The Linux Foundation has declared its intention to establish Valkey, an open-source substitute for the NoSQL in-memory data store Redis. In reaction to Redis’s recent license change announcement, project contributors swiftly rallied maintainer, community, and corporate support to regroup. Valkey will continue development on Redis 7.2.4 and will keep the project available for use and distribution under the open source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 3-clause license.
Thousands of open source developers have made major contributions to the growth and success of the Redis project since its founding in 2009. Many more developers would use it for caching, as well as a lower latency, higher throughput data store alternative to their backend database, for real-time data analysis, session store, message broker, and many other use cases. Redis was one of the top three most praised databases and the sixth most used database according to developers in the 2023 Stack Overflow developer survey.
The community developed Valkey, an open source high performance key-value store, to enable unrestricted project distribution and to continue refining this technology. The platforms OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux are all supported by Valkey. Furthermore, the community will persist in advancing its current roadmap, which encompasses novel functionalities like a more reliable slot transition, significant enhancements to the clustering system’s scalability and stability, enhanced multi-threaded performance, triggers, novel commands, support for vector search, and additional features.
“Valkey is a fully open source successor built by long standing Redis contributors and maintainers,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO at The Linux Foundation. “Fostering open collaboration that benefits all and not just a single organization is critical in building long term, sustainable open source communities. Also, having this project in the hands of a foundation, rather than a single company, means Valkey will be community-driven without surprise license changes that break trust and disrupt a level open source playing field.”
Supporters of Valkey include Ericsson, Snap, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Oracle, and others in the industry. Their primary objective is to provide contributions that uphold the project’s sustainability and long-term health, so enabling its widespread benefits.
“Open source Redis is one of today’s most popular databases, and that success has been driven in large part by its active, thriving community of contributors,” said Jeff Carter, Vice President of Relational Databases, AWS. “Through the creation of Valkey, many of the former maintainers that contributed to open source Redis are helping keep the project open for everyone, and the industry can further support them so the project can continue to evolve and improve for our customers and the community at large. We are excited to see the groundswell of support from both the community and a range of companies that all share our vision that the best way to maintain this vibrant project is through open source governance, with contributions from all.”
Valkey Support
Valkey will adhere to an open governance approach at the Linux Foundation, continuing to be community-driven and accepting of all users and contributors. Numerous former Redis contributors have already joined the project’s technical leadership committee, and hundreds more community members have expressed their intention to support Valkey.
“Oracle is excited to see a community of long-standing Redis contributors come together to ensure a future for the project in open source with the development of Valkey,” said Jim Wright, Chief Architect, Open Source Policy, Strategy, Compliance and Alliances, Oracle. “We look forward to collaborating and seeing innovation continue to flourish in the new home for this important technology.”
“It is nice to see a strong community forming so quickly around Valkey. We believe that continuing to have a well maintained and innovative option for those who prefer open source will serve the community well,” said Andi Gutmans, GM and VP Engineering, Databases, Google Cloud. “We look forward to supporting the open source community on this next phase of its journey.”
“I have been an active contributor to the project for the past few years. I’m pleased to see Valkey come together under open governance to continue the work the Redis open source community began,” said Viktor Söderqvist, Co-Maintainter of Valkey, Senior Open Source Developer, Ericsson Software Technology, Part of Ericsson. “Through truly open collaboration, the technology will continue to evolve and provide value for all users. I’m proud to serve as one of the maintainers of Valkey and hope to serve the community to the best of my ability in that role.”
To learn more about Valkey, visit the project on GitHub here.
