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RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

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Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#11

Post by swsieber »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #7
timclemans206 wrote: post #2

The open source project that has really stood out to me in terms of funding is vuejs.org who's funding is almost entirely public at https://www.patreon.com/evanyou In the case of RethinkDB I wish they had started Horizon much sooner. Having plugins like for Stripe will make Horizon usable in the real world. I certainly like the goal set for Horizon that it be easy to extend a Horizon app by embedding it in a Node app…

What differentiates Vue from all the other client rendering libraries out there? (Angular, Polymer, React, Ember, Knockout, etc). At first glance it looks kinda like Knockout.

It seems like a full framework, easy to start with, yet doesn't feel bloated or confusing (personal opinon).

Here's an obviously biased (obvious biased since it's from the creator of vue himself), yet pretty good comparison: https://vuejs.org/guide/comparison.html

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#12

Post by timclemans206 »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #7
timclemans206 wrote: post #2

The open source project that has really stood out to me in terms of funding is vuejs.org who's funding is almost entirely public at https://www.patreon.com/evanyou In the case of RethinkDB I wish they had started Horizon much sooner. Having plugins like for Stripe will make Horizon usable in the real world. I certainly like the goal set for Horizon that it be easy to extend a Horizon app by embedding it in a Node app…

What differentiates Vue from all the other client rendering libraries out there? (Angular, Polymer, React, Ember, Knockout, etc). At first glance it looks kinda like Knockout.

For me it's that I can easily get work done in it compared to React.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#13

Post by sotojuan »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #7
timclemans206 wrote: post #2

The open source project that has really stood out to me in terms of funding is vuejs.org who's funding is almost entirely public at https://www.patreon.com/evanyou In the case of RethinkDB I wish they had started Horizon much sooner. Having plugins like for Stripe will make Horizon usable in the real world. I certainly like the goal set for Horizon that it be easy to extend a Horizon app by embedding it in a Node app…

What differentiates Vue from all the other client rendering libraries out there? (Angular, Polymer, React, Ember, Knockout, etc). At first glance it looks kinda like Knockout.

Vue, like Ember, is not controlled or authored by a large tech corporation. That doesn't make them better or worse, but it's an idea I like.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#14

Post by ef4 »

timclemans206 wrote: post #2

The open source project that has really stood out to me in terms of funding is vuejs.org who's funding is almost entirely public at https://www.patreon.com/evanyou In the case of RethinkDB I wish they had started Horizon much sooner. Having plugins like for Stripe will make Horizon usable in the real world. I certainly like the goal set for Horizon that it be easy to extend a Horizon app by embedding it in a Node app…

There are much more mature and stable examples to point at for community-supported open source. Successful open source generally doesn't happen because of direct dollar contributions, but because companies that depend on the projects decide to employ the project maintainers, or assign their existing employees to fix & improve critical projects.

For example, I know that at least $100k/month is being poured into Ember right now. There is no visible patreon page to point to, because it's all employee salaries. But multiple very-big companies -- in tech, finance, and media -- are using and depending on Ember and are paying their employees and contractors directly to keep making it better.

That estimate is certainly lower than the true number, because I'm only counting the group of people whose time is 100% allocated to Ember. There are a couple orders of magnitude more people who get to allocate some of their paid working time, and that group adds up to quite a lot more money.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#15

Post by mgreg »

Several interesting ideas to ponder due to the RethinkDB shutdown.

1. Business model / strategy is as important as the technology. Way too many people believe that all they need to do is build a great product (by all accounts it seems RethinkDB did) and the rest will take care of itself. Enterprise software is a very difficult business and at the moment going through tremendous change and while there is good opportunity it takes much more than good tech.

2. I would put RethinkDB in the "hard tech" category - the category that YC recently said they'd like to fund more of. Given the success of the technology but failure of the company it raises the question of what value YC brings to the table for a hard tech company? Many hard tech companies are very different than the companies that appear to enjoy the most success from YC (e.g. very different than AirBNB, Dropbox,...).

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#16

Post by rdtsc »

It seems new users and people who saw the ease of querying, distribution, good docs, solid architecture jumped on board. Lots of HN articles were written. The technology is really solid. Come to think of it, don't recall seeing a single negative RocksDB article on HN, ever.

However databases are hard and they are a bit like operating systems. They are so important that people expect them to have a long track record of stability, and that they should also be be completely open, or have someone like Oracle behind it.

If it is open and completely free it doesn't make money.

And large support contracts are lucrative with enterprise customers, but they will not buy into a relatively new database product and entrust its crown jewels to it.

Another, probably the most important, element is timing. MongoDB was there first and it made a huge difference. They shipped with really terrible defaults, lost and corrupted people's data. And they are still around. Had RocksDB come at that time, it would have been a different database market today no doubt...

It is really painful to see this because technology is there, people working on it are really smart, it is just this market is fickle.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#17

Post by gamesbrainiac »

I think Rethinkdb although having quite a lot of ambition and delivering on a lot of that ambition just wasn't compelling enough compared to the strides made by competitors.

One example I keep referring back to is postgres. Postgres is soon going to be getting distributed capabilities, and I think it corresponds to the need in having highly available systems.

Now, this was what was missing from postgres all along as postgres already has LISTEN/NOTIFY, so if you slap on a system that can properly replicate and shard it, then what you have is a product that is open source, free and has years of strong engineering to back it up.

Its hard to compete with that.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#18

Post by nchelluri »

I wonder what will happen to products like SageMathCloud using RethinkDB now that the company is gone away.

Will support contracts end? Will people run into new problems and be stuck without help when this happens? Just curious to see what happens.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#19

Post by the_common_man »

Open Source is really just a check mark in a list of things required for developer tools these days. It doesn't sell a product by itself. What people pay for these days in primarily service and not the software. If you want to sell software, the only place left is the enterprise. Enterprise sales is really about networking and connecting and not whether a product is technically good.

This is also why I am worried about things like CoreOS. Not sure who uses it. I hope their enterprise sales keep them ticking, otherwise they are screwed since they have taken so much funding.

Re: RethinkDB, SageMath, Andreessen-Horowitz, Basecamp and Open Source Software

#20

Post by 33degrees »

williamstein wrote: post #10
arrowgunz wrote: post #5

>I think Basecamp itself is mostly closed source, so they may have an advantage in building a business. I think it's the exact opposite. Basecamp is mostly open source. Ruby on Rails is basically extracted from the Basecamp application. They've open sourced even their Trix Editor ( https://github.com/basecamp/trix ). Edit: capitalization

That's very cool that Basecamp is mostly open source. I really appreciate their leadership and the example they set.

The difference is that the stuff they've opened source is not stuff they're directly in the business of selling; this is quite different than trying to sell support or enterprise versions of an open source product.
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