’s running a critical part of our system day in day out because it never causes me any trouble.
Good luck with your next adventure, here’s hoping it’s as fruitful for the community as your last one.
[+] [-] drol3|5 years ago|reply
Good luck exploring your other options
[+] [-] bborud|5 years ago|reply
Just wanted to offer you my thanks. I've seen the project a bit from the sidelines over the years out of interest, and I think you should be proud of it.
Hope you will do something that excites you next. My only tip is : don't worry about what other people think is exciting - follow your gut.
[+] [-] mbillie1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swivelmaster|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for Redis, and I hope you can relax and have some fun with whatever is next!
[+] [-] seemslegit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
I did have a post that basically said "I relate," but it wasn't popular (I guess it came across as self-promoting. My apologies).
In any case, I can relate, and completely support you in your future endeavors. I am not a redis user, but I have seen nothing but good said about it.
[+] [-] tasuki|5 years ago|reply
> I'll just do whatever every morning I want to do for a long time.
[+] [-] abmobi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siculars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WJW|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|5 years ago|reply
I am glad to read that you made a choice, as difficult as it might have been, and I hope it will make you happy (or happier).
[+] [-] adeeshaek|5 years ago|reply
Redis is simple and straightforward and a joy to use. Best of luck :)
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathieubordere|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koolba|5 years ago|reply
> However I never wanted to be a software maintainer.
And nothing say that you have to be. There's this perverted view that anytime someone creates a popular FOSS project, they need to dedicate every waking minute to maintaining it. That's neither economically feasible nor psychologically reasonable.
> Redis was the most stressful thing I did in my career, and probably also the most important. I don’t like much what the underground programming world became in recent years, but even if it was not an easy journey, I had the privilege to work and interact with many great individuals.
What is "underground programming world"?
[+] [-] JamesSwift|5 years ago|reply
I say this frequently both online and when discussing system design with newer devs, but will repeat here: of all the production issues I've debugged, the culprit has has never been redis. In fact, redis has been a critical piece of achieving cost-effective scaling. It is one of only two pieces of software (along with postgres) that I blindly recommend without any caveats. From following along here and on your blog about how you approach things and think about the software, I think its clear that you and your vision for the project are a large factor of why it has been so reliable.
Thank you antirez!
[+] [-] justaguyhere|5 years ago|reply
Takes a rare person to say this, made me smile :)
[+] [-] bbulkow|5 years ago|reply
I have a huge respect for Redis, and Antirez, but I have to say my respect doesn't include RedisLabs. They're the ones who started a commercial endevour to capitalize on Redis initially without Antirez, and then later offered him a position. They're the ones that Kyle@Jepsen says is making claims about ACID, not Antirez. I always heard that Clustering was a feature Antirez was very reluctant about.
I hope Redis is, fundamentally, taken away from RedisLabs.
Antirez, you say you want to express through code and open source, and I can't square that with your association with RedisLabs. You've been taking their money for quite a few years now to allow them to put up a billboard saying "the home of redis".
I'm going to stop right there. I've cut my own path through the wild jungle that's Open Source, and it's not yours, and I respect the years you put in to make the product with your vision. I'm sure there are some other first coders of foundational databases on this list, but it's a small club.
As an employee of RedisLabs, I don't think you are free to say what you'd like to say, I hope you follow whatever path does allow you to freely express in the future.
Good luck always.
[+] [-] jihadjihad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binarymax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|5 years ago|reply
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/why-a-tale-of-a-pos...
https://kev.town/2013/04/30/why-did-why-the-lucky-stiff-quit...
[+] [-] wolco|5 years ago|reply
"I don’t like much what the underground programming world became in recent years"
What could he mean? What underground programming world is he talking about?
[+] [-] antirez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beachy|5 years ago|reply
To me this epitomises what Bill Gates meant when he said "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.".
I just wish I had something to show for my last decade that had as much impact as Redis!
[+] [-] p2501|5 years ago|reply
Thanks for your work :)
[+] [-] avmich|5 years ago|reply
We don't yet know how to write a completed software well - the one which isn't updated on Github for years yet nobody calls it stale or outdated.
[+] [-] stephc_int13|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwittel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leonardteo|5 years ago|reply
It's really great to see when someone who is totally honest with themselves and what sparks joy in their life/career, and is also respectful to all the people who depend on the work/artifact. So much respect.
Thanks again.
[+] [-] niftylettuce|5 years ago|reply
Using Redis to handle greylisting on a custom Node.js backed email forwarding service:
https://github.com/forwardemail/free-email-forwarding/blob/0...
Also using it for job scheduling (with clustering support on top of Bull):
https://github.com/forwardemail/forwardemail.net/blob/master...
So many things you can do with Redis :tada:
[+] [-] Apofis|5 years ago|reply
Of course an Italian programmer would say this.
[+] [-] knadh|5 years ago|reply