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Datomic is Free

blog.datomic.com

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Re: Datomic is Free

#131

Post by harperlee »

xpe wrote: post #128
harperlee wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I’d add that security by obscurity is also a valid reason. It’s bad as a standalone strategy, but good as a complementary strategy. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24444497

> And I’d add that security by obscurity is also a valid reason. It’s bad as a standalone strategy, but good as a complementary strategy. As the thread you link mentions, the phrase “security by obscurity” historically means (more of less) “security primarily by obscurity”. But sometimes this point gets lost. The thread you mention is interesting. Wikipedia: > Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is…

Sorry, we’re both editing at the same time :) I added a related link to the parent comment.

Re: Datomic is Free

#132

Post by sneak »

kevincox wrote: post #50
jchw wrote: post #30

Not complaining about the actual announcement itself here: seems pretty sweet all things considered, But: the "Is it Open Source?" section should lead with "No." It's not a complicated question, and it's not a complicated answer. I think it's weird to talk about having "all the same rights" without explaining why that matters particularly (it does matter, it's just not explained much!) but it is somewhat tangential t…

I felt the exact same thing. I was pretty sure the answer was "No" but they were too chicken to write it. Were they hoping that people wouldn't notice?

It worked for Docker Desktop and BSC.

The products even have github repos! There's just no source in them.

It's open source cosplay.

Re: Datomic is Free

#133

Post by sooheon »

moomin wrote: post #100
frou_dh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case then all the people running around praising the ""simplicity"" of golang got the wrong end of the stick completely from Rich's classic presentations.

The thing is, Hickey was entirely right to reject this idea of “Simplicity” being the same thing as “Easy”. But he then decided to conflate in “comprehensible” which it turns out is very much a matter of aesthetics. Turns out if you really focus on composability above other concerns you get Haskell.

In Hickey's world comprehensible is a subset of easy.

Re: Datomic is Free

#134

Post by augustl »

xpe wrote: post #118
augustl wrote: post #11

Datomic's is perfect for probably 90% of small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale (i.e. most of what I do at work). Writing in a single thread removes a whole host of problems in understanding (and implementing) how data changes over time. (And a busy MVCC sql db spends 75% of its time doing coordination, not actual writes, so a single thread applying a queue of transactions in sequence can be fast…

> Datomic's is perfect for probably 90% of small-ish backoffice systems that never has to be web scale (i.e. most of what I do at work). I don’t think I agree with this as stated. It is too squishy and subjective to say “perfect”. More broadly, the above is not and should not be a cognitive “anchor point” for reasonable use cases for Datomic. Making that kind of claim requires a lot more analysis and persuasion.

I agree, I mostly phrased it that way for effect. My "analysis" is 100% subjective, opinionated and anecdotal :)

Re: Datomic is Free

#135

Post by charesjrdan »

jchw wrote: post #30

Not complaining about the actual announcement itself here: seems pretty sweet all things considered, But: the "Is it Open Source?" section should lead with "No." It's not a complicated question, and it's not a complicated answer. I think it's weird to talk about having "all the same rights" without explaining why that matters particularly (it does matter, it's just not explained much!) but it is somewhat tangential t…

There are also similar datalog immutable databases with fully open source codebases out there too like https://www.xtdb.com/ or https://datahike.io/

Re: Datomic is Free

#136

Post by xpe »

harperlee wrote: post #131
xpe wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I’d add that security by obscurity is also a valid reason. It’s bad as a standalone strategy, but good as a complementary strategy. As the thread you link mentions, the phrase “security by obscurity” historically means (more of less) “security primarily by obscurity”. But sometimes this point gets lost. The thread you mention is interesting. Wikipedia: > Security through obscurity (or security by obscurity) is…

Sorry, we’re both editing at the same time :) I added a related link to the parent comment.

Yep :) That’s a great thread, thank you!

Re: Datomic is Free

#137

Post by thomastjeffery »

jchw wrote: post #30

Not complaining about the actual announcement itself here: seems pretty sweet all things considered, But: the "Is it Open Source?" section should lead with "No." It's not a complicated question, and it's not a complicated answer. I think it's weird to talk about having "all the same rights" without explaining why that matters particularly (it does matter, it's just not explained much!) but it is somewhat tangential t…

They lead with, "The Datomic binaries are being released under the Apache 2.0 license."

I can feel the internal open vs. closed source argument from here.

Re: Datomic is Free

#139

Post by motoboi »

mst wrote: post #61

I guess NuBank (Cognitect's owners) have concluded that the paid licensing business wasn't worth the hassle compared to having the developer time involved spent on other things. Releasing only binaries, while I understand people being grumpy about it, seems like an interesting way of keeping their options open going forwards. Since it was always closed source, it now being 'closed source but free' is still a net win.…

Very probably they understood that having a property database makes hiring and onboarding more difficult than necessary.

Open sourcing the database helps on that.

Re: Datomic is Free

#140

Post by jrmg »

mbreese wrote: post #113
assbuttbuttass wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a lawyer, but doesn't the Apache license specifically grant the right to redistribute the source code? > You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form

But what if you never had the source form? You can’t redistribute what you never had… This is actually an interesting question. But I can’t see how a binary only distribution would be in the spirit of the Apache license.

It’s runs on a JVM, right? Presumably it could be decompiled and cleaned up (might be a massive task - but possible), and the reconstructed source would fall under the Apache license.

What a weird choice to make.

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