
RethinkDB and Compose: Where Next - andrewbarba
https://www.compose.com/articles/rethinkdb-and-compose-where-next/
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nodesocket
Wish RethinkDB could have created a product similar to MongoDB's Atlas[1]
which perhaps could have been the revenue stream they needed.

[1] [https://www.mongodb.com/cloud](https://www.mongodb.com/cloud)

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jondubois
RethinkDB (the company) spent 7 years creating amazing value by building
RethinkDB (the database) from scratch.

Compose.io probably only spent 1 or 2 months to incorporate it as part of
their 'as-a-service' offerings...

Guess which company actually survives and profits from all the value which was
created?!

... And this 'news release' from Compose.io is the business equivalent of a
vulture feasting on the carcass of its own mother.

~~~
nemo44x
I have to agree here a bit. However, there was nothing stoping Rethink from
building their own service and promoting it as the "official" RethinkDB
service. They have the unique opportunity of making it better than any other
service by:

-Updating the service the day new versions go GA

-Faster turn around on breaking changes

-Ability to provide authentic expert support

-Ability to provide additional functionality power users would pay for and 3rd parties like compose would not implement

They wouldn't capture the entire market but they could be the leader in it.

The open source business model is hard enough. It becomes very difficult when
every other Cloud simply wants to offer your product and you capture none of
that. And then the project dies and no one wins.

Open source companies need to be the leaders of their tools, provide the best
services around them and differentiate their offering from the open source
code base. If you can't do that you won't have a company. Asking for donations
is not a business model.

RethinkDB was a good database with a bad business.

~~~
mrkurt
Running a database service is really, really hard. It's an obvious thing for
OSS database companies to try, but the skills and experience necessary to do
it are not at all the same as what it takes to build databases. MongoDB took
_years_ to launch theirs, and then even more time to get it working well.

~~~
nemo44x
I guess the alternative is to not try, put all your resources into making
Aphyr cultists happy and then going out of business a few months later.

Built on top of existing cloud architecture and with a few experienced
developers a cloud service can be made available in months. mLab didn't take
years to build it and get it right, for instance. And those folks were a tiny
operation years ago when they started. I'm not discounting the effort but I've
been around that effort and have seen DB-As-A-Service go live with a couple
smart people in a matter of months. AWS API's, containers, Zookeeper and come
Python and you're well on your way. Again - it's hard but so is making a DB of
Rethink's quality. It can be done, however. You start small and you go from
there. You exploit your advantages as you build a fantastic product over time.

I'm not saying a SAAS would have saved them as I'm pretty sure their biggest
issue is adoption in the first place.

But there's something to be said about your business plan when someone hosting
your software is doing well why you, the owner, has to find a new job.

