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Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

discuss.horizon.io

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Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#31

Post by jpgvm »

coffeemug wrote: post #12

Slava @ RethinkDB here. I am not able to get into details yet, but the short version is that the commercial entity behind RethinkDB is shutting down. We're working on continuity for the open-source project. Full announcement (and details) coming in a day or two.

Sad to hear mate.

I chose RethinkDB for a core component of a project back in 2013 and really liked it. I think we were probably one of the earliest production adopters but sadly we couldn't talk about it much. I wanted a document store done right and RethinkDB was definitely it.

I hope the OSS project is able to gather steam.

Best of luck Slava.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#32

Post by regularfry »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #25
craigyk wrote: post #11

Pick two: 1. Valuable product maintained by professionals 2. Is free 3. Will be around for a long time Yes, I know there are exceptions.

Huh. Apache, nginx, php, js, python, Linux, chromium, asterisk, openvpn... list is very very long. Actually I doubt there is more proprietary software that is widely accepted and reliable, than open-source (or even free) software with same achievements.

"Valuable product maintained by professionals" doesn't equal "proprietary". All those products you list have people paid to work on them.

Open Source doesn't work in the long term without sponsorship of some sort.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#33

Post by Ros2 »

RethinkDB kicked (at least) 2 people from their Github organization involved in Horizon development. This tells me they plan to continue the organization in some way--probably under another company and not with Horizon at all.

Considering who these 2 people were and their contributions, it wouldn't make any sense for them to hurriedly remove them. (One was also a RethinkDB developer). That is, if the "continuity plan" were just gifting it to the community.

It's all speculation but I think it paints a clear picture. I have been doing a pulse check on RethinkDB / Horizon for a while so I've been watching this pretty closely.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#35

Post by jondubois »

I hope that RethinkDB (the company) gets acquired. I think the main hurdle for them is that their product is open source.

Unfortunately a lot of large old-school software companies believe that there is no IP (no sense of ownership) when it comes to open source - This is not true however. Open source companies still 'own' the code repos, the documentation website, the team, the chat boards, the domain names, the package manager registries, Docker registries, etc... What is more valuable; the source code or everything else?

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#37

Post by jondubois »

I think now is not a good time for open source. There is just too much advertising in the tech industry.

The advantage of open source used to be that it could help you to grow the user base of a product very quickly for free through only word of mouth. Open source is a low-margin, high volume industry.

These days, tech industry advertising is so strong/competitive that traditional 'word-of-mouth' marketing has become ineffective. I think open source products have a hard time reaching the kinds of volumes that they need to become profitable.

On the other hand, show me any open source project and I can quickly find a proprietary alternative which is not as good, costs a fortune but which thrives in this economy because they have received a ton of funding and are just spamming the internet with their ads.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#38

Post by EugeneOZ »

regularfry wrote: post #32
EugeneOZ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. Apache, nginx, php, js, python, Linux, chromium, asterisk, openvpn... list is very very long. Actually I doubt there is more proprietary software that is widely accepted and reliable, than open-source (or even free) software with same achievements.

"Valuable product maintained by professionals" doesn't equal "proprietary". All those products you list have people paid to work on them. Open Source doesn't work in the long term without sponsorship of some sort.

You want to say these products are not valuable or not maintaned by professionals? They are making money around their projects same as RethinkDB did, so I don't understand what difference you want to underline.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#39

Post by nikanj »

moreentropy wrote: post #26
bnastic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how enterprises work.

Ack. Sadly, enterprise procurement is all about avoiding blame in case something goes wrong. Another issue is contributing to open source projects. I know a case where a customer's in house developer had to wait two months to contribute a few lines patch to a open source project because legal objected. They never dealt with that situation before.

Enterprise procurement is all about avoiding things going wrong, avoiding blame is a distant second. When every hour of downtime costs hundreds of thousands, the ridiculously expensive, 24/7 SLA supported enterprise solutions don't seem so overpriced anymore.

Re: Are RethinkDB and Horizon abandoned?

#40

Post by eis »

This thread seems actively being burried by HN. Now it's flagged as dupe and the previous thread from yesterday also quickly disappeared from the front page after gaining traction.

Why are threads that get tons of upvotes and have active commenting going on getting kicked off the frontpage? YCombinator invested in RethinkDB and HN is a YCombinator platform so they have an interest in suppressing speculation or bad news but I think manipulation here goes a bit too far.

HN mods: what happened here?

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