5 ms·

I really wish they'd open source Datomic and just make money on hosting. I can't bring myself to spend anymore of my life learning proprietary software in such

by kgwxd 9y ago

I really wish they'd open source Datomic and just make money on hosting. I can't bring myself to spend anymore of my life learning proprietary software in such a foundational domain.

bringtheaction 9y ago
Speaking of open source Datomic, check out mentat. It's not at all the same as an open source Datomic, because it's made for use on single devices not clusters, but it's inspired by Datomic so at the same time it is very much like Datomic. https://github.com/mozilla/mentat https://github.com/mozilla/mentat See also this blog post for some background and history: https://www.ncalexander.net/blog/2017/05/31/tofino-data-storage-and-how-we-got-to-mentat/ https://www.ncalexander.net/blog/2017/05/31/tofino-data-stor...
- samuell 9y ago
  Thanks, added to my WIP "awesome datalog" :) https://github.com/samuell/awesome-datalog https://github.com/samuell/awesome-datalog
- jasonkostempski 9y ago
  "The first version of Project Mentat, named Datomish" For some reason, that almost made me spit my drink. This looks cool, I'll check it out.
systems 9y ago
they wont ... or at least not any time soon if you search online they did address this repeated request in summary they do it for money, they dont know how to do it for money if its open-source, they already contributed clojure to the open source community someone already was vocally aggressive about this in a blog: http://z.caudate.me/on-whose-authority/ http://z.caudate.me/on-whose-authority/ and rich hickey didnt like it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_authority/do1olag/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_au... -- My personal take on this its not that datomic is closed source or that it cost a lot of money its that for its cost, its a valid option for fewer people i use ms sql at work, and it cost a lot of money but .. you can easily make the business case for it for datomic ... it would be much harder datomic is a niche product .. which is not bad .. it is just where its at
- lgrapenthin 9y ago
  I don't believe that Datomic is profitable for Cognitect or ever has been. Given how profitable it is for my customers that truly is a shame. I wish they'd open source it, primarily because reading Rich Hickeys code is always enlightening. But I can see how cautious they are about it and am just glad they haven't already sold out to some big company who pushes tons of "business needs" into it. IME you can't really compare Datomic to a SQL database. If you know Datomic it is like comparing a filesystem to a harddrive.
- ExactoKnight 9y ago
  Popular databases at scale can be tremendously popular too. This is the profit model of databases like Neo4J. Not sure if it worked out for them, but it seems like a viable route to popularity: go big at scale. Amazon or Heroku style.
j_s 9y ago
The similarities to FoundationDB (a unique closed source database technology acquired by Apple, no longer publicly available) encourages additional caution. Apple Acquires FoundationDB | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9259986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9259986 (2015) I poked around for a few minutes trying to find any assurances Datomic offers their customers should they be acquired, but couldn't even find the current EULA accessible online (older versions didn't seem to mention anything). https://www.datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html https://www.datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20160310175126/https://my.datomic.com/datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160310175126/https://my.datomi...) <Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code>
rdtsc 9y ago
It's interesting really. Thinking back 20 years, nobody would have expected or dreamed of a having a production level database be open source. It stared I think mainly with MySQL but it was really part of a greater shift. Compilers, OS-es, other tools and most software was closed source, by default. Shareware was a thing but it wasn't open source usually. To that effect I mostly credit the GNU licensing model. I know people love to hate it and praise BSD/Apache/MIT licensing but I believe without GNU, the proliferation would not have happened. But back to the point, it is interesting that the expectation is reversed completely - people expect databases to be open source by default. Having said that, I still support author's decision to keep it closed source, it's their work and they intend to monetize it in a particular way. It's been around for years, presumably it works for them, which is great.
- Jach 9y ago
  http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-software/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-soft... seems pretty prescient given the glut of open source we find ourselves enjoying today. I do agree a lot of it can be credited to the GNU model, that is aligning on values over other things, but once more and more companies started understanding the economics that was immensely helpful too.
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    That's a good post from Brian, can't believe I haven't see it yet. Thanks for sharing. > seems pretty prescient given the glut of open source we find ourselves enjoying today. Indeed, even regarding databases: [from blog post] > Yes, there have been traditional demand-side efforts like MySQL and research efforts like PostgreSQL, but neither of these “good enough” efforts has actually been good enough to compete with Informix, Oracle, Look at PostgreSQL today -- it's got a variety of indexing options, scalability improvements and various other things. It hasn't displaced Oracle but it's certainly not a research effort anymore.
dj-wonk 9y ago
I'd be interested to see if people would candidly unpack their rationale a bit more in this area. Before I get into that part, forgive me, but I must admit that I've begun to tune out when I hear the "make Datomic open source" commentary. Still, this particular line of commentary returns from time to time, so I'll weigh in. This reminds me of "meta stories" that take over the original story. On Hacker News, I'd much rather hear about technical commentary, lessons learned, or interesting domains and applications used in Datomic projects. I tend to be less interested in hearing armchair quarterbacking around what business model would work better for Datomic, particularly when the arguments seem: 1. largely motivated by self-interest. Open source is often perceived as "free" to software developers. It is relatively easy to say "I would rather not pay for this software, why isn't this open source?" Of course, open source is not necessarily really free, due to integration and maintenance costs. In the cases where open source projects are abandoned, projects face substantial risk and transition costs. 2. not framed around the long-term interests of Datomic (at least the arguments rarely seem to make suggestions from the perspective of Cognitect, which invests in the product and makes income from sales) It is easy to say "make it open source". It is harder for a company to find a business model that works. It seems that Datomic's business model is working. There is a free tier and paid tiers. I know that I cannot properly summarize all perspectives with the ideal amount of nuance. Perhaps some people think it is really in Datomic's interest to be open source. Nevertheless, it seems to me that many arguments people make are somewhat unexamined. Let's go a level deeper. May I ask this: How many of Amazon Web Service's offerings are based on open source software? I ask that question because there are four follow-up points I would like to make: 1. People use AWS quite extensively. 2. AWS is based on closed source software. 3. I don't think it is a coincidence that AWS is so successful. 4. It seems totally reasonable (and arguably the smartest thing to do) for Datomic to stay with a closed source model. Also, I have no affiliation with Datomic, but I have used it on projects.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  Datomic isn't Amazon. People aren't afraid of it going away and they know that Amazon actually uses their services as a part of their core business. This makes people much more willing to use something like Lambda when they might be afraid of the long-term viability of something like Datomic. Just look at what happened to Parse. What if Datomic one day gets bought by some company that doesn't care about offering Datomic cloud or keeping it maintained? At least with Parse, people could migrate to an open source solution.
dman 9y ago
Why arent people making such demands from their hardware vendors yet?
marknadal 9y ago
Several people (including Feross, who I know) have made comparisons of Datomic to gun, which I have made open source: https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun they're based on very similar principles and architecture of functional reactive programming (elm and eve are also in that camp, but not databases).

by kgwxd 9y ago

I really wish they'd open source Datomic and just make money on hosting. I can't bring myself to spend anymore of my life learning proprietary software in such a foundational domain.

bringtheaction 9y ago

Speaking of open source Datomic, check out mentat. It's not at all the same as an open source Datomic, because it's made for use on single devices not clusters, but it's inspired by Datomic so at the same time it is very much like Datomic. https://github.com/mozilla/mentat https://github.com/mozilla/mentat See also this blog post for some background and history: https://www.ncalexander.net/blog/2017/05/31/tofino-data-storage-and-how-we-got-to-mentat/ https://www.ncalexander.net/blog/2017/05/31/tofino-data-stor...

samuell 9y ago
Thanks, added to my WIP "awesome datalog" :) https://github.com/samuell/awesome-datalog https://github.com/samuell/awesome-datalog
jasonkostempski 9y ago
"The first version of Project Mentat, named Datomish" For some reason, that almost made me spit my drink. This looks cool, I'll check it out.

systems 9y ago

they wont ... or at least not any time soon if you search online they did address this repeated request in summary they do it for money, they dont know how to do it for money if its open-source, they already contributed clojure to the open source community someone already was vocally aggressive about this in a blog: http://z.caudate.me/on-whose-authority/ http://z.caudate.me/on-whose-authority/ and rich hickey didnt like it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_authority/do1olag/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_au... -- My personal take on this its not that datomic is closed source or that it cost a lot of money its that for its cost, its a valid option for fewer people i use ms sql at work, and it cost a lot of money but .. you can easily make the business case for it for datomic ... it would be much harder datomic is a niche product .. which is not bad .. it is just where its at

lgrapenthin 9y ago
I don't believe that Datomic is profitable for Cognitect or ever has been. Given how profitable it is for my customers that truly is a shame. I wish they'd open source it, primarily because reading Rich Hickeys code is always enlightening. But I can see how cautious they are about it and am just glad they haven't already sold out to some big company who pushes tons of "business needs" into it. IME you can't really compare Datomic to a SQL database. If you know Datomic it is like comparing a filesystem to a harddrive.
ExactoKnight 9y ago
Popular databases at scale can be tremendously popular too. This is the profit model of databases like Neo4J. Not sure if it worked out for them, but it seems like a viable route to popularity: go big at scale. Amazon or Heroku style.

j_s 9y ago

The similarities to FoundationDB (a unique closed source database technology acquired by Apple, no longer publicly available) encourages additional caution. Apple Acquires FoundationDB | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9259986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9259986 (2015) I poked around for a few minutes trying to find any assurances Datomic offers their customers should they be acquired, but couldn't even find the current EULA accessible online (older versions didn't seem to mention anything). https://www.datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html https://www.datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20160310175126/https://my.datomic.com/datomic.com/datomic-pro-edition-eula.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160310175126/https://my.datomi...) <Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code>

rdtsc 9y ago

It's interesting really. Thinking back 20 years, nobody would have expected or dreamed of a having a production level database be open source. It stared I think mainly with MySQL but it was really part of a greater shift. Compilers, OS-es, other tools and most software was closed source, by default. Shareware was a thing but it wasn't open source usually. To that effect I mostly credit the GNU licensing model. I know people love to hate it and praise BSD/Apache/MIT licensing but I believe without GNU, the proliferation would not have happened. But back to the point, it is interesting that the expectation is reversed completely - people expect databases to be open source by default. Having said that, I still support author's decision to keep it closed source, it's their work and they intend to monetize it in a particular way. It's been around for years, presumably it works for them, which is great.

Jach 9y ago
http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-software/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2004/08/28/the-economics-of-soft... seems pretty prescient given the glut of open source we find ourselves enjoying today. I do agree a lot of it can be credited to the GNU model, that is aligning on values over other things, but once more and more companies started understanding the economics that was immensely helpful too.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  That's a good post from Brian, can't believe I haven't see it yet. Thanks for sharing. > seems pretty prescient given the glut of open source we find ourselves enjoying today. Indeed, even regarding databases: [from blog post] > Yes, there have been traditional demand-side efforts like MySQL and research efforts like PostgreSQL, but neither of these “good enough” efforts has actually been good enough to compete with Informix, Oracle, Look at PostgreSQL today -- it's got a variety of indexing options, scalability improvements and various other things. It hasn't displaced Oracle but it's certainly not a research effort anymore.

dj-wonk 9y ago

I'd be interested to see if people would candidly unpack their rationale a bit more in this area. Before I get into that part, forgive me, but I must admit that I've begun to tune out when I hear the "make Datomic open source" commentary. Still, this particular line of commentary returns from time to time, so I'll weigh in. This reminds me of "meta stories" that take over the original story. On Hacker News, I'd much rather hear about technical commentary, lessons learned, or interesting domains and applications used in Datomic projects. I tend to be less interested in hearing armchair quarterbacking around what business model would work better for Datomic, particularly when the arguments seem: 1. largely motivated by self-interest. Open source is often perceived as "free" to software developers. It is relatively easy to say "I would rather not pay for this software, why isn't this open source?" Of course, open source is not necessarily really free, due to integration and maintenance costs. In the cases where open source projects are abandoned, projects face substantial risk and transition costs. 2. not framed around the long-term interests of Datomic (at least the arguments rarely seem to make suggestions from the perspective of Cognitect, which invests in the product and makes income from sales) It is easy to say "make it open source". It is harder for a company to find a business model that works. It seems that Datomic's business model is working. There is a free tier and paid tiers. I know that I cannot properly summarize all perspectives with the ideal amount of nuance. Perhaps some people think it is really in Datomic's interest to be open source. Nevertheless, it seems to me that many arguments people make are somewhat unexamined. Let's go a level deeper. May I ask this: How many of Amazon Web Service's offerings are based on open source software? I ask that question because there are four follow-up points I would like to make: 1. People use AWS quite extensively. 2. AWS is based on closed source software. 3. I don't think it is a coincidence that AWS is so successful. 4. It seems totally reasonable (and arguably the smartest thing to do) for Datomic to stay with a closed source model. Also, I have no affiliation with Datomic, but I have used it on projects.

chickenfries 9y ago
Datomic isn't Amazon. People aren't afraid of it going away and they know that Amazon actually uses their services as a part of their core business. This makes people much more willing to use something like Lambda when they might be afraid of the long-term viability of something like Datomic. Just look at what happened to Parse. What if Datomic one day gets bought by some company that doesn't care about offering Datomic cloud or keeping it maintained? At least with Parse, people could migrate to an open source solution.

dman 9y ago

Why arent people making such demands from their hardware vendors yet?

marknadal 9y ago

Several people (including Feross, who I know) have made comparisons of Datomic to gun, which I have made open source: https://github.com/amark/gun https://github.com/amark/gun they're based on very similar principles and architecture of functional reactive programming (elm and eve are also in that camp, but not databases).