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ScyllaDB no longer open source

forum.scylladb.com

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Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#21

Post by mroche »

tw04 wrote: post #12
superq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised it didn't get more upvotes, but probably because most people missed it at this time of year. (I did the first time too) I found it kinda surprising (it's kinda tough when a primary DB choice is no longer open source!), although not that surprising given the fact that this keeps happening to VC-backed DB startups.

VC backed or not, what is the launch trajectory? Any DB that gets even a little bit of traction is quickly turned into a hosted service by one of the major cloud providers with full support, eliminating the primary path to revenue for these devs. Their options are?? Patreon and pray or go broke? The Redhat model just doesn’t work in 2024 with the sharks constantly looking for fresh meat.

The Redhat model just doesn’t work in 2024 with the sharks constantly looking for fresh meat.

I truly believe that the Red Hat model is still possible to achieve today, but the barrier of entry is much higher than before. What sets Red Hat apart from many of these VC backed projects is what they actually offer. Red Hat doesn't primarily provide "services" or singular components like a database^, but delivers platforms.

RHEL, OpenShift, Ansible Automation Platform, OpenStack, Satellite, etc, are the aggregation of many open source projects tied together to make an offering appealing and attractive to enterprises. They produce the infrastructure and management layers of the stack that all your services and applications are deployed on. Working at this level enables a very different degree of flexibility and "safety" in comparison to single application or SaaS style offerings.

There's distinct boundaries of their products as well from the upstream variants: Fedora vs CentOS vs RHEL, OKD/SCOS vs OCP/RHCOS, RDO vs RHOSO, Ansible ecosystem vs AAP, etc. Red Hat also delivers on support, training/education, partner-driven sales, and OEM integration/certification.

^ Main exception would really be the Java middleware solutions, but the Runtimes and Integration offerings could be argued as a platform of their own. Same with RHEL/OpenShift AI.

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#22

Post by bayindirh »

krawczstef wrote: post #15
kstrauser wrote: post #8

It’s always kind of a relief when I can completely remove something from my long list of things to check out. Life’s too short to bother with proprietary platforms. A closed source database? Hah, no.

your comment made me think I read it wrong, but it's not closed source, they're just moving to a source available license...

Source available doesn't allow you to build on that software or patch it the way you see fit.

Heck, even some source available licenses doesn't allow you to compile that thing, let alone get parts and use it elsewhere.

However, I somewhat like source available licenses currently, because they're neat little mines that sneak in to training sets of generative AI models and make the models less suitable for serious work.

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#23

Post by jszymborski »

anonzzzies wrote: post #10

It saved us continuing our evaluation of it when our sales contact told us. Our company has a strict nope on basic infra licenses; closed is not an option. We need to be able to switch (and test everything all the time on the open version if we use binaries). We have been building software for over 35 years now and we have been bitten too many times.

Am I wrong in thinking you can still compile Scylla after the change as it's source available? You just also need a license, right?

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#25

Post by dragonwriter »

krawczstef wrote: post #15
kstrauser wrote: post #8

It’s always kind of a relief when I can completely remove something from my long list of things to check out. Life’s too short to bother with proprietary platforms. A closed source database? Hah, no.

your comment made me think I read it wrong, but it's not closed source, they're just moving to a source available license...

“Source available” is within the common usage of the term “closed source” which is simply the negation of “open source”.

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#27

Post by tehlike »

superq wrote: post #2

> ScyllaDB OSS AGPL 6.2 will stand as the final OSS AGPL release... A free tier of the full-featured ScyllaDB Enterprise will be available. I wonder if this means YDB (from the devs of Clickhouse) will get some traction ( https://ydb.tech/ ) or if there are other massive scale scylladb-types of DB's out there.

I am hoping ydb gets a little easier to use in general, and supports some things I use from postgres.

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#28

Post by anonzzzies »

jszymborski wrote: post #23
anonzzzies wrote: post #10

It saved us continuing our evaluation of it when our sales contact told us. Our company has a strict nope on basic infra licenses; closed is not an option. We need to be able to switch (and test everything all the time on the open version if we use binaries). We have been building software for over 35 years now and we have been bitten too many times.

Am I wrong in thinking you can still compile Scylla after the change as it's source available? You just also need a license, right?

Yes, but that's not an option for our lawyers; we need the actual freedom to do whatever. Source available is not a thing for us; it's not about the source (we will probably not ever touch it anyway), it is about the freedom when they go out of business, change the rules , etc. But I am not a lawyer but I do agree: we gladly pay licenses and support but if things go crazy (upping the prices to stupid amounts etc) we need to be able to get out without many issues.

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#29

Post by batisteo »

anonzzzies wrote: post #28
jszymborski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I wrong in thinking you can still compile Scylla after the change as it's source available? You just also need a license, right?

Yes, but that's not an option for our lawyers; we need the actual freedom to do whatever. Source available is not a thing for us; it's not about the source (we will probably not ever touch it anyway), it is about the freedom when they go out of business, change the rules , etc. But I am not a lawyer but I do agree: we gladly pay licenses and support but if things go crazy (upping the prices to stupid amounts etc) we…

So it's not about Open Source but about Free Software?

Re: ScyllaDB no longer open source

#30

Post by kstrauser »

batisteo wrote: post #29
anonzzzies wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that's not an option for our lawyers; we need the actual freedom to do whatever. Source available is not a thing for us; it's not about the source (we will probably not ever touch it anyway), it is about the freedom when they go out of business, change the rules , etc. But I am not a lawyer but I do agree: we gladly pay licenses and support but if things go crazy (upping the prices to stupid amounts etc) we…

So it's not about Open Source but about Free Software?

“Source available” is not Open Source. Some orgs reportedly have access to Windows source code, but that doesn’t mean they’re building and deploying their own version.
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