How the Team Behind Valkey Knew It Was Time to Fork

TOKYO — Forking an open source project is never a first choice. It is divisive, dangerous, and politically risky. But sometimes, as Valkey leaders Roberto Luna Rojas and Madelyn Olson said during their talk here Monday at Open Source Summit Japan, you don’t have a choice. It’s the only viable path forward to protect an open source project.

For those who don’t know the story, a recap: In 2024, Redis, producers of the widely used in-memory key-value NoSQL database, decided to dump its three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)…