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RethinkDB is shutting down

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Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#311

Post by zeveb »

pc86 wrote: post #308
zeveb wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Proprietary software is not by definition "user-hostile,"

Yes, it is: by definition it violates one of the Four Freedoms of users … which is hostile.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#312

Post by winter_blue »

coffeemug wrote: post #102
heyts wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user and supporter of RethinkDB I hope (and expect!) that the engineering team joining Stripe is a sign that Stripe will be able to take part in further development of the product. On a sidenote, for people unfamiliar with RethinkDB, this episode of The Changelog with Slava explains some of the history and choices behind RethinkDB ; I found it really interesting. https://changelog.com/114/

Slava @ Rethink here. The team at Stripe has been absolutely phenomenal throughout this process, they've gone above and beyond in finding high-impact projects for our team. We're brainstorming together how to transition RethinkDB to a self-sustaining open-source project, and Stripe is super-supportive of that too. If there is a way for RethinkDB to live on, we'll find it!

Will Stripe allow your team to continue working maybe even on a part-time (20% time or 50% time) basis on RethinkDB inside Stripe?

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#313

Post by ithkuil »

zeveb wrote: post #294
ithkuil wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah. RethinkDB is AGPL, which means that some people cannot use it (e.g. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/31/google_on_open_sourc... ). While a very well grounded interpretation says that merely using the AGPL'd service via a public API doesn't force you to release the clients, some companies would prefer buying a commercial license rather than facing the legal risk.

> RethinkDB is AGPL, which means that some people cannot use it That's completely false: anyone has the right to use it, for any purpose; that's what Freedom Zero is all about. Some people do not want to both use it and also comply with its terms, but that is their choice; they can and may use it, but choose not to.

TL;DR: it's not always "them", there are also those working for "them", who might have no say in the matter.

cannot resist to reply to nitpicks :-)

counterexample: let's imagine I'm an employee of a company which has a policy that forbids me from using any AGPL software for work and it also forbids to install said software on my corporate laptop at all (even if it was for personal evaluation or toy projects) or else, if caught, I might incur in disciplinary action, who knows, possibly termination.

I guess that in this case you'll agree with me that the statement "some people cannot use it" is not quite false and especially not completely false, in that , yes, I could use it (as in no physical law forbids me), and even if you might say that it's me who freely chooses to not use it in order to avoid the repercussions I don't really think I have a choice here, do I?

(I didn't downvote you)

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#314

Post by kerkeslager »

RethinkDB is an amazing product. I've had the pleasure of using it a few times in my projects and the experience has always been very smooth. I would recommend RethinkDB to anyone, and you guys should be very proud of your work.

I'm sad that all that excellent engineering hasn't translated into a profitable business model. Part of me wants to suggest you make a donation campaign, and I'd be happy to become a regular donor. But it's understandable and respectable that you guys want to move on to other ventures.

I've also used Stripe's API and their systems are also very good. I'm glad to hear you'll find a place with another solid engineering team and I wish you guys all the best.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#315

Post by roachpq »

erichocean wrote: post #108
hueving wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you can chalk this up to a failure of capitalism. Postgres is a tough database to contend with and it's mature and open source. People like to hate on mysql/mariadb, but it also has a massive open source community. As a company choosing open source technologies, the popularity is important . Otherwise you run into issues finding answers to common problems and you end up paying through the nose for suppor…

> Postgres is a tough database to contend with and it's mature and open source. Presumably, that's in part why CockroachDB decided to be more-or-less Postgres-compatible on the wire, and embraced SQL.

> CockroachDB decided to be more-or-less Postgres-compatible on the wire, and embraced SQL.

I was about to post that a quick grep of CockroachDB source turned up no references to postgres, libpq or anything obvious to back that up that claim but then I noticed my workspace was out of date, so I after a git pull/git grep I now see that you are correct. Commits to add postgres-compatible parsing and wire protocol appear to have landed late last year. Why wasn't I informed! So thank you for this - time for me to take another look at it.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#316

Post by winter_blue »

tamalsaha001 wrote: post #290
coffeemug wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slava @ Rethink here. The team at Stripe has been absolutely phenomenal throughout this process, they've gone above and beyond in finding high-impact projects for our team. We're brainstorming together how to transition RethinkDB to a self-sustaining open-source project, and Stripe is super-supportive of that too. If there is a way for RethinkDB to live on, we'll find it!

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

It's licensed under the Affero GPLv3, but I don't think AGPL license requires you to open source your code, if you're just using ReQL (the API/interface for RethinkDB).

GPL/AGPL requires you to share your code if you statically (or dynamically) link (which is a C language family concept) to GPL code, but I don't know if calling an API is considered "linking".

I don't think most companies really make any contributions or modifications to the databases they use that they absolutely do not want to share back to the community.

(If using ReQL constitutes "linking" under AGPLv3, then that's a very serious matter. Perhaps re-licensing under LGPLv3 would make sense then.)

But overall, I think it's fair that they used AGPL. I especially like that they opted for the Affero version, since companies that do make useful changes can't just hold onto it , and not share it back.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#317

Post by SadWebDeveloper »

simon_acca wrote: post #260

It seems that unfortunately RethinkDB the company was architected in such a way that the success of their product, in terms of performance and developer experience, led to a decrease in revenue. This shutdown therefore goes a long way to say how talented and ethically correct the team was, something extremely evident in how they put correctness and reliability in front of performance. In short, RethinkDB is a very so…

> what could have they done differently to stay afloat?

Make a private (non-OSS) version optimized for Business (B2B), do external consultant jobs and pretty much ask for donations from the big players/users. This is a common problem from almost every OSS project and so far the only one that is doing this is OpenSSL.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#318

Post by AliaksandrH »

crudbug wrote: post #78

Core tech products are hard to sell. With so many passengers on big data boat - MemSQL / VoltDB / Postgres / DataStax / DataBricks / Cloudera / Horton many more. Your sales force strength becomes critical. Waiting for insider insights.

Not only your sales force, technology is also a big differentiator: all of the mentioned technologies are very different from one another. My bet is on MemSQL

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#319

Post by chipotle_coyote »

grantjgordon wrote: post #268
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. And...hmm. That's an interesting question.

The Rethink docs truly are incredible. Do you have any guides or books you recommend for writing good documentation? What software did you use to produce Rethink? Sorry to see Rethink go.

The documentation is all maintained in Markdown and built with Jekyll, so it's pretty straightforward. There were a few custom Jekyll tags. For writing, I used the venerable Mac editor BBEdit; obviously any text editor can do a fine job here, but there are some subtleties in BBEdit I liked. Its "open file by name" command can open multiple files with the same name at once, for instance, and its find/replace functionality goes above and beyond the call of duty.

For books/guides, it's hard to say. Find documentation you like a lot and think about what makes it good--the organization/taxonomy is really important to pay attention to, as well as the tone (formal, conversational, weird, etc.). As shocking as this might be around here, the _Microsoft Manual of Style_ is useful as a specifically technical guide, and it's good to have a relative recent edition of the _Chicago Manual of Style_ kicking around as a reference. And, just being familiar with standard grammar and punctuation rules is important. A lot of people aren't. (A lot of people who aren't still think they are.)

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