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Is there an Open Source version of Firebase which we can use on our own hardware if we wish to? Vendor lock-in is the biggest fear I have with Firebase. Like

Is there an Open Source version of Firebase which we can use on our own hardware if we wish to? Vendor lock-in is the biggest fear I have with Firebase. Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting? How do we protect ourselves, if Google decides to increase the price of Firebase 3-4 times in a single day? Even just a public pledge from Google saying that they will open source the full featured Firebase if they decide to close down the devision will go a long way to alleviate this fear.

csmajorfive 10y ago
I think it's less likely to happen here because Google is investing heavily in building a business around developer services.
- mybigsword 10y ago
  I cannot agree with that. Google Cloud services are way too small comparing to AWS or Azure and they don't make a lot of money with it. They can discontinue it easily.
  - williamstein 10y ago
    +1 -- Sometimes Google does embrace open source in building services that I can trust longterm, e.g., Kubernetes. I wish Firebase (which I won't use) were being built and marketed in a similar way to Kubernetes (which I will use).
  - velohx 10y ago
    This is sarcasm, right? Here's some more equivalent sarcasm: Gmail and Google Search could discontinue easily.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Search, hardly. But Gmail? What happens when Google decides they're not monetizing Gmail sufficiently and force everyone to Inbox? What then!
    - unclebucknasty 10y ago
      You're comparing their mature businesses to their nascent cloud business. Their market share in the latter is still a fraction of the leaders'. It's very possible that Google may "lose the cloud".
  - dandelany 10y ago
    GCS is relatively small today, but it's growing fast, and Google is investing a ton of money and resources into it right now. They've added a bunch of new systems and promised more coming soon. They also just signed a huge deal to host all of Spotify's data. Cloud Services aren't going anywhere, in fact my perception is that Google would like them to replace advertising as their #1 moneymaker.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    Google Cloud is way more advanced than both AWS and Azure in many ways and just as big in capacity, if not customers yet. Cloud computing will likely be more profitable than ads in the future for them and they announced billions in new investment just a few months ago to build out the platform further. It's not going anywhere.
    - ignoramous 10y ago
      > Google Cloud is way more advanced than both AWS and Azure in many ways I see this being thrown around here a lot. Buying into Google's PR is what this is. If you've valid points apart from BigQuery vs RedShift, I'd request you to enumerate them for me. I have personally interacted with Googlers who lament the fact that 'no one internally bothers using most of GCP' and hence not being able to 'iterate/innovate as fast as AWS' is a key disadvantage despite their 'superior offerings', whatever that means.
      - manigandham 10y ago
        > Buying into Google's PR is what this is Really? Have you actually used it or done any research? 1. Container Engine = built on kubernetes, faster and easier than the others 2. Compute Engine = VMs start faster, customizable rather than set sizes, live migration when the host has maintenance or starts to fail, NVME SSDs available with < 1ms latency 3. Networking = faster and more consistent performance, all the regions are connected which makes cross-regional/global deployments easier and more secure 4. Load balancing = actually routes the traffic automatically to the closest region and spills over based on capacity, not just DNS junk like the rest, no warmup or latency issues 5. CDN interconnects = cheaper bandwidth and lower latency using their partner CDN networks 6. Pub/Sub = great message system that doesnt need shards or anything to deal with for scaling, supports multiple subscribers and acks 7. gcloud = best shell access available to interact with pretty much everything, no keys or passwords to worry about 8. grpc APIs, fast storage/nearline, bigtable/datastore/cloud sql, Vision API, etc Yes it's still new and there are a few frustrating issues, and AWS and Azure do have lots of products and their own special offerings, but the core Google platform is the amazing at running a bunch of servers/containers for a globally distributed app with high performance. We've tried them all and GCP has been the best so far.
aeosynth 10y ago
Horizon[0] was announced yesterday; it's basically an open-source Firebase built on RethinkDB. [0]: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon
- pritambarhate 10y ago
  This seems quite interesting. Hope they chose MIT or Apache for license as said in the ReadMe.
  - spb 10y ago
    MIT: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon/commit/79304a56fbcd57a65a534a0e1caa6164c3c5cb02 https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon/commit/79304a56fbcd57a6...
- guelo 10y ago
  Horizon is only the "realtime db" portion of Firebase and it's only for Javascript, not Android or iOS. The mobile app realtime network connection tech is especially tricky to get right without draining a user's battery by doing things like constantly polling the backend. I have not seen anything from RethinkDB along those lines.
  - hiphipjorge 10y ago
    > by doing things like constantly polling the backend RethinkDB doesn't require polling. It's like their #1 feature and differentiator from other non-sql databases.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - EGreg 10y ago
      What do they do? We use websockets in our realtime platform.
nwrk 10y ago
Self hosted 'firebase' from RethinkDB team http://horizon.io/ http://horizon.io/
ginkgotree 10y ago
I'd second Horizon. I've been working with RethinkDB for over a year, and really believe in their commitment to RethinkDb's core technology, and their deep understanding of what is needed to build reactive web apps.
jstoiko 10y ago
http://ramses.tech http://ramses.tech (shameless plug) It's not exactly the same thing but it achieves the same goal and is opensource. API services are generated from RAML files (yaml) No code required for simple crud, biz logic can be hooked using http event handlers. Uses Elasticsearch for reads and Mongodb or Postgres for writes. Other DB can be hooked by writing the proper Db engines, it's all documented.
wolframhempel 10y ago
https://deepstream.io https://deepstream.io is an open source server that's basically a self hosted firebase. It supports data-sync, pub/sub and rpcs and can scale horizontally to millions of connections.
troika 10y ago
Overview of open source alternatives: https://deepstream.io/blog/realtime-framework-overview/ https://deepstream.io/blog/realtime-framework-overview/
gabidobocan 10y ago
We were also looking for an open source Firebase a while ago, packed with some extra features like multiple db support and push notifications. Ended up building http://telepat.io http://telepat.io. Docs & specifications at http://docs.telepat.io/ http://docs.telepat.io/. Hope this helps you.
marknadal 10y ago
Another: http://gun.js.org/ http://gun.js.org/ & https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun Realtime, Peer-to-Peer, Offline-First, Graph. A podcast on its performance (25+M ops/sec) just happened on http://readthesource.io/ http://readthesource.io/ an hour or so ago, hangouts link: http://youtu.be/70dn1oZQFCk?a http://youtu.be/70dn1oZQFCk?a . MIT / ZLIB / Apache 2 license - do whatever you want with it.
kabes 10y ago
There's also Meteor
neilellis 10y ago
Of course we always need to balance open source 'FREE as in beer' with no-maintenance commercial solutions. Opensource is extremely important but it can also be 'FREE as in puppies' adding an extra maintenance burden (self hosting, security updates etc.). Horizon.io ticks both boxes by offering a cloud SaaS :) one could say that is the ideal product!
st3v3r 10y ago
"Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting?" You can architect your app sequester these 3rd party services on the edge, making any rewrite much easier.
wayneacarter 10y ago
[Architect from Couchbase] Couchbase Mobile is open-sourced under Apache 2 and has all of the database and sync functionality of Firebase. From a database perspective it is more complete than Firebase. It also has enterprise level security, REST/Stream/Batch APIs, etc. Take a look and see if it meets your needs. http://www.couchbase.com/mobile http://www.couchbase.com/mobile

csmajorfive 10y ago

I think it's less likely to happen here because Google is investing heavily in building a business around developer services.

mybigsword 10y ago
I cannot agree with that. Google Cloud services are way too small comparing to AWS or Azure and they don't make a lot of money with it. They can discontinue it easily.
- williamstein 10y ago
  +1 -- Sometimes Google does embrace open source in building services that I can trust longterm, e.g., Kubernetes. I wish Firebase (which I won't use) were being built and marketed in a similar way to Kubernetes (which I will use).
- velohx 10y ago
  This is sarcasm, right? Here's some more equivalent sarcasm: Gmail and Google Search could discontinue easily.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Search, hardly. But Gmail? What happens when Google decides they're not monetizing Gmail sufficiently and force everyone to Inbox? What then!
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    You're comparing their mature businesses to their nascent cloud business. Their market share in the latter is still a fraction of the leaders'. It's very possible that Google may "lose the cloud".
- dandelany 10y ago
  GCS is relatively small today, but it's growing fast, and Google is investing a ton of money and resources into it right now. They've added a bunch of new systems and promised more coming soon. They also just signed a huge deal to host all of Spotify's data. Cloud Services aren't going anywhere, in fact my perception is that Google would like them to replace advertising as their #1 moneymaker.
- manigandham 10y ago
  Google Cloud is way more advanced than both AWS and Azure in many ways and just as big in capacity, if not customers yet. Cloud computing will likely be more profitable than ads in the future for them and they announced billions in new investment just a few months ago to build out the platform further. It's not going anywhere.
  - ignoramous 10y ago
    > Google Cloud is way more advanced than both AWS and Azure in many ways I see this being thrown around here a lot. Buying into Google's PR is what this is. If you've valid points apart from BigQuery vs RedShift, I'd request you to enumerate them for me. I have personally interacted with Googlers who lament the fact that 'no one internally bothers using most of GCP' and hence not being able to 'iterate/innovate as fast as AWS' is a key disadvantage despite their 'superior offerings', whatever that means.
    - manigandham 10y ago
      > Buying into Google's PR is what this is Really? Have you actually used it or done any research? 1. Container Engine = built on kubernetes, faster and easier than the others 2. Compute Engine = VMs start faster, customizable rather than set sizes, live migration when the host has maintenance or starts to fail, NVME SSDs available with < 1ms latency 3. Networking = faster and more consistent performance, all the regions are connected which makes cross-regional/global deployments easier and more secure 4. Load balancing = actually routes the traffic automatically to the closest region and spills over based on capacity, not just DNS junk like the rest, no warmup or latency issues 5. CDN interconnects = cheaper bandwidth and lower latency using their partner CDN networks 6. Pub/Sub = great message system that doesnt need shards or anything to deal with for scaling, supports multiple subscribers and acks 7. gcloud = best shell access available to interact with pretty much everything, no keys or passwords to worry about 8. grpc APIs, fast storage/nearline, bigtable/datastore/cloud sql, Vision API, etc Yes it's still new and there are a few frustrating issues, and AWS and Azure do have lots of products and their own special offerings, but the core Google platform is the amazing at running a bunch of servers/containers for a globally distributed app with high performance. We've tried them all and GCP has been the best so far.

aeosynth 10y ago

Horizon[0] was announced yesterday; it's basically an open-source Firebase built on RethinkDB. [0]: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon

pritambarhate 10y ago
This seems quite interesting. Hope they chose MIT or Apache for license as said in the ReadMe.
- spb 10y ago
  MIT: https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon/commit/79304a56fbcd57a65a534a0e1caa6164c3c5cb02 https://github.com/rethinkdb/horizon/commit/79304a56fbcd57a6...
guelo 10y ago
Horizon is only the "realtime db" portion of Firebase and it's only for Javascript, not Android or iOS. The mobile app realtime network connection tech is especially tricky to get right without draining a user's battery by doing things like constantly polling the backend. I have not seen anything from RethinkDB along those lines.
- hiphipjorge 10y ago
  > by doing things like constantly polling the backend RethinkDB doesn't require polling. It's like their #1 feature and differentiator from other non-sql databases.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - EGreg 10y ago
    What do they do? We use websockets in our realtime platform.

nwrk 10y ago

Self hosted 'firebase' from RethinkDB team http://horizon.io/ http://horizon.io/

ginkgotree 10y ago

I'd second Horizon. I've been working with RethinkDB for over a year, and really believe in their commitment to RethinkDb's core technology, and their deep understanding of what is needed to build reactive web apps.

jstoiko 10y ago

http://ramses.tech http://ramses.tech (shameless plug) It's not exactly the same thing but it achieves the same goal and is opensource. API services are generated from RAML files (yaml) No code required for simple crud, biz logic can be hooked using http event handlers. Uses Elasticsearch for reads and Mongodb or Postgres for writes. Other DB can be hooked by writing the proper Db engines, it's all documented.

wolframhempel 10y ago

https://deepstream.io https://deepstream.io is an open source server that's basically a self hosted firebase. It supports data-sync, pub/sub and rpcs and can scale horizontally to millions of connections.

troika 10y ago

Overview of open source alternatives: https://deepstream.io/blog/realtime-framework-overview/ https://deepstream.io/blog/realtime-framework-overview/

gabidobocan 10y ago

We were also looking for an open source Firebase a while ago, packed with some extra features like multiple db support and push notifications. Ended up building http://telepat.io http://telepat.io. Docs & specifications at http://docs.telepat.io/ http://docs.telepat.io/. Hope this helps you.

marknadal 10y ago

Another: http://gun.js.org/ http://gun.js.org/ & https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun Realtime, Peer-to-Peer, Offline-First, Graph. A podcast on its performance (25+M ops/sec) just happened on http://readthesource.io/ http://readthesource.io/ an hour or so ago, hangouts link: http://youtu.be/70dn1oZQFCk?a http://youtu.be/70dn1oZQFCk?a . MIT / ZLIB / Apache 2 license - do whatever you want with it.

kabes 10y ago

There's also Meteor

neilellis 10y ago

Of course we always need to balance open source 'FREE as in beer' with no-maintenance commercial solutions. Opensource is extremely important but it can also be 'FREE as in puppies' adding an extra maintenance burden (self hosting, security updates etc.). Horizon.io ticks both boxes by offering a cloud SaaS :) one could say that is the ideal product!

st3v3r 10y ago

"Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting?" You can architect your app sequester these 3rd party services on the edge, making any rewrite much easier.

wayneacarter 10y ago

[Architect from Couchbase] Couchbase Mobile is open-sourced under Apache 2 and has all of the database and sync functionality of Firebase. From a database perspective it is more complete than Firebase. It also has enterprise level security, REST/Stream/Batch APIs, etc. Take a look and see if it meets your needs. http://www.couchbase.com/mobile http://www.couchbase.com/mobile