19 ms·
RethinkDB joins the Linux Foundation: What Happens Next
- mglukhovsky 10y agoBryan Cantrill posted his thoughts on the CNCF's decision to donate RethinkDB to The Linux Foundation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13579544 We wanted to share RethinkDB's next steps in our new home with The Linux Foundation. We've also had a lot of folks ask if they can donate to support the project. Stripe has generously offered to match up to $25k in donations (which will help fund server costs and future development.) You can learn how to contribute to the project with OSS contributions or donations here: https://rethinkdb.com/contribute https://rethinkdb.com/contribute
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoI don't have much to add, but as someone who has a lot of projects dependent on RethinkDB and also loves using it: Thank you to everyone involved!
- atmosx 10y agoDo you/would you use for anything other than something that needs live updates ASAP?
- AsyncAwait 10y agoYes, I use it in my upcoming project, which is just a regular, (no real-time sensitive) webapp and RDB is perfectly usable as a regular NoSQL database. I really like the fact that you query the database by calling methods on an object rather than passing strings to it, feels more like actual programming and protects you from injection attacks. The WebUI and easy scalability are great features as well. It and CockroachDB, (for more traditional SQL, same scaleability benefits), are the databases I am most excited about, but I seem to prefer ReQL to SQL despite being vastly more familiar with SQL :-)
- davidbanham 10y agoAbsolutely. Rethink's core value props to me are: Strong promises about consistency Nosql with joins Atomic changefeeds (real time) A great functional query language (reql) Great admin UI Simple auto sharding that actually works
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoWe use changefeeds but just to update Elasicsearch. The key value offer is the very powerful query language which feels right at home in Node, strong robustness, and real proper join support with NoSQL.
- gargarplex 10y agoI haven't used ReThinkDB yet, but I know that projects I have or will rely on do. Therefore, I donated and I encourage you to do the same! It helps that I met Slava at a bar in Mountain View once and he was really nice to me =)
- tracker1 10y agoI also donated... I haven't been able to use it in a workplace project (yet), but have to say following several of the issues/resolutions, it would be my first choice today for most scenarios.
- marknadal 10y agoMike and Slava, you guys are so great! You've worked overtime to secure social confidence in RethinkDB for others when the engineering talent alone was good enough. You guys are so admirable and hard workers and such a good role model to others.
- mglukhovsky 10y agoThanks Mark, I appreciate the kind words.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- adamnemecek 10y agoIs this the best possible outcome given the circumstances?
- daenney 10y agoYes.
- zyang 10y agoI stayed away from Rethink in the past few years due to its uncertain future. Now I'm seriously interested. Looking forward to the next chapter of RethinkDB.
- afarrell 10y agoI wonder if they could have closed more deals if they'd promised to do something like this. Then again, maybe the board would have balked at that as a sign of no confidence.
- jkarneges 10y agoI don't know if "we'll relicense if we go out of business" is a particularly helpful stance to a potential customer that wants to use the product in the present. Presumably, if a deal is being closed, then the buyer has agreed to some licensing that is already reasonable enough (e.g. freely modifiable and distributable within the org). This kind of stance can be useful to a community, though, that wants to ensure future proprietary development remains possible (kind of strange to want but it can make sense). I recall when Trolltech did this with Qt. If they went out of business or there were a change of control, Qt would switch from GPL to BSD licensed.
- hodgesrm 10y agoYou generally have to move carefully to get proprietary software to an open source model. One typical customer reaction to rumors you are open sourcing is "Great! We'll wait until you do that to try it out." The result is that [already not good] sales may tank completely.
- karim 10y agoAlso known as the Obsborne effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect).
- troymc 10y agoRethinkDB wasn't proprietary. It was open source, licensed under the AGPL v2, the same license used by MongoDB, which is doing just fine. MongoDB is one of the top five in the DB-Engines rankings. One of the key business differences between RethinkDB and MongoDB is that the latter keeps some enterprise-grade features/tools closed-source and available under a commercial license, i.e. the "open core" business model.
- hd4 10y agoSorry if this should be obvious but what is/are the killer feature/s of RethinkDB, what differentiates it from something like Redis or even CockroachDB?
- mglukhovsky 10y agoThis might be a useful read: https://rethinkdb.com/faq/ https://rethinkdb.com/faq/ It explains RethinkDB's ideal use cases, explains how to compare it to other databases, and details some of the differentiating features.
- hmottestad 10y agoRethinkDB has passed jepsen testing. *Fixed typo
- mglukhovsky 10y agoI think you might mean the Jepsen tests: https://aphyr.com/posts/329-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-1-5 https://aphyr.com/posts/329-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-1-5
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jwr 10y agoOnly RethinkDB gets you a) working changefeeds, where you can receive real-time changefeed updates to your queries, b) a well-implemented and Jepsen-proven distributed database. As far as I know, there is no other solution which gets both things right. I use it in PartsBox (https://partsbox.io/ https://partsbox.io/), a solution for keeping track of electronic components. I am surprised more people aren't interested in changefeeds — the way I see it, it's the only way to implement multi-user webapps which update in real-time (as in: a change is made in one session and all other open sessions get the update immediately).
- pmalynin 10y agoWell a) is provided by Mongo and is literally the reason why Meteor can do exactly what you described: multi-user webapps which update in real-time.
- vegabook 10y agoHonestly what needs to happen next is a serious effort to explain why or when rethink is better than mongo, cassandra, arango, aerospike, memsql, mysql, riak, or postgres, ++, not to mention all the TSDBs. On the event pushes I am unconvinced that message queues/computation graphs arent superior and that's another crowded space. When I last looked at it the advantages struck me as mostly incremental on the query language and decremental on performance. There are many excellent competitors in this space, most of which are well funded, and moving targets. Rethink doesn't seem to have a USP, or none that has been effectively communicated at least, IMO.
- hmottestad 10y agoComes down to jenkins for me. RethinkDB aced the jenkins tests. Mongo has failed every jenkins test it's been put through, dunno about the status now though. Last I checked Mongo's default durability level was "data loss on power outage". Aerospike failed jenkins too, and not on small edge cases like Mongo, but with major dataloss. Going by the problems Gitlab has recently with Postgres I wouldn't use that for a distributed database. Likely true for MySQL too. * Yep. I meant to write Jepsen :)
- bcantrill 10y agoI think you mean Jepsen? It's a slight exaggeration to say that RethinkDB aced it -- but they did very well[1] and (more importantly to me, honestly) Jepsen was used to find a subtle and nasty issue that was subsequently fixed.[2] [1] https://aphyr.com/posts/329-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-1-5 https://aphyr.com/posts/329-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-1-5 [2] https://aphyr.com/posts/330-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-2-3-reconfiguration https://aphyr.com/posts/330-jepsen-rethinkdb-2-2-3-reconfigu...
- hmottestad 10y agoI've been having a lot of trouble with Jenkins at work today. So when I though Jepsen, I wrote Jenkins. Still feel they aced it. No one passes Jepsen on their first try. But RethinkDB is the first to immediately fix the issue. I wouldn't go as far as to call it a nasty issue. It would only happen if you got node failures while reconfiguring your cluster. And reconfiguring the cluster must be initiated by the admin and it's something that happens very often.
- tdees40 10y agoMy weird and unrelated question is: if I donate software to an open source group like the Linux Foundation, can I write it off my taxes? And if so, how do I assess the value of it? RethinkDB probably has some legitimate market value...can the founders reflect that on their taxes?
- ci5er 10y agoIt's not the founder's asset -- unless it has been released back to them in adjudicated liquidation proceedings or by contractual agreement. It is the company's asset, and would be reflected in the company's taxes.
- dublinben 10y agoNot likely, since the Linux Foundation is a 501(c)6 organization, and donations are not tax-deductible.
- chrisabrams 10y agoThis is correct.
- Cshelton 10y agoHad never thought of this... for Linux Foundation, I don't believe so. However, it'd be interesting to see an Open Source Foundation set up as a 501(c)3, where contributors would get to write off a certain value given for their contribution. The hard part would be, what is the value of the product you have contributed, and how will it stand up under audit? Or would it just be considered a service and, just like volunteering, you can't really write it off. I can see a foundation that provides software to the community, especially communities that would other wise not have access to it, and or municipalities, etc.
- jwr 10y agoThis is fantastic news. My current project would not have been possible if it wasn't for RethinkDB. Very glad to see it moving forward!
- ausjke 10y agoLinux foundation are collecting quite a lot "failed" projects and turn them to gold these days? I sometimes feel it is acting like a software goodwill store partially. Whatever that is, hope RethinkDB will do well in the future.
- wmf 10y agoIMO the ASF is better at collecting abandoned failed software while LF has more openwashed corporate code dumps. CNCF is actually legit though because they generally accept technically sound software that is already successful.
- tracker1 10y agoRethinkDB is quite a bit more than an openwashed code dump though. It seems like a natural fit to some of the rest of the CNCF work, and probably why they had an interest... though not a direct fit, hense being under LF proper instead of CNCF. I think it's an appropriate home though. ASF always seems like a minefield when I look into some of their projects.
- the_duke 10y agoWhat are other examples?
- linuxlinus 10y agoLinux
- caniszczyk 10y agoDo you have some examples to point out?
- jonny_eh 10y agoNode.js and Express? Although neither seemed failed, maybe troubled at one point.
- crudbug 10y agoWhat kind of workload RethinkDB is suitable for ? 1. Transactional 2. Analytical 3. Operational
- tyingq 10y agoThe tagline on the site describes the most obvious use case: "RethinkDB pushes JSON to your apps in realtime. When your app polls for data, it becomes slow, unscalable, and cumbersome to maintain." In their FAQ, they call out these types of applications: Collaborative web and mobile apps, Streaming analytics apps, Multiplayer games, Realtime marketplaces, Connected devices
- lobster_johnson 10y agoNot really transactional. RethinkDB only has document-level atomicity, and even then, not all writes are guaranteed to be atomic.
- ohstopitu 10y agoI wish some company (apart from compose.io) would create a RethinkDB as a service (DBaaS). I would totally love a dynamodb or firebase kind of payment structure! I specifically excluded compose not because their service is not great (from what I've heard - it's excellent) but more so because they charge a premium for it.
- chrisabrams 10y agoThere are a couple of community members seriously considering this with the license change.
- ohstopitu 10y agoIf there is any way I can help (anything from building, or even just documentation or support), I'd love to get involved. I am very passionate about XaaS (X as a service) think that we need a lot more DBaaS and we just don't seem to have that many options to choose from which is sad considering almost all software projects out there - especially the hobby ones would benefit so much from such a service.
- NikolaeVarius 10y agoI'm wondering what kind of legal shenanigans I would have to wrangle with in order to do this. Exactly what is and is not allowed when making a service based on an Open Source tool?
- sbashyal 10y agoJust donated! We have an app in production using Rethinkdb. This needs to live on!
- RobertoG 10y agoAny news about the future of horizon? I played with rethinkdb and horizon and it looked like the the way to go to me. When you see that with a few easy lines of code, any change in state in the browser of your computer it's updated in the browser of your mobile, without practically doing anything in the server, it feels like the future.
- mglukhovsky 10y agoHorizon will be joining under RethinkDB's aegis at The Linux Foundation: a new community-driven release is in the works.
- grizzles 10y agoAny chance this release will include custom auth support? The lack of that was our main reason for staying away.
- kellros 10y agoI've always been fond of Rethinkdb, but never actually used it. Perhaps if I came across pragmatic examples of how to do x with y, like you typically see with Redis, I could have convinced my team/s otherwise. One of the aspects of Rethinkdb I admire most is the tooling. I find myself often trying out something new with React, Postgres, ASP.NET Core, Elm, Go, Kotlin or what not and biasing my experience getting started with preference to use. I recond Rethink as Pied Piper in Silicon Valley; a great product ultimately being misunderstood. I'm relieved to hear Rethinkdb will live on under the Linux Foundation (and applaud them for doing so) and earnestly hope it re-establishes itself in a niche, such as that of Firebase/Parse, with partnerships and a legacy to rival that of Postgres one day.
- jkarneges 10y agoIncredible news. I was certain this kind of relicensing would be impossible. Congrats to the community.
- theGimp 10y agoThe team behind RethinkDB has been a class act. Thank you for creating a fantastic product and doing what's right by your users even as you were winding down.
- OskarS 10y agoIt's really true. I was looking at RethinkDB for a project a while back, but decided to go another way, but I've been following it from a distance ever since. At all steps of this process, it's been clear that the core developers have been doing their utmost to do right by their users, even in the face of unfortunate business developments. It's really heartening to see this news.
- obulpathi 10y agoThis is awesome news! Good to see Cloud Native Foundation growing to address the needs in Cloud Computing space.
- brilliantcode 10y agoironic that this will be the move that actually propels rethinkdb... it's my feeling that software licensing day's are over for the little guys. If you are Oracle or Microsoft and have that brand recognition great. Coupled with commoditization of developers, I think it'd be great if we had a kickstarter site where you could request a commercial project to be open-sourced, pitch in some money to support the developer. For instance if somebody released an open source version of Hootsuite I think that would put a severe dent in Vancouver's tech scene-Hootsuite customers wouldn't even think twice about switching to a zero cost solution, as it's not a pain killer but a vitamin. Free vitamin is always better than an expensive one. Pain killers on the other hand are less flexible because it's an emotional buy.
- michaelvoz 10y agoWhat?
- lewisl9029 10y agoI'd love to be able to pitch in some money to turn Datomic into an open-source project. As much as I'd love to use it for my own projects, commercial licenses tend to causes huge pains for deployment, and poses as an insurmountable philosophical barrier for use in my own open-source projects.
- brilliantcode 10y agoI worked with Datomic but it was such a turn off to use because of it's limiting license plans. I'm also worried that they might not be around in the future and what then? An open source Datomic would be wonderful. I worked with Datomic last year and while I enjoyed clojure and datalog, it was also a big pain in the butt to be googling "how do I do X in clojure/datomic/datalog". A really sharp developer might be able to master it (I'm not) given ample time but it's very expensive both to ramp new developer's up and pay clojure devs which aren't cheap due to their limited supply. If there was a website like Kickstarter that had a way for people to vote (with money) on open-sourcifying an existing commercial project, would people come?
- 10y ago
- Nomentatus 10y agoThe news in the article is that CNCF spent good money to wipe out a copyleft license. They think history has shown a more permissive license without copyleft or a patent grab (just a patent notice) - namely ASLv2 - is a far superior choice and paid to get that in place. Their very recent explanation is well worth reading: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/01/cncf-recommends-aslv2 https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/01/cncf-recommends-aslv2 I'll explain what I mean by patent notice since those are my words, quick version: If you don't declare that you have patent rights affecting a portion of code you have contributed, you've given those patent rights.
- firdaus 10y ago25K to be exact https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/06/cncf-purchases-rethinkdb-source-code-contributes-linux-foundation-apache-license https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/06/cncf-purchases-rethinkdb...
- cdnsteve 10y agoIs this one of the first companies that has made the transition from business to fully open-source? If so this could set an interesting president for others to follow suite under similar circumstances.
- jcl 10y agoBlender would seem to be another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History
- nodesocket 10y agoI just donated. Thanks to the original RethinkDB team for your amazing efforts... I meetup with Michael Glukhovsky briefly over coffee here in SF and was immensely impressed then, and I am still immensely impressed now. Fantastic to hear RethinkDB lives on. Long live RethinkDB. ;-)
- jonny_eh 10y agoThe rethinkDB team are truly the best. I wouldn't hesitate to work with them in the future.
- omouse 10y agoThey should have stuck with AGPL.
- ScottBurson 10y agoI see Slava has no comment :-)
- dirkg 10y agoThis is great news! Rethink is NoSql DB done properly, I know many others such as Cassandra often get mentioned as alternatives to Mongo but they aren't really. I just hope the rigor and correctness that have characterized RethinkDB continue moving forward as a community project. Part of me feels sad it never caught on and will never be a commercial success like Mongo, but that's in the past. Horizon is another exciting project I hope gets traction.
- tracker1 10y agoRethinkDB is in my mind firstly Mongo done right... Cassandra is a very different beast, but seems to be the better option when you need massive (100+ node clusters) scaling, but that comes with a lot of work in terms of development. While RethinkDB is probably most comparable to Mongo, it's worth noting that the sharding/replication/fail-over support and model is much better than Mongo's. Beyond that, the update notifications (streams) are in the box, where with mongo it's bolt-on. Also, rethink supports joins at the server (though best to avoid a lot of the time). The admin ux is pretty awesome, and the dev team has been very cool to follow.
- bogomipz 10y ago>"Also, rethink supports joins at the server (though best to avoid a lot of the time)." Does RethinkDB have distributed joins then? These sort of notoriously difficult to implement well no? I see you say its best to avoid. I would curious to hear you experience with them.
- tracker1 10y agoThey are difficult, and costly, performance-wise. I wouldnt use them for a large expected result-set... maybe sub-items against a single parent.
- hueving 10y agoI'm not too familiar with RethinkDB. Can someone explain why it's so popular on HN? The wiki page shows that it's not that popular overall and the comparison to other DBs makes it sound pretty bad.[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RethinkDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RethinkDB
- detaro 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13581872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13581872
- bogomipz 10y agoI had a question about this passage: "The company behind RethinkDB shut down last year after struggling to build a sustainable business around the product. Many former RethinkDB employees currently work for Stripe, where they help build infrastructure for developers around the world." Is Stripe a big RethinkDB shop or is there another connection between the two?
- davidbanham 10y agoStripe hired most of the Rethink engineering team after the shutdown. They're no longer working on Rethink professionally, but many are still contributing in their own time.