Deno KV Is in Open Beta

I worked on some of this - happy to answer questions :)

I poked around with this a few months ago to figure out how it works locally. The answer is SQLite: https://til.simonwillison.net/deno/deno-kv

I'm finding the business model aspect of Deno KV absolutely fascinating.

    const kv = await Deno.openKv();

That's a Deno core API. It works fine in the open source version of Deno using a local SQLite database file.

But as soon as you deploy your application to their proprietary hosted service, that core API feature gets massively more powerful. It's no longer a SQLite database, it's now a globally distributed key/value store backed by FoundationDB, replicated around the world.

It looks like they've extended that idea further with the latest version - you can now do this:

    export DENO_KV_ACCESS_TOKEN="personal access token"
    
    const kv = await Deno.openKv(
        "https://api.deno.com/databases/your-database/connect",
    );

And your local code is now able to manipulate that remote FoundationDB database as well.

I'm having trouble thinking of a precedent for this - an open source project that has a core API which is effectively a lead generator for their proprietary cloud service.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I think I like it: open source projects need a business model, and the openKv() method is still a supported, useful part of the open source offering.

Kind of fascinating pattern though.

UPDATE: I just found this page of docs https://github.com/denoland/deno/blob/be1fc754a14683bf640b7b... - which describes the "KV Connect" protocol they are using. It looks like this evens the playing field, in that anyone could implement their own alternative backend to Deno Deploy if they wanted to.

This firmly establishes me on the "I think this is cool" side of the fence.

congrats to the deno team on launching this :)

Typo in your blog post: "first processed at the primary pegion"

> This is the enshittification of open source.

You can simply not use it, no?

I am not going to make any sweeping generalizations across all products. But at least in the case of Deno KV, there doesn't seem to be lock-in. So if you were running something self-hosted for KV persistence, it will continue to work unmodified.

> I would see with disgust a bunch of startups use "open source" as their marketing tactic.

Again, not sure which bunch of startups. But I am not seeing that with this product. Seems more like a survival strategy to add some cashflow behind the developers.

I am curious what you think Open Source should be (or should not be). I think it's fair that running a service in the cloud should cost something. And self-hosting it, I think it's fair that it requires a bit more effort than using the hosted service.