Investigating alternatives to using Redis

[Bnyro]

Redis will publish all their future code under a different, non-free license, see redis/redis#13157.

Obviously this means that SearXNG would depend on a project that's not FLOSS and might only distribute binaries instead of keeping all new changes public - which is critical.

There is a fork https://codeberg.org/redict/redict which looks promising but still in its beginning, we'll see how it goes.

We could also consider using a completely different database from now on, but I'm certain that'd cause a lot of trouble with migrations, making all instance maintainers switch, ...

ping @unixfox, @return42, @dalf, @mrpaulblack

[unixfox]

For me it's too soon to really discuss what to do next. Let's wait at least 1 month to see what reliable fork comes out.

But without picking someone else recent fork like redict, we can also look for re-implementation of the redis server like:

• https://docs.keydb.dev (Impact of Redis licence change on KeyDB  Snapchat/KeyDB#798 interesting)
• https://www.dragonflydb.io

We do not highly depend on specific functions from redis so these could work fine.

[virtadpt]

SearxNG doesn't depend on Redis, it can just interface with it if you want it to. For most users this is a non-issue.
However, it is still something to keep an eye on.

I think keeping Redis support would be useful, just because there will still be folks (some nebulous group of people and organizations out there) who have to use Redis, will pay for it, and will need to hook SearxNG into it. For folks who are going to bail on Redis (understandably), this is probably going to take the form of migrating to something else that probably doesn't use the Redis interface protocol itself but HTTP. For example,

• https://github.com/grantjenks/python-diskcache/
• https://github.com/alexellis/minio-kv
• https://github.com/alash3al/redix (which actually does speak the Redis wire protocol)

[kkofler]

DragonflyDB is also non-Free (always has been), it uses a "Business Source License" with very similar non-Free terms to the ones Redis is now adopting.

[jonas-w]

There is also the placeholderkv fork, just for future reference, here are the differences between redict and placeholderkv:

valkey-io/valkey#8 (comment)

[jonas-w]

Someone made a summary of the current forks:

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966631/6bf2063136effa1e/

Seems like placeholderkv has been renamed to valkey

[return42]

Someone made a summary of the current forks:

thanks for sharing this article, which is well worth reading .. 👍

Seems like placeholderkv has been renamed to valkey

Yes .. Linux Foundation Launches Open Source Valkey Community

[unixfox]

The SearXNG team agreed to move to valkey as an official replacement. Further testings will be done by @mrpaulblack on his instance.

Work in being done in searxng-docker here: searxng/searxng-docker#230

[unixfox]

We moved to valkey on the searxng-docker project: searxng/searxng-docker#230

Thanks @inetol