
How We're Building a Business to Last - tosh
https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/how-were-building-a-business-to-last/?m=1
======
tybit
I wonder if we will eventually see open source projects getting a fair cut
from cloud vendors. For example, with AWS both their cache offerings are built
on open source (redis and memcached), many of their DB offerings (Aurora and
RDS versions of MySQL and Postgres) etc.

It seems like giving a meager cut back to these companies could go a long way,
rather than forcing them to compete with added features on their own SaaS
offerings.

I wonder if this could be done via licensing, i.e a commercial license that
only kicks in when you offer the project as a service.

Does anyone know of anything being done like this?

~~~
chimeracoder
> I wonder if this could be done via licensing, i.e a commercial license that
> only kicks in when you offer the project as a service.

The AGPL can be used this way. The project is free and open source, but people
wanting to sell it as a service will pay for a commercial license instead of
using the AGPL.

~~~
justincormack
Only if they want to modify it and not give back. If people want to use the
code as is AGPL doesn't really help.

~~~
lewisl9029
And from the outside, it's nigh impossible to know if the source code for a
hosted open-source product has been modified or not, unless they make it
blatantly obvious, which makes the AGPL extremely difficult to enforce. In
addition, a lot of great hosted open-source products are designed to be
extensible through plugin architectures so that its functionality can be
extended through code that lives outside of the core codebase, and AGPL can
introduce a perverse incentive to close off the product for extension to the
detriment of the quality of the code base and the experience of end-users, in
the name of not circumventing the protections provided by AGPL.

That said, AGPL is still my go-to license to reach for when I build open-
source products that can be self-hosted, but it's by no means a silver bullet,
even for its intended purpose.

------
lewisl9029
> features necessary for a startup to succeed will be APL, and part of the
> open core; a feature which is primarily useful only to an already successful
> company will be CCL, and part of the enterprise product.

This sounds like an excellent guiding principle to strive for in an open-core
development model. There's definitely still a fine line to walk to determine
how to apply that principle to each new feature, but it's encouraging to see
that they've at least put enough thought to arrive at a reasonable-sounding
compromise to hold themselves to.

I personally still vastly prefer to use and build products that are entirely
open, funded through hosted SaaS services and support contracts, but that
model definitely doesn't fit very well for infrastructure products like
databases where a very significant portion of the user base would prefer to
self host.

And speaking as a pragmatist, if a open-core product's paid features genuinely
only become useful once a product reaches a scale where licensing costs become
insignificant relative to the revenue generated by the product, and the source
code for those paid features are readily available to be inspected and
extended, then as far as I'm concerned it's as good as any fully open-source
alternative from a licensing perspective.

I'd much rather see companies use a open-core model like this that makes
reasonable compromises in order to sustain their business rather than close
off their product entirely. This is especially important for core
infrastructure products like databases, where the difference between open-core
and fully proprietary often means the difference between a product worthy of a
cautious evaluation and one that's simply a non-option for many developers,
myself included. And that's always a shame because there are some very
promising proprietary products like this that I simply refuse to consider
using in a early stage product due to feature/scaling/deployment/licensing
restrictions (Datomic being the one that's always lingering in the back of my
mind).

------
noncoml
Seeing the fall of RethinkDB followed by the death of Basho is not an
encouraging sign for the industry, however my personal gut feeling is that if
they deliver what they promise, there is definitely room in the game for them.

~~~
erikrothoff
Is Basho dead?

~~~
grzm
Sadly, it is. HN discussion from 11 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15182566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15182566)

> _In 2017, Basho was put into receivership._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basho_Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basho_Technologies)

------
CoreXtreme
Cockroach in context of resiliency towards Nuclear impact is a great name for
this DB. But it doesn't sound serious.

~~~
bpizzi
I'm under the impression that this name based aversion is only existing among
English native speaking people. Here on the other side of the fence, even if
some do know what a cockroach is, I see no gut reactions (but I'm only a
single data point).

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
I can say for sure it's not just for English speaking people.

Rather, I'm actually curious why you think some cultures may even think that
cockroaches are OK.

Cockroaches are universally considered as pests all over the world because
they ARE pests, that's how they survive. Look up wikipedia to learn more about
cockroaches. They have an entire section describing the relationship between
humans and cockroaches, mostly about them being a pest.

~~~
icebraining
I read bpizzi's post as saying that, for non-native English speakers, the name
doesn't trigger the same aversion because the mental connection between the
English name and memories of the bugs is weaker, since we grew up calling them
something else. At least that's the case for me, as a non-native English
speaker myself.

------
adwmayer
Previous discussion from January
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13438476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13438476)

------
geetfun
Congrats and definitely it's for the long game. Changing infrastructure is a
hard thing to convince revenue generating companies to do, as they aren't as
price sensitive. It'll take years to grow the product to the point where it
reaches enough word of mouth recommendations to be considered the first
choice. That or you have some killer feature that everyone has got to have.

------
hunta2097
Suggestion : smaller cockroaches belong to the family Ectobiidae.

How about EctoDB ?

(I actually love the name CockroachDB but it seems to be an intractable
problem for some!)

~~~
delta1
I like the name but there's potential for confusion with Ecto[1]

[1] [https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto](https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto)

~~~
hunta2097
Dagnabit, we're running out of words!

Well, all Cockroaches belong to the order Blattodea... but BlattoDB conjures
the wrong feelings.

I'm sure these have been offered before, inspiration from nature:

TardigraDB (Water bears)

EchinoDB (starfish)

Morphallaxis

BorgDB (OK, that one is Star Trek!)

------
Radim
By making the association with cockroaches so explicit, they're placing a bet:

    
    
      *People will change their perceptions and "cockroach" will assume a new meaning. Instead of "something disgusting and negative", people will associate the word with "something resilient and positive".*
    

It's a tough bet to place. We've been around cockroaches for millions of
years, and the roots of the disgust are deeply biological (HW, not just SW).

Will the masses shift their mental model, for this company?

------
perpetualcrayon
I was hoping they'd choose DBaaS. But I get it. How do you really compete when
you'd ultimately probably have to run your operation on cloud providers'
infrastructure.

The "open core" model in open source has always felt like a "poor man's
acquihire" to me.

------
pryelluw
I just wish it had a better name like ResilientDB.

~~~
kcdev
Agreed. I actually didn't give it much attention for the longest time simply
because of the name (I'm talking years - just checked it out a few months ago
although I heard of it probably a couple years ago). Now that I've taken the
time to check out the project, I'm sold and will definitely use it in place of
Postgres, etc. But, the name does turn off some newbies. Eventually it may not
matter as all good brands eventually just become familiar.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
One of the reasons I'm put off by their name is because I know that they know
a lot of people don't like the name. Them knowing this AND keeping at it means
they don't care about losing out on tons of users because of this trivial
matter, which means they are not being professional. When it comes to
something like a database system, I want to use something that's built by a
professional team.

When I say they don't feel professional I don't mean their tech is
unprofessional. In fact I'm sure their tech is excellent and that's why
they're so confident enough to keep at this name. But what I'm saying is I
don't believe that the executives or whoever is in charge of the business is
reliable enough to keep the business stable.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable buying a piece of
enterprise software or service from a company whose CEO thinks it's OK to have
a brand name that turns off tons of users and don't care.

~~~
andrewchambers
turns off idiots, sure, I honestly can't believe the stupidity of these
bikeshed comments.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
That's not how bikeshedding works

~~~
andrewchambers
Instead of discussing the merits of the business model, or technology, they
are discussing what it is called, because it is easier.

It is not bikeshedding in the traditional sense, but the spirit is the same.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
With that reasoning, every single discussion thread that contains criticism is
bikeshedding.

Bikeshedding is for people who care about a project in one way or another. In
their mind they're contributing because they're providing feedback, but
overall they're just wasting time because their "work" is far from
significant, which means they are not really achieving what they think they're
achieving.

In this case most people who complain about their name are not their users.
Some actually do want to be excited about their tech and want to be their
users but they are not. Which means none of these have any intention of trying
to make this project better. I am not their employee nor their shareholder.
Why should I care about them?

"Bikeshedding" only applies to people who have stakes in a project or care
about the success of the project because they are foolishly wasting time on
something that doesn't matter when they actually think they are contributing.

This is not the case in this case. I do not care about cockroachdb and I am
not trying to contribute to their success. I just bitch about it because i
think it's a stupid decision. This is not bikeshedding.

~~~
andrewchambers
It's like criticizing the hairstyle of your doctor. Do you complain when users
report 'bugs' to you too?

My first reaction when I heard that name was to think - 'must be designed to
be hard to kill'.

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
If I went to a dentist and he had a mohawk with pink hair, I would be
concerned. And that's how most people react too. I'm not a fan of dressing up
which is why I can't imagine myself working at a wall street firm, but at the
same time it's arrogant to think that you can beat everyone else even when you
are clearly exhibiting a behavior some people find repulsive.

If there was another dentist with exactly the same skills both technically and
socially, there is no reason for patients to go to the guy with pink mohawk.

------
king_magic
Stubbornly and childishly keeping a name that is revolting is not what I'd
call 'building a business to last'.

The name is instinctively disgusting. I will never recommend this product to
any of my clients for that reason alone.

~~~
evgen
And I am sure that they are very happy to not have you or your clients as
customers. Anyone who would base a technical decision on a name should never
be in a position to influence technical decision-making, and anyone who hires
such unqualified people deserves the bad advice they will receive.

~~~
king_magic
Sorry, but technical decisions _also_ need to be based on trust, and a company
that chooses a name like this is _not_ a shining example of trust. But we're
not going to see eye to eye on this, so let's end it here without anymore
personal insults.

------
erikb
That's all well and nice, but we're currently not living in a world that will
last. We're on the brink of some huge changes: oil getting replaced as main
resource, AI becoming more and more able to really help making business &
political decisions, space flight becoming affordable, the big players on the
planet increasing their military and trying to buy each others valuable corps
and resources.

Even the biggest companies are more and more moving to flexible business
models, not really being anything like what the label says outside on the
door. Just think about banks. Once the most stable institutions in the world,
now not sure what they are. But everybody knows they need to adapt in some way
if they want to stay relevant.

Trump, Putin, Xi, all people you better don't mess with. All people who are
totally willing to mess with others. What happens when they start to mess with
each other? And maybe that just has symbolic value, but next week the German
government is re-elected, and the Nazis will get 10% of the parliament seats.

Nobody knows what the world will look like in 10 or 20 years. How can you
build something to last that is not a few hundred meters underneath a huge
mountain and self sufficient?

~~~
grzm
Yes, the world is changing and there's a lot that's uncertain. However, this
is really over the top and has little to do with the submission per se. Do you
have anything specific and constructive regarding the post? Strategies they
should be using to build their business? Say what you want about their
business strategy. At least it's an ethos.

~~~
erikb
I don't know if this fallacy has a name, but many people have it. In many
situations the goal itself must be adapted according to the environment, in
this case attempting to build a business to last is the mistake. The smarter
way is to not have a company and let others worry about it, or to build a
company to grow quickly, so that it can take a newly formed space quickly.

