Should you’re a developer who desires probably the most feature-rich, high-performance model of Redis, your selection is evident: Redis and never a fork. When you’ve got the time and inclination to dabble in ideological debates about open supply licensing, effectively, you may make one other selection. However if you happen to’re simply attempting to get your job completed and wish an amazing database that traditionally was primarily a cache however at present affords far more, you’re going to go for Redis and never its fork, Valkey.
So argues Redis CEO Rowan Trollope in an interview. “It’s unquestionable that Redis, since we launched Redis 8.0 with all of the capabilities from Redis Stack, is simply a much more succesful platform,” he says. He substantiates the declare by cataloging “an entire bunch of issues” that Valkey doesn’t provide, no less than not at parity: vector search, a real-time indexing and question engine, probabilistic knowledge varieties, JSON assist, and many others. (Be aware that some distributors, like Google Cloud, have began to fill in a few of these blanks, no less than in pre-GA releases, like Google’s Memorystore.)
That’s all CEO-speak, proper? What would a severe technologist say about Redis? It could be troublesome to discover a extra credible Redis skilled than Redis founder Salvatore Sanfilippo who just lately returned to the Redis neighborhood (and firm) he left in 2020. Why return? Amongst different causes, Sanfilippo desires to assist form Redis for a world awash with generative AI. In his phrases, “Lately I began to assume that sorted units can encourage a brand new knowledge kind, the place the rating is definitely a vector.” Trollope says, “Redis has an actual alternative to emerge as a core a part of the genAI infrastructure stack.” Discussions about licensing, Trollope notes, could be enjoyable “popcorn fodder” that fixates on the previous, however the actual focus ought to be on Redis’ future as an integral a part of the AI stack.
