Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free • Hacker News Board

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#161

Post by akulkarni » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #145

mfreed wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi JeremyNT: We've never "changed" any Apache-2 licensed code to TSL-licensed code. And in fact, we've recently basically eliminated most of our enterprise features (read: paid only) and converted them to community features (read: free under the TSL). So I'm curious: Why do you use only the Apache-2 version of TimescaleDB rather than the Community version? https://www.timescale.com/products/features (I realize that I…

Proprietary usually mean "not Open Source". Not JeremyNT, but from my perspective, avoiding vendor lock-in is my number one reason to favor open source software. Avoiding vendor lock in is very important to me when I am evaluating options. Just because your business model and my business model currently align, does not guarantee that they will always align. I don't want you to be stuck being my vendor if I am not a g…

Just so that everything is 100% clear, most of our code base is still Apache 2 licensed (and we have no plans to change that).

All that this blog post is (trying) to say is that multi-node will not be under a paid license, but instead will be free under the Timescale License.

Hope this helps.

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#162

Post by jcims » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #70

jcims wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge fan of Splunk but always want to keep my eye open for alternatives. My use case is mostly security analytics against event content and patterns, and for that the Splunk Processing Language is very well suited. That said I find it's fairly tedious to do a lot of time-series analysis and pattern discovery/anomaly detction across rich event models (think aws cloudtrail events). Anything TimescaleDB can help w…

I use TimescaleDB for mass storage and query of security events (up to 100s of millions) - the speed of queries and aggregate queries even on a single node is very impressive. I haven't done anything with regards to anomaly/trend detection yet, but it's planned. Not really sure where you see a database (TimescaleDB) fitting into that though?

We're in that scale domain where everything is a pain in the ass but not obviously outside the scope of commercial solutions. I just checked and we're averaging ~500k events per second in the five areas I'm interested in.

I feel that we could probably use a time-series database to reflect our streams as 'last observed state' type collections as well as do the aggregations that we need to feed back into anomaly detection.

I'd like to also use something like that to create a 'heat map service' where you can feed a property/window/range and get back scalar for color coding and possibly a slice of values for sparkline type UI.

Without getting hands on, though, it's hard to say for sure.

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#163

Post by JeremyNT » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

mfreed wrote: post #130

JeremyNT wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there! We use and love Timescale, so we've been paying attention to this feature. We currently use the open source version and it's very nice. Would you mind clarifying a bit, because the blog post doesn't really explain: how much of TS do you expect to remain Open Source versus proprietary? Is the idea here that you will switch the entire project to this new license (i.e., this means you're killing the open sourc…

Hi JeremyNT: We've never "changed" any Apache-2 licensed code to TSL-licensed code. And in fact, we've recently basically eliminated most of our enterprise features (read: paid only) and converted them to community features (read: free under the TSL). So I'm curious: Why do you use only the Apache-2 version of TimescaleDB rather than the Community version? https://www.timescale.com/products/features (I realize that I…

First, thanks for replying. But, I'll note you didn't answer my question, which is about the future of the current open source codebase. Knowing that you haven't changed the license on such code yet is great, but that doesn't speak to the future direction for that codebase.

EDIT: I just saw this reply to another child, which addresses this concern for the core timescale, I think! [0]

To be clear, I don't think the license change as described is a blocker for my org, given their use case. Indeed, it may be an near term win, as they will likely be able to take advantage of the new features that you are placing under this license.

That said, I always prefer open source code that I can modify myself. Open source licenses guarantee that the code can't be "taken away" from me, that I can integrate a technology without concerns for the sands shifting under me. If a company goes away, I and others can keep on working on it, and it can live on even if the original authors decide to no longer maintain it.

So, as an example: say Timescale changes the license of all its code under this new license tomorrow, then happily adds features and changes some fundamental things over the next few years, and then is bought by Oracle, who decides to take it fully proprietary under a new license that is more restrictive than the TSL license. This would make a fork unlikely or at least very difficult to get going!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23276614

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#164

Post by akulkarni » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #115

akulkarni wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Timescale CEO and post author) You are spot on. Before the Timescale License, we were left with a tough decision: do we open-source a feature so that everyone can have it for free OR do we close a feature so that the mega-clouds don't have access to it? We didn't like either of those options, which is why we created the Timescale License, which allows us to offer capabilities for free (and make the source code avail…

Did you discuss the license with any free/open source software organization to get their input? Are other products adopting similar licenses, and if so, what are the differences? I'm not fundamentally opposed to any deviation in licensing. But I am much less inclined to use software if the license hasn't been reviewed/endorsed/used by others widely. Also, I'm curious if you considered just addressing the license to a…

We launched the Timescale License about 1.5 years ago.

At that point we did engage with multiple folks in different organizations, but realized that we had a business to build and didn't have the bandwidth for all the politicking usually required to establish a standard.

However, if someone wants to propose a standard around the principles of the Timescale License, then I would completely support that discussion.

Also, so that we are 100% clear: most of our code base remains licensed under Apache 2. The main thing that this post is trying to convey is that multi-node will be free under the Timescale License.

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#165

Post by JeremyNT » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

akulkarni wrote: post #161

ensignavenger wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proprietary usually mean "not Open Source". Not JeremyNT, but from my perspective, avoiding vendor lock-in is my number one reason to favor open source software. Avoiding vendor lock in is very important to me when I am evaluating options. Just because your business model and my business model currently align, does not guarantee that they will always align. I don't want you to be stuck being my vendor if I am not a g…

Just so that everything is 100% clear, most of our code base is still Apache 2 licensed (and we have no plans to change that). All that this blog post is (trying) to say is that multi-node will not be under a paid license, but instead will be free under the Timescale License. Hope this helps.

Thanks very much for clarifying. You might want to make a note of this in the blog post!

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#166

Post by akulkarni » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

jcims wrote: post #162

GordonS wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use TimescaleDB for mass storage and query of security events (up to 100s of millions) - the speed of queries and aggregate queries even on a single node is very impressive. I haven't done anything with regards to anomaly/trend detection yet, but it's planned. Not really sure where you see a database (TimescaleDB) fitting into that though?

We're in that scale domain where everything is a pain in the ass but not obviously outside the scope of commercial solutions. I just checked and we're averaging ~500k events per second in the five areas I'm interested in. I feel that we could probably use a time-series database to reflect our streams as 'last observed state' type collections as well as do the aggregations that we need to feed back into anomaly detect…

@jcims I'm really interested to see if we can help. If you're open to discussing, please feel free to email me: ajay (at) timescale.com

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#167

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

gautamdivgi wrote: post #153

boulos wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (but am glad to see you protecting your rights to your software). The conversation down thread though raises an interesting point: why does the license say you can’t run modifications in production (under any circumstances) versus some sort of “for commercial purposes” clause? It seems to me like it’s infeasible to have actual contributions if someone isn’t allowed to have a patch,…

It's a good question. How do we classify non-commercial? Is a telecom company using timescaledb for internal time series storage non-commercial although it is directly supporting a commercial offering (maybe mobile traffic platforms)? I do get the direct commercial inference. What about the indirect ones? Just about anything in production is directed towards supporting some sort of commercial offering. Just genuinely…

[deleted]

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#168

Post by massaman_yams » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

bglusman wrote: post #107

eloff wrote: post #4

This is an interesting window into their business model. This could be a purely an altruistic decision, which businesses sometimes do, contrary to popular belief. More likely it's a bet that wider adoption from making the clustered version free will drive more revenue through their managed database as a service offering. Which shows that their non-OSI open-source license is actually leading to more code and features…

I think I agree with this sentiment with one caveat: (I didn't read their license in detail, but really for licenses like this which seems to be the broader topic) Today Timescale offers Timescale-as-a-service, so this allows them a kind of soft-monopoly on being a paid provider for this, but do these licenses generally contain a provision such that if they no longer provide that service themselves, whether from goin…

They're not actually providing it themselves - Aiven actually runs the backend. Seems like that points to it having some longevity.

https://kb.timescale.cloud/en/articles/2752585-timescale-clo...

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#169

Post by mfreed » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:47 PM UTC

jakaroo wrote: post #102

How does the multi-node version handle high availability and automatic failover? Are those included or are they paid add-ons?

Short answer is: The 2.0 release won't natively support automated failover, although you can build around using PG tools like physical replication + Patroni. But these capabilities are certainly things we are working on.

Per the PR notes:

  The current implementation has many more limitations 
  that will be addressed over time:

  - HA and replication has to be managed node-by-node. 
    This will be improved with native replication.

Re: Multi-node TimescaleDB is now free

#170

Post by hagen1778 » Fri, May 22, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

mfreed wrote: post #137

hagen1778 wrote: post #129

Free multi-node TSDB solution sound cool! I wonder if someone tried to use TimescaleDB as remote-storage for some heavy-loaded Prometheus [1] setups. [1] https://prometheus.io/

Absolutely! We wrote one of the first remote backends to Prometheus that supports both the remote_read/remote_write interface: https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/integrations/#remote-en... Given how much interest we had using TimescaleDB for this, we recently built and released (in beta) a new "full-stack" of Prometheus + TimescaleDB + Grafana that comes fully configured and "just works" out-of-the-box: - https://t…

This is so nice that design doc is opened for commenting - so much good thoughts there. Thank you for sharing!

After reading that I have a two questions:

1. While the integration with Prometheus sounds great it still requires to run pretty complicated system behind it. The distributed TimescaleDB could require a lot of knowledge to operate and additionally a connector that could become a one more point of failure. Have you considered to merge connector into Timescale to make setup more simple and robust?

2. Significant part of my everyday work is connected with writing PromQL queries and I often check week/month ranges while plotting timeseries. And I heard many complains that remote-read might be very expensive when it touches a lot of data. Do you consider possibility to support PromQL in TimescaleDB to avoid remote-read bottleneck?

Personally, I have a good experience working with Thanos and VictoriaMetrics because of seamless usage experience - same queries, same Grafana dashboards, same alert rules. Would love to see more products that support the same standards for timeseries data.

Edited: formatting.