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RethinkDB is shutting down

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Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#91

Post by geofft »

hueving wrote: post #88
geofft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, maybe we should find a way to develop good technology that doesn't involve for-profit companies?

Non profit companies still need to make money to keep the lights on. That means targeting technologies that can attract lots of donations. Databases are a very mature technology so the number of companies running into issues with them is vanishingly small. Who is going to donate to a non profit spending its time developing a solution a problem almost nobody has?

I don't know, I feel like lots of people donate to universities to spend their times solving problems that almost nobody has. Or maybe they don't, but somehow that money still exists. How does that work?

Why are we assuming that everything has to be done by companies? What if we establish a National Science Foundation for fundamental CS research?

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#92

Post by heyts »

pc wrote: post #48

RethinkDB is one of the developer tools that we at Stripe most looked up to.[1] The team had so many good ideas and rigorous, creative thoughts around what a database could be and how it should work. I'm really bummed that it didn't work out for them and have enormous respect for the tenacity of their effort. I'm also excited to have them join us here at Stripe. As we've gotten to know Mike, Slava, and the other Reth…

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/

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#93

Post by cybrix »

This is very sad to hear this looked like a real product.

Quite off-topic but has anyone managed to implement something similar to Changefeeds in MongoDB? RethinkDB sends both old data and new data and watching the oplog sounds like a bad idea.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#94

Post by sotojuan »

misterbowfinger wrote: post #84

Wow. I was seriously rooting for them. I'm looking forward to Slava's posts about their challenges on the business side. There's a part of me that's angry that MongoDB - which some would say has made an objectively worse product - has succeeded. My initial thought is that MongoDB has done a way, way better job at SEO. The number of blog posts about RethinkDB pales in comparison to Mongo. I wonder if they got beat on…

Mongo also got there "first". I mean, Mongo isn't much compared to Rethink, but they're both in the "not a traditional SQL database" camp and Mongo came before and had all the hype first.

I wouldn't be surprised if people a) didn't use Rethink because they're happy with Mongo and its popularity b) hated Mongo and saw Rethink as too similar/didn't research it enough.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#95

Post by omginternets »

vacri wrote: post #77
omginternets wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because having the better product (often) doesn't matter: see Windows vs Apple in the early days. Mongo has a strong community, which translates into a plethora of articles/blog-posts/tutorials/etc that secures its niche. From there it's possible to make money with things like consulting fees to help fix the problems it created in the first place. It's all about execution. Case and point: I know what (purportedly) ma…

At my last workplace, I finally asked: "Since you guys bitch about mongo so much, why do we use it? Why not something else?". Response: "It's not actually that bad, it does the job". Half the crap people speak about Mongo seems to be from either the early days, or from people who just like to complain. It certainly has it's issues, but there doesn't seem to be much community will to replace it with $superdupernosqldb…

Also not the point.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#96

Post by ronreiter »

If RethinkDB is really better than Mongo then where is the blog post about it?

Where are all the scaffolding tools? The examples?

I have only heard of Rethink because I read HN every day. But no one knows about it. That is obviously the reason it failed - bad marketing.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#97

Post by dieselz »

pc wrote: post #48

RethinkDB is one of the developer tools that we at Stripe most looked up to.[1] The team had so many good ideas and rigorous, creative thoughts around what a database could be and how it should work. I'm really bummed that it didn't work out for them and have enormous respect for the tenacity of their effort. I'm also excited to have them join us here at Stripe. As we've gotten to know Mike, Slava, and the other Reth…

I believe the RethinkDB team will be a great fit for Stripe. RethinkDB was literally a pleasure to work with. As someone who has had to endure the pain of setting up a production mongo environment, I was thrilled to see how easy RethinkDB was to provision and then configure (all in their beautiful dashboard).

I see a lot of similarities between Stripe's offering and RethinkDB, making a once painful process into one that is actually looked forward to when building a new product. I'm glad Stripe will have even more engineering firepower as they continue to succeed.

Sad that RethinkDB(.com) is no more, but happy they found a great company to join!

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#98

Post by ronreiter »

nine_k wrote: post #17
tbrock wrote: post #5

I hope this isn't true. Having worked at/on multiple competitors I have nothing but respect and admiration for the work the RethinkDB team has done to make a great database and development platform. This was real technology! I'm truly sad that the environment is such that great work like this can't continue to be funded. Thanks for showing everyone how to write amazing documentation, caring about the fundamentals, an…

Ever thought what do these salespeople do in a software company? This is what happens when salespeople fail to do enough of their thing. Sales are essential for a for-profit company.

Not sales. Marketing. In today's world having someone push a new database for a hefty price is not going to work. I would need to be able to test it against mongo and decide myself that it is better... but how would I know it's even an option?

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#99

Post by rtpg »

apetresc wrote: post #74
brianwawok wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people in the world can work on a large DB, even with source? I am all for open source, but it doesn't make things like this is easy as some make it out to be. For example with Linux source, how long would it take me to fix a video driver bug? Perhaps a year?

His point is a little more subtle than that. When you're choosing a database engine to build your company on, knowing that it's open source provides some level of guarantee that someone will continue to maintain it if the company/developer folds, even if that someone is not you. Therefore, if you're the one building the database, open-sourcing it de-risks your product to your potential customers, to some extent.

To expand on this point, if you look at Linux development, multiple companies are contributing to the project! The product exists outside any single organisation.

Of course closed source products can also be collaborations, but open source + open development practices can make this a smooth and natural result.

Re: RethinkDB is shutting down

#100

Post by amscanne »

bcruddy wrote: post #83
scrollaway wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have an open source product with a company behind it, they're not incompatible.

Red Hat's market cap is almost $15B and they're worth $2B. Definitely not incompatible.

This is like saying "the widget sells for $15 and the price is $2".

I assume you mean they have $2bn in annual revenue?

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