Linux Foundation Unveils Valkey, an Open Source Alternative to Redis

In an announcement made today, March 28, 2024, the Linux Foundation unveiled a new initiative named Valkey. This open source project aims to be an alternative to Redis, a popular in-memory, NoSQL database, following recent licensing changes by Redis Inc. Valkey promises to continue the development of Redis version 7.2.4 under the more permissive Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) 3-clause license.

Redis, since its inception in 2009, has seen widespread adoption and contribution from the open source community, making it a critical tool for developers for various applications including caching, real-time data analysis, and session storage. Redis was ranked as the sixth most used database in the 2023 Stack Overflow developer survey, highlighting its popularity and importance in the developer ecosystem.

Valkey is being developed as a high-performance key-value store and will support multiple platforms, including Linux, macOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD. The project’s roadmap includes new features aimed at enhancing scalability, stability, and performance, such as improved slot migration, multi-threaded performance enhancements, and vector search support.

The project has already garnered support from notable industry players, who have expressed their commitment to contributing to Valkey, ensuring its long-term health and viability for the benefit of the wider community. Madelyn Olson, a former Redis maintainer and a co-creator of Valkey, expressed her dedication to open source software and her enthusiasm for continuing to contribute to the community through Valkey.

For more information about Valkey and to join the community, interested parties are encouraged to visit the project’s GitHub page: Valkey on GitHub.