RethinkDB is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#301

Post by tshannon » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #235

h1d wrote: post #224

A while ago, I heard how good RethinkDB is and tried to check it out and found this page. https://rethinkdb.com/docs/sql-to-reql/javascript/ The more complex the query becomes I just felt everything was getting less intuitive compared to the SQL version and ended up not actually using it. For anyone who switched from SQL, I'd like to know how it felt to write RethinkDB queries. Did they start to feel fluent later on?

I haven't used RethinkDB in ages, but when I did, I used it exclusively for a year. It took a few weeks for ReQL to really sink in, but once it did, I much preferred it to SQL. As my sibling comment says, its very linear: do this then this then this then this. It also feels very much like sequence processing in functional languages (and I was using Clojure at the time, so it really meshed very well). I also found it…

Especially the "known performance" bit. One of the things I fight with constantly in SQL Server is never getting consistent performance from a more complicated SQL query. The query plan could change from one day to the next if the plan falls out of cache.

With ReQL you new exactly how indexes were being used, and how the data was being accessed. No trying to guess what the query optimizer was doing in the background.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#302

Post by formula1 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #300

Holy shit, my worst nightmare is realized. I LOVE RethinkDB, I use it for EVERYTHING. It has everything I've ever wanted in a database. Relational documents, realtime feeds. Sadness. Someone better be picking up from where they left off.

You can pick it up where they left it off. It may sound cold and hostile but often open source projects fail because consumers cant become contributers. Perhaps finding a way to fund it like bounty source is a good path foreard

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#303

Post by oomkiller » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #292

tamalsaha001 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that RethinkDB has no commercial ambitions, will you consider re-licensing to more commercial friendly license?

The GPL is of course completely commerce-friendly, as it permits anyone to resell the original or modifications to it. What you're asking for is a license friendly to proprietary software[1]. Why on earth would they want to enable someone to close his modifications to RethinkDB? How does that make the world a better place? How does that encourage the growth of RethinkDB (vice the proliferation of closed, proprietary…

RethinkDB is licensed AGPL, not GPL.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#304

Post by Jweb_Guru » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

qooleot wrote: post #202

mangeletti wrote: post #72

Does anyone have experience with Postgres' pubsub[1] as a means for realtime apps? 1. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/static/sql-notify.html

We don't use postgres pub/sub for exactly "realtime", but do make use of it in single-page apps that use websockets. A couple notes: -- LISTEN/NOTIFY has a payload size hardcoded maximum. For big documents, we have to send a record ID then fetch the document upon receiving a message. In practice, it adds 5ms of overhead. -- One of the best features is that you can combine this with pg_try_advisory_lock to create job…

Note that as of Postgres 9.5, you can use SKIP LOCKED for roughly the same usecase.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#305

Post by overcast » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

formula1 wrote: post #302

overcast wrote: post #300

Holy shit, my worst nightmare is realized. I LOVE RethinkDB, I use it for EVERYTHING. It has everything I've ever wanted in a database. Relational documents, realtime feeds. Sadness. Someone better be picking up from where they left off.

You can pick it up where they left it off. It may sound cold and hostile but often open source projects fail because consumers cant become contributers. Perhaps finding a way to fund it like bounty source is a good path foreard

You're right, I can't become a contributor. I don't have the time, nor anywhere near the skill set to build a relational database.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#306

Post by pluma » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #201

People saying they "failed" -- I disagree. It is VERY hard to sell products that are essentially free. Its largely down network effects and luck or having an _in_ with the good old' boys network. Its not more popular than every other db..so what.. And the best systems are rarely the most popular. Btw popularity is not merit. But they made a badass database that relatively speaking IS very popular. So thats not failin…

I agree in so far as that RethinkDB didn't fail as an open source project. RethinkDB is a great piece of technology with an even greater community.

But RethinkDB evidently failed as a company. The announcement indicates we might learn more about how it failed specifically but at this point it seems like it simply didn't achieve one of two things: become cashflow positive or gain another investment/acquisition.

It also seems the open source project will live on.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#307

Post by baristaGeek » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 3:00 PM UTC

I have tinkered with RethinkDB a lot recently. It's the NoSQL DB (and the DB of any kind, I believe) that has the deepest focus on real-time features, that mixed up with Golang's concurrent model can support really powerful and highly scalable real-time apps.

But my question is, what are your thoughts on building more than a product but a business with RethinkDB? Will the support quality decrease? Will Stripe offer architectural consulting? Will developers be interested in learning ReQL?

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#308

Post by pc86 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #292

tamalsaha001 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that RethinkDB has no commercial ambitions, will you consider re-licensing to more commercial friendly license?

The GPL is of course completely commerce-friendly, as it permits anyone to resell the original or modifications to it. What you're asking for is a license friendly to proprietary software[1]. Why on earth would they want to enable someone to close his modifications to RethinkDB? How does that make the world a better place? How does that encourage the growth of RethinkDB (vice the proliferation of closed, proprietary…

Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile," and hyperbole like this does much more harm than good to people like me who would like to see more open source and less proprietary software in the world simply as a matter of principle.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#309

Post by peterlk » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

jnordwick wrote: post #73

Why does nobody seem to have any introspection on why RethinkDB failed? Clearly there are some major problems that people re ignoring. If my favorite DB (I must mention Kx Systems once a month) folded, I could give you a laundry list of issues where things went sideways, but all I see is glowing praise and comments about the best tech not always winning (KDB knocks the socks off of everything, but I sure can give you…

Those of us who have had failed startups can tell you that pats on the back and community support help. The Hype Machine would have you believe that failure is opportunity, and that you get a chip on your shoulder when you fail; but failure means failing (grade F in the US) and it hurts. A lot.

They mentioned that they will be releasing more post-mortems later. For now, I'm comfortable with supporting them and hearing about their learning later.

The RethinkDB team built an amazing product that many people appreciated - as noted by the comments here- and for that they have my praise and admiration. The fact that the product will continue without the business is also noteworthy. Well done all

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#310

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #292

tamalsaha001 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that RethinkDB has no commercial ambitions, will you consider re-licensing to more commercial friendly license?

The GPL is of course completely commerce-friendly, as it permits anyone to resell the original or modifications to it. What you're asking for is a license friendly to proprietary software[1]. Why on earth would they want to enable someone to close his modifications to RethinkDB? How does that make the world a better place? How does that encourage the growth of RethinkDB (vice the proliferation of closed, proprietary…

So you care more about having the entire pie, than about how much pie you have?

If you have a license that "permits" commercial sales in a way that by design makes most business models completely unfeasible... guess what? You'll only get contributions from those with one of the handful of blessed business models. Which will work or not depending on what sorts of businesses models your project is suited for.

Copyleft works fine for things like the kernel that are complementary to tons of different expensive things and nobody cares about otherwise. Permissive works well for Postgres.