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AWS Acquires DuckLabs

ducklabs.com

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Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#161

Post by xingped »

stingraycharles wrote: post #85
aratob wrote: 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.

>...sustainable engineering, correctness, and keeping DuckDB open and MIT-licensed for everyone

Hah. Never have I ever heard a sentence that described Amazon less.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#163

Post by bch »

richwater wrote: post #90
stingraycharles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has such a much better reputation when it comes to contributing to and understanding open source. It’s unfair to Google to put Amazon above them. Heck AWS is the sole reason all these projects needed to go through these license changes to prevent AWS from completely destroying their business models.

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.

> 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.

I can't speak to how successful it is, but Daniel/Curl have been running with this model[0][1] for years. Probably not too different from 'drh and SQLite[2][3].

[0] https://curl.se/support.html

[1] https://rock-solid.curl.dev/

[2] https://sqlite.org/support.html

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49272832

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#164

Post by runtime_terror »

xnx wrote: post #148
daviewales wrote: post #34

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"

For clicks

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#165

Post by runtime_terror »

fullstop wrote: post #19
hobofan wrote: 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.

Surely they are better than Google in this regard.

Golang is alive and kicking still :shrug:

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#166

Post by bigstrat2003 »

richwater wrote: post #90
stingraycharles wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has such a much better reputation when it comes to contributing to and understanding open source. It’s unfair to Google to put Amazon above them. Heck AWS is the sole reason all these projects needed to go through these license changes to prevent AWS from completely destroying their business models.

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.

I'm not seeing how MIT licensing has anything to do with your ability to use support contacts as a business model. Yeah, nothing constrains the potential customer to purchase support, but that's just as true of GPL licensed software. I can download GPL software and never pay a dime for a support contract, just like MIT software.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#167

Post by riknos314 »

felixgallo wrote: post #47
ferguess_k wrote: post #18

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...

For anyone interested in the differences between dynamo (the early internal-only KV store described in this paper) and DynamoDB (The AWS service), Marc Brooker has an excellent writeup https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/08/15/dynamo-dynamodb-dsql.h...

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#168

Post by applfanboysbgon »

Zigurd wrote: post #133
richwater wrote: post #90

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.

It has an extremely low ceiling. You literally cannot make consumer-targeted software if you want to survive while writing open-source code. Services and consulting is strictly B2B, and services and consulting for open-source software is capable of supporting a population of like 1% of existing software developers. Advocating for this dogmatic ideal that would cull the field by 99% is ridiculous.

I don't know how you came to OpenAI as an example given that they famously succeeded while going closed-source with the release of ChatGPT.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#169

Post by bigstrat2003 »

homarp wrote: post #141
Zigurd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It helps just fine. The original software is still there, available for anyone to use for free. AWS et al can't take that away from us, no matter what they choose to do with their fork.

Re: AWS Acquires DuckLabs

#170

Post by applfanboysbgon »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #169
homarp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It helps just fine. The original software is still there, available for anyone to use for free. AWS et al can't take that away from us, no matter what they choose to do with their fork.

When they say "doesn't help", they're talking about the developers of the original software you want to use for free getting to eat food and have a roof over their head.
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