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Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? Also

Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? Also, how does FoundationDB compare (in general, and in performance) to: - CockroachDB (competitor) https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2-dot-0-perf-strides/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/2-dot-0-perf-strides/ - Redis (competitor) https://redis.io/topics/benchmarks https://redis.io/topics/benchmarks - GUN (ours) https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in-IE6-on-2GB-Atom-CPU https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/100000-ops-sec-in-IE6-on-2... - Fauna (competitor) https://fauna.com/enterprise#Scalability https://fauna.com/enterprise#Scalability - VoltDB (competitor) https://www.voltdb.com/blog/2017/10/02/comparing-fast-data-performance-a-comparison-of-voltdb-and-cassandra-benchmarks/ https://www.voltdb.com/blog/2017/10/02/comparing-fast-data-p... - RocksDB (competitor) https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/performance-benchmarks https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/wiki/performance-benchma... Is the the big boom in FoundationDB just that it is "now Open Source", or that Apple vetted it (why didn't they keep it closed source?), or is there something distinctly unique about FoundationDB that it surpasses a bunch of other tried and true systems?

owaislone 8y ago
I think one major distinction is that Foundation DB can be used to build most of the databases you mentioned above because of its architecture.
- marknadal 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that is true the other way around though: Back in 2011 I built a couple DBs with Redis, and I've definitely seen people swapping other databases (MySQL, MongoDB, etc.) storage engine for RocksDB and others. I also know the storage engine we wrote (Radix Storage Engine) could be used to build LevelDB and Cassandra on top. Even Cockroach makes for a pretty solid storage engine. Could you give an example of why you couldn't use VoltDB to get FoundationDB like properties?
  - owaislone 8y ago
    It is possible to write code to add a compatibility layer on top of any DB to make it work like any other DB. Foundation DB's architecture specifically accounts for this. It was designed from the ground up to allow building different interfaces/layers. We can write compilers for any language to compile it to Python bytecode. That does not make python VM and .NET CLR the same thing. CLR clearly has a design goal of allowing multiple languages to run.
sigstoat 8y ago
> Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? there's nothing to clarify. there are people spewing nutty weirdness, and then there's https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE if that somehow isn't convincing, they distribute linux binaries.
- marknadal 8y ago
  Thank you! This is legit, glad to see it is Apache2. EDIT: Why on earth are people downvoting this comment, is Apache2 hated by most HNers?? It is one of the best licenses out there. EDIT 2: RE: @sigstoat comment: I read through the whole article and even checked out and read through JosephG's (ShareJS author) FDB repo before commenting, and had even read the other comments (which is where I saw the MacOS thing). Just to clear the air (thanks @sigstoat for suggesting an answer). I followed FDB back when it was proprietary too, which is part of my curiosity if proprietary -> OSS receives a bigger reaction than companies like CockroachDB who have always been OSS. It has taken CockroachDB years to get to 13K stars, compare to FDB's 7K+ in just two weeks, I'm really interested in how/why behind these mechanics.
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    > Why on earth are people downvoting this comment all of your comments appear to be getting downvotes, probably because they look suspiciously as though you haven't even spent 45 seconds on the website, despite being in the database space yourself.
artimaeis 8y ago
> Could somebody clarify the license? The license is Apache 2.0. https://tldrlegal.com/license/apache-license-2.0-(apache-2.0) https://tldrlegal.com/license/apache-license-2.0-(apache-2.0... > I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? https://www.foundationdb.org/download/ https://www.foundationdb.org/download/ There are binaries available for macOS, Ubuntu, RHEL and Windows. You're allowed to run it literally anywhere you're able to get it to run. Instructions for compiling from source can be found in the Github readme.
dwaite 8y ago
> ...but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? I believe they were positing that CI would be difficult, since Apple limits macOS to running on Apple hardware.

owaislone 8y ago

I think one major distinction is that Foundation DB can be used to build most of the databases you mentioned above because of its architecture.

marknadal 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that is true the other way around though: Back in 2011 I built a couple DBs with Redis, and I've definitely seen people swapping other databases (MySQL, MongoDB, etc.) storage engine for RocksDB and others. I also know the storage engine we wrote (Radix Storage Engine) could be used to build LevelDB and Cassandra on top. Even Cockroach makes for a pretty solid storage engine. Could you give an example of why you couldn't use VoltDB to get FoundationDB like properties?
- owaislone 8y ago
  It is possible to write code to add a compatibility layer on top of any DB to make it work like any other DB. Foundation DB's architecture specifically accounts for this. It was designed from the ground up to allow building different interfaces/layers. We can write compilers for any language to compile it to Python bytecode. That does not make python VM and .NET CLR the same thing. CLR clearly has a design goal of allowing multiple languages to run.

sigstoat 8y ago

> Could somebody clarify the license? I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? there's nothing to clarify. there are people spewing nutty weirdness, and then there's https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/foundationdb/blob/master/LICENSE if that somehow isn't convincing, they distribute linux binaries.

marknadal 8y ago
Thank you! This is legit, glad to see it is Apache2. EDIT: Why on earth are people downvoting this comment, is Apache2 hated by most HNers?? It is one of the best licenses out there. EDIT 2: RE: @sigstoat comment: I read through the whole article and even checked out and read through JosephG's (ShareJS author) FDB repo before commenting, and had even read the other comments (which is where I saw the MacOS thing). Just to clear the air (thanks @sigstoat for suggesting an answer). I followed FDB back when it was proprietary too, which is part of my curiosity if proprietary -> OSS receives a bigger reaction than companies like CockroachDB who have always been OSS. It has taken CockroachDB years to get to 13K stars, compare to FDB's 7K+ in just two weeks, I'm really interested in how/why behind these mechanics.
- sigstoat 8y ago
  > Why on earth are people downvoting this comment all of your comments appear to be getting downvotes, probably because they look suspiciously as though you haven't even spent 45 seconds on the website, despite being in the database space yourself.

artimaeis 8y ago

> Could somebody clarify the license? The license is Apache 2.0. https://tldrlegal.com/license/apache-license-2.0-(apache-2.0) https://tldrlegal.com/license/apache-license-2.0-(apache-2.0... > I was excited this was Open Source, but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? https://www.foundationdb.org/download/ https://www.foundationdb.org/download/ There are binaries available for macOS, Ubuntu, RHEL and Windows. You're allowed to run it literally anywhere you're able to get it to run. Instructions for compiling from source can be found in the Github readme.

dwaite 8y ago

> ...but then some people say you are only allowed to run it on MacOS? How can that be? I believe they were positing that CI would be difficult, since Apple limits macOS to running on Apple hardware.