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Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

dropbox.tech

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Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#151

Post by account42 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #108
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version Qt is pushing hard for commercial licensing (which I heard prevents you from using the open-source version), putting L/GPL FUD on their websites, and trying to track users of their installers more.

The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Q…

Qt is more and more trying to get away with restricting the open source version as much as they can without triggering KDE's escape rights.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#152

Post by anonymoushn »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #138

Seems like they could have switched to openresty instead and saved quite a lot of effort in their migration, but oh well, they probably just couldn't handle the 1-indexing /s

Seems like they were already using openresty. Having used openresty professionally, I appreciate that it provides ways to write code to solve a lot of the problems outlined in TFA, but solving the problems out of the box is significantly better.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#153

Post by techntoke »

dzonga wrote: post #83
rmoriz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've admired Drew and the early Dropbox team for getting things done and shipped even when compiled python GUIs was edgy as the initial Rails version of Twitter was. But they shipped and validated the market. Now adding all those fancy and cool tech mentioned in the blog post will increase the complexity by a lot but it's not clear what are the real benefits. Does a decreased number of machines running really justify…

effect of being vc funded. the engineers hired later on, only care about engineering problems also company nametag & money, not user level problems. you would think, dropbox would be concerned with providing best value for the buck but nah. plenty of other examples fb, google - google software quality sucks for a place that employs 100s of engineers.

There are lot of things they do that I'm not happy with, but it is still very valuable for the price point. No where else can you get unlimited storage that is fast for so cheap, and they are the only cloud provider that doesn't charge egress to those services.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#155

Post by sanxiyn »

rmoriz wrote: post #148
sanxiyn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does a decreased number of machines running really justify the migration and addition of complexity? Of course it does. I am not sure why you think it doesn't.

servers are a commodity and cheap compared to runtime complexity

Yes, but it's a lot of servers.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#156

Post by unionpivo »

holografix wrote: post #80
e40 wrote: post #40

Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features. It always kills me when very successful companies don't buy software from other companies. I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology. About 1/2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn't allow them to use anythin…

This also rubbed me the wrong way. As an individual I think that shows selfish and opportunistic behaviour and it raises a red flag about that organisation in my mind. However, for profit companies are not here to do what’s “correct” they’re here to make money for its investors. If I had decision making abilities at Nginx I’d be conducting a comprehensive review of the free OSS offering and redacting the features and…

You can't redact the features that are already open sourced.

And besides, if that were to happen people would just go behind some other open source web server, and push that.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#157

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

Matthias247 wrote: post #94
ram_rar wrote: post #68

I feel so old now. There was a time, when I used to discuss with senior engineers @ Yahoo! to use NginX over Apache. Nginx was the hot thing, popularizing C10k [1]. Now in my current team, I have junior devs in my team pushing for Envoy over HAProxy/Nginx setup. Is this trend happening primarily because devs are pushing for GRPC over REST? What benefits does Envoy offer over Nginx, if you're still a REST based servic…

The sibling comments point towards the difference in configuration if you take the "out of the box" product. But there is also a vast difference in how code is organized, in case you ever have to touch it. From my point of view Nginx feels "old". It's a C codebase without a great amount of abstractions and interfaces, and instead having a bunch of #ifdefs here and there. Unit-tests and comments are not to be found. B…

> uses Bazel for builds

Is this unanimously good? I've heard both praise and horror, never used it myself.

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#158

Post by FireBeyond »

nrmitchi wrote: post #96
e40 wrote: post #40

Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features. It always kills me when very successful companies don't buy software from other companies. I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology. About 1/2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn't allow them to use anythin…

I think a part of this is that engineers in particular have a preference to use software which can be treated as a transferable skill if/when they move on. They would rather use the OSS version of Nginx, of Envoy, because they know they will have access to it in the future. I think there is some aversion to becoming familiar with the features, functionality, and characteristics of a piece of software that your curren…

You can purchase the commercial version of Nginx and not use its specific paid feature subset. Alternatively, "I am familiar with this, and we can do x% of what we need with the OSS version, but we had to pay to get the last part."

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#159

Post by pjmlp »

mehrdada wrote: post #146
pjmlp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When supermarkets and landlords start accepting them, then yes.

Could it be that OSS is simply not a sustainable business model for the long haul and it was simply successful in a period of history when vast money was made quickly by landgrab expansion of technology to consolidate/provide many basic services and the code itself wasn’t the competitive differentiator? I don’t know but that’s a possibility too. I question why one would be concerned in keeping OSS alive, as a busines…

The serendipity was GPL getting uptake thanks to Linux and GCC.

Linux via the ongoing lawsuit with BSD back then, and GCC because UNIX vendors started charging for their compilers, with GCC being the only alternative available.

However everyone needs to pay their bills, therefore the push for non-copyleft licenses, thus in a couple of years GPL based software will either be gone, or under dual licenses.

You already see this happening with BSD/MIT based alternatives to Linux on the IoT space, NuttX, RTOS, Azure RTOS, Zephyr, Google's Fuchsia, ARM's mbed, Arduino, ...

Re: Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy

#160

Post by FireBeyond »

dmicher wrote: post #67
rebelnz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thoughts when I read the article - a hugely successful company not contributing to an open source project which enabled them to succeed in the first place ...

There are different paths companies take. Some buy and it really works for them and their business, since overhead is small and everything just works. The other set of companies have more sophisticated requirements: when they want to have full control on what is going on, understand what the code is doing to better optimize everything else around it, faster shipping cycles and being able to implement what you want wi…

What stops them buying commercial licenses for Nginx and then using the OSS version? They're not obligated to, certainly, but I hardly think Nginx would say "you must use only the commercial version".
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