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Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

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Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#71

Post by fuddle »

alberth wrote: post #66

Off-topic (and hope the conversation doesn't digress too much): when is it ok for someone to monetize an open source project and when is it not? I've read over the years how people get super upset at Amazon for taking an open source project, (sometimes) adding some code to it and then host and monetize it. The argument being that Amazon is monetizing on the backs of countless open source developers. Hence why the Com…

There is a difference between Amazon and Supabase:

- Supabase open source's their backend service product which uses Postgres. Anyone could technically fork their project and self-host.

- Amazon has a closed source backend service product which uses .

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#72

Post by alberth »

burggraf wrote: post #70
alberth wrote: post #66

Off-topic (and hope the conversation doesn't digress too much): when is it ok for someone to monetize an open source project and when is it not? I've read over the years how people get super upset at Amazon for taking an open source project, (sometimes) adding some code to it and then host and monetize it. The argument being that Amazon is monetizing on the backs of countless open source developers. Hence why the Com…

Supabase developer here. "Wrapper" is an oversimplification, but essentially, we provide additional value to the existing OSS offerings (i.e. PostgreSQL, GoTrue, Kong, Postgrest) by adding libraries and server configurations that tie everything together and make it much easier to develop an application. That being said, you're free to self-host Supabase and get all this value (and continued value and support) for fre…

Thanks burggraf.

Hope my question didn't come off the wrong way, and really appreciate your reply.

Another question, so does Supabase open source 100% of the added features/functionality? Or are some features/functionality gated behind a paid license?

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#73

Post by ttcbj »

sk55 wrote: post #11

For people who have some experience in this, what's the best less-code backends? Hasura? Supabase? Prisma? Thin?

Coming from a rails background, I have really enjoyed developing against Firebase.

Cloud Firestore so much easier than deploying a rails app somewhere. It comes with a lot of great analytics tools. The auth stuff works great. The documentation is very good. It has been extremely reliable. Syncing across devices is amazing and seamless in my experience.

If it fits your use case (I think mostly CRUD apps with data sharing that is somewhat limited in its breadth, e.g. not something like twitter with N-N data relationships), it is really amazing.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#74

Post by burggraf »

alberth wrote: post #72
burggraf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supabase developer here. "Wrapper" is an oversimplification, but essentially, we provide additional value to the existing OSS offerings (i.e. PostgreSQL, GoTrue, Kong, Postgrest) by adding libraries and server configurations that tie everything together and make it much easier to develop an application. That being said, you're free to self-host Supabase and get all this value (and continued value and support) for fre…

Thanks burggraf. Hope my question didn't come off the wrong way, and really appreciate your reply. Another question, so does Supabase open source 100% of the added features/functionality? Or are some features/functionality gated behind a paid license?

No problem -- it's a very valid question and deserves to be clear to everyone.

Supabase open-sources everything and nothing is behind a paid license, except for any stuff related to us providing the hosted stuff. For instance, our internal software we created for billing customers who host with is not necessarily open-source.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#75

Post by oceanplexian »

cercatrova wrote: post #68
alberth wrote: post #66

Off-topic (and hope the conversation doesn't digress too much): when is it ok for someone to monetize an open source project and when is it not? I've read over the years how people get super upset at Amazon for taking an open source project, (sometimes) adding some code to it and then host and monetize it. The argument being that Amazon is monetizing on the backs of countless open source developers. Hence why the Com…

One can do whatever the license allows. It is not my fault if I monetize someone else's code that is MIT licensed. People should read and understand licenses before slapping one on their open source project.

I've been using the MIT license for a decade. It's actually free software, not "free but if you fail to follow my manifesto I'll sue you". It's more practical since it can be used for anything, and it's better for the community since people can use it and contribute without risking legal liability.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#77

Post by halotrope »

Congratulations, it is well deserved! I have been using SB for the past couple months and its great! In my experience what they excel at is picking really good components (Postgres, PostgREST, Elixir, Kong, Gotrue, Logflare etc) and packaging them with little overhead into something that is much greater than the sum of its parts.

There are issues of course (slow dashboard, some inconsistencies in auth, shaky self-hosting story, a little bloated JS client libs) but in general they have a solid offering that is only getting better.

I can't stress enough how there is really nothing quite like it out there at the moment. I get that HN crowd is always very skeptical esp with the somewhat airy opensource/self-hosting story that seems a little deprioritized to handle the (probably insane) growth. The escape hatches might be a bit rusty a bit at the moment but compare that with Firebase and its a little inconvenient in SB vs a prison in FB.

I am quite optimistic about Supabase and I wish the team the best of success.

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#78

Post by michelpp »

ehathaway wrote: post #38

I like the approach Supabase takes in being a light abstraction over Postgres and using OSS. Even in light of the following critiques, I feel like its one of the simplest ways for an experienced developer to start a new project, and it's now my go to over spinning up a database, Firebase, ORMs, and other database abstractions. My main critiques are: - As others have said, default security is way too permissive. They…

I work at Supabase on database security so I can speak to some of these.

> - As others have said, default security is way too permissive. They should lock everything down by default. At some point, this is going to cause major problems for some company that decides to build off Supabase.

We agree and are internally actively discussing this very subject.

> - Although they have row-level security, RBAC is completely missing. It's not hard to implement yourself through stored procedures and triggers (they have an example repo to copy from), but I don't see a lot of junior devs doing this.

We don't "have" row level security per se, that is a native feature of Postgres we expose, and the customer is free to use or not. RBAC is a very broad term, and broadly speaking Postgres has roles and privileges that do access control. Did you have something more specific in mind?

> - Stored procedures are more likely to be utilized in the Supabase paradigm, but I haven't felt like they have done much to address the inherent weakness and common critiques of using sprocs instead of application level functions.

Weaknesses, critiques and strengths. There are tradeoffs and some of this gets down to a matter of opinion. Mine is admittedly radical in this case. We recently released Edge functions which are great, more tools in the toolbox, including stored procedures.

Did you used to work on Zope? You have a familiar handle...

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#79

Post by jinjin2 »

sk55 wrote: post #11

For people who have some experience in this, what's the best less-code backends? Hasura? Supabase? Prisma? Thin?

We only have mobile apps, so I can’t speak for web apps, but for us Realm (https://realm.io/) has been amazing.

The Local API’s are a joy to work with. The capabilities of the local database makes Firebase look like a toy, and the sync service does solid two-way replication between devices.

Definitely one of the best backend-as-a-service we have tried (but our experience is mobile only, so yemv).

Re: Supabase (YC S20) raises $80M Series B

#80

Post by jrmiii »

kiwicopple wrote: post #41

supabase ceo here. I want to give a big shout-out to the HN crowd. You have been instrumental in our growth - both from a traction perspective, but even more so for product development. From our initial launch 2 years ago[0], where everyone told us we need auth, to our Auth[1], Storage[2], Functions[3], and GraphQL[4] launches. You are always giving great (and usually tough!) feedback which helps guide the team and p…

I appreciate how you all have open-sourced key elements of the platform. I've enjoyed learning from your code. It's also cool how you guys don't "code scared" and push the envelope for Postgres.
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