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CockroachDB license change

cockroachlabs.com

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Re: CockroachDB license change

#31

Post by warvariuc »

api wrote: post #22
ko_pivot wrote: post #14

As much as this has the vibes of a classic OSS rug pull, as a Cockroach user, I don’t really take it that way. First of all, it was already not open source and secondly, the free to use version was missing key features like follower reads and incremental backups.

Someone creating free software and changing the license on software they created isn't a "rug pull" in any sense of the word. You paid $0 and contributed nothing. What rug is being pulled? A rug pull is when you buy into something and then it's taken away, like when a cryptocurrency token is busted out or you spend money on something and then it's cancelled or nerfed. Don't like it? Write your own distributed fault t…

> You paid $0 and contributed nothing

I think investing into integrating a tool into your infrastructure is not exactly "paying $0".

Re: CockroachDB license change

#32

Post by aduffy »

tvink wrote: post #4

Free license: > Telemetry Required (excluding ephemeral clusters of 7 days or less) So not free, then. Is there already a popular fork?

Yes, the popular fork is called Postgres. You can find many vendors who will let you run it on one node cheaply. It’s also free to self-host.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#33

Post by cvwright »

kragen wrote: post #15
arccy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only a problem if you need to update

even then you've had five years notice that enshittification was coming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CockroachDB#History

Making $10M ARR companies pay for the software that they use is not enshittification.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#34

Post by sho »

Cwizard wrote: post #19
sho wrote: post #10

Probably a good move. I'd looked at Cockroach before for a project - they basically disqualified themselves from the start by nerfing the "core" version so bad it was useless, while Enterprise was some absolutely insane figure for a cash-strapped startup. While it was possible to hotfix the code to get around their restrictions - we eventually just used something else. This at least gets the full-fledged product in t…

What did you use instead?

It was a data domiciling project so just went with sharding in good old postgres. Cockroach would have been perfect but it was going to cost something like $5k/m just to turn it on..

Re: CockroachDB license change

#35

Post by mrweasel »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #24
tschellenbach wrote: post #9

We will probably end up removing CockroachDB from our infra due to this change. It also makes me a bit worried about their long term viability. How much ARR does CockroachDB have and what was their last round valuation...?

What issue do you have with the changes? Sounds like it's mostly focused on making it more affordable for small operations.

Not me, but two issues I could see: Revenue over $10 million, but not profitable, or the license cost would be to high. We had that issue with support contracts Elastic tried selling us, way back, compared to our revenue and profit, the license/support contract made zero sense.

Other issue: Telemetry is mandatory on the free tier and cost to avoid it is to high. Some industries cannot have telemetry enable, or at least not without a heavy amount of reviews, think finance or healthcare.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#37

Post by [deleted] »

AYBABTME wrote: post #28

I understand the goal, and the perceived abuse of the Core edition. But the problem with the Enterprise edition is that it's quite expensive, "contact us" salesy, and it feels like taking a bite of this edition is possibly getting into bed with a future Oracle/landlord type of relationship where you end up squeezed by your database vendor. The Core offering made this palatable, one could fallback to Core features if…

[deleted]

Re: CockroachDB license change

#38

Post by jen20 »

shadow28 wrote: post #30
Cwizard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will you switch to? I feel like there isn’t a good alternative.

YugabyteDB is a commonly used alternative.

According to Wikipedia, Yugabyte (the company) has taken 290 million dollars of VC money. It's probably a safe assumption that they will follow the same path soon enough.

Re: CockroachDB license change

#40

Post by d_watt »

api wrote: post #22
ko_pivot wrote: post #14

As much as this has the vibes of a classic OSS rug pull, as a Cockroach user, I don’t really take it that way. First of all, it was already not open source and secondly, the free to use version was missing key features like follower reads and incremental backups.

Someone creating free software and changing the license on software they created isn't a "rug pull" in any sense of the word. You paid $0 and contributed nothing. What rug is being pulled? A rug pull is when you buy into something and then it's taken away, like when a cryptocurrency token is busted out or you spend money on something and then it's cancelled or nerfed. Don't like it? Write your own distributed fault t…

I see the issue with these more as if you are paying for it, one of the decision factors to buy it might have been that you have the opportunity to go to an open source version if the relationship gets bad.

Sole source vendors are really risky, so open source gives a little control back to the buyer that the vendor won't lock them in then screw them later (oracle).

So now if you're paying for Cockroach, you're effectively on proprietary technology with no negotiating levers.

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