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AWS Acquires DuckLabs

ducklabs.com

141–150 of 304 posts

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#141
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What business model do MIT licensed projects even have? If you want to offer support contracts and actually make people use them, don't use MIT. You can't have you cake (accepting public contributions and free labor) and eat it (sole profiteering) too.

RMS addressed the business model from the very beginning: it's services and consulting. He practiced what he preached. You might think that's got a very low ceiling. But, even though it's a bad example in many ways, OpenAI showed that the ceiling is very high. And if you're morally flexible even higher.

RMS promotes GPL, not MIT licensed software.

When a bigger entity (e.g. AWS) decides to undercut the original creator/vendor (e.g. redis,elastic search), MIT code des not help.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#142

AWS rarely acquired startups, though leveraging someone else's tech is a typical pattern. It did license ParAccel and sold it as Redshift. It also runs Athena, which is based on Trino (a Presto fork). Now, with Snowflake and Databricks earning big bucks in the intelligence era, time to gain market share by having DuckLabs under its ownership?

[deleted]

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#143
I am happy for the team's success but I am sad and anxious for what may become of the DuckDB. It is my favorite tool. Like other comments mentioned, DuckDB is open source and MIT license so I hope it will survive and evolve further the way it did.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#144
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must be operating on different definitions. Generational wealth means you have enough money to meaningfully improve the lives of your kids and give them a leg-up on life. A million dollars is enough to buy a house for each of your 2.5 kids. If getting a million dollars wouldn't affect how much money you can leave your kids, you already have generational wealth.

The commonly accepted definition of generational wealth ranges from around 1.5 to 5 million per child.

I can only find sources that define it the way I said, but I'm sure that folks who think a million dollars isn't enough to buy a house disagree.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#145

I wasn't expecting this, and I am pleasantly surprised. I think AWS has been a bad player in the data space and very much behind all the other warehouse providers for many years now. This could lead into interesting integrations of DuckDB on top of all the data that lives in S3 and provide a leaner, faster and a more modern alternative to Athena.

Athena already has Trino and Spark engines, it could totally have DuckDB one too.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#146
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. AWS did not acquire the DuckDB technology itself, which is MIT-licensed open source and governed by the DuckDB Foundation which holds most of the related IP [1]. What they did acquire is DuckLabs, the Amsterdam-based services and development company behind the technology which is owned by and employs the creators and major contributors. And MotherDuck is a US-based venture-funded commercial company, wh…

Interesting to see how they will update their About page. Currently it says “Today, DuckLabs remains independent and fully owned by the original creators. We've deliberately chosen not to take venture capital, so we can focus on sustainable engineering, correctness, and keeping DuckDB open and MIT-licensed for everyone. “ Future will tell if that ends up being true.

They now updated it. That bit is indeed gone.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#147
I'm an idiot, and a lot of Hacker News goes over my head, but I still read it. Would anyone mind answering this question?

Are databases not a solved problem? Why are there lots of different databases? Why is one faster than the other? What's different between them?

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#148

The title is misleading. AWS acquired DuckLabs, NOT DuckDB. The DuckDB source code is still owned by the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation. Quote from the article: "As the CWI representative on the DuckDB Foundation... When DuckLabs spun out of CWI, we created this foundation, which holds all IP of open-source DuckDB, and will continue to do so." - Peter Boncz

Not sure why the submitter changed the title from the page: "DuckLabs to Join AWS, Projects to Remain Open Source"

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#149
post #8

I'm glad that DuckDB has a foundation in place and hope it is resilient enough to push the DB forward when the time comes. Out of all the big orgs, Amazon is probably the one that has the least regard for keeping technically interesting projects alive, and the certainly will bulldoze it for some dumb reason when the next re-org comes.

Yup, they are very serious about DynamoDB and it is a very good product. Wish they released more information about it, though.

They have published 2 academic papers about it. What more do you want, operational details?

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, they are very serious about DynamoDB and it is a very good product. Wish they released more information about it, though.

https://www.amazon.science/publications/dynamo-amazons-highl...

Nothing to do with DynamoDB except the name.
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