In the event you’re a developer who needs essentially the most feature-rich, high-performance model of Redis, your selection is evident: Redis and never a fork. You probably have time and inclination to dabble in ideological debates about open supply licensing, effectively, you may make one other selection. However for those who’re simply attempting to get your job executed and need a terrific database that traditionally was primarily a cache however in the present day affords rather 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 supply, at the very least not at parity: vector search, a real-time indexing and question engine, probabilistic knowledge sorts, JSON help, and so on. (Notice that some distributors, like Google Cloud, have began to fill in a few of these blanks, at the very least in pre-GA releases, like Google’s Memorystore.)
That’s all CEO-speak, proper? What would a severe technologist say about Redis? It is perhaps troublesome to discover a extra credible Redis professional than Redis founder Salvatore Sanfilippo who lately returned to the Redis group (and firm) he left in 2020. Why return? Amongst different causes, Sanfilippo needs to assist form Redis for a world awash with AI. In his phrases, “lately I began to assume that sorted units can encourage a brand new knowledge sort, 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, is perhaps enjoyable “popcorn fodder” that fixates on the previous, however the true focus must be on Redis’ future as an integral a part of the AI stack.
