
RethinkDB Relicensed under Apache 2.0 - csmajorfive
https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-liberation-of-rethinkdb
======
mglukhovsky
Hey everyone, thanks to the rest of the RethinkDB leadership team and the CNCF
for their hard work! This wouldn't have been possible without a lot of effort
from our dedicated community.

You can read the announcement on RethinkDB's blog to find out about the
project's next steps: [https://rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-joins-linux-
foundation/](https://rethinkdb.com/blog/rethinkdb-joins-linux-foundation/)

We've 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)

~~~
chrisabrams
I'd like to point out that the OP of this comment is Mike the RethinkDB co-
founder. While the company may have perished, his spirit for the project only
got larger. Everyone buy Mike a beer.

~~~
TheMissingPiece
Yes it did... MG being our fearless leader has been everything :) Working with
the interim leadership team was a dream...

Thank you for being one of the most amazing communities around :)

(I'm the former community manager btw).

------
chrisabrams
RethinkDB leadership member here: happy to answer any questions for the next
hour or so.

One thing to note, this was not an easy process; our team has spent months
working daily on a solution. This was definitely our Plan A result, but we
never expected LF to step up and provide the sponsorship funding as well. Huge
thanks to LF/CNCF for helping close things in the end!

If you use RethinkDB please make sure to give a leadership member a hug if you
happen to be in SF/NYC/Nashville/Philly/etc.

~~~
neumino
Kudos to the team :) Thanks for giving RethinkDB a second chance to strive.

------
api
Feeling good about our decision to stick with it for our core infrastructure's
next incarnation. Still very sad that they didn't make it as a company. We
would have paid. RethinkDB is an unbelievable technology: better under the
hood _and_ IMHO easier to use than MongoDB, and combining NoSQL with some SQL-
like features that for us are good enough. The rough edges we've found so far
are minor.

We used PostgreSQL before and while excellent on a single node it's deeply
painful to cluster. You need a full time DBA to make sure you're doing it
right, as GitLab discovered, and when it fails it gives error messages that
seem more cryptic than C++ template errors. Amazon RDS was insanely pricey
compared to bare metal (our load is both CPU-bound and disk-IO-heavy bare
metal on OVH is >10X cheaper than Amazon) and Redshift didn't have pgsql
syntax yet. Even now that it does I'm not sure I want to be bound to it as I
have an instinctive aversion to cloud lock-in.

~~~
kod
Citus
([https://github.com/citusdata/citus](https://github.com/citusdata/citus)) is
pretty easy to use for distributed postgres.

~~~
macmac
Citus is interestingly licensed under the AGPL.

------
niftich
The GNU Affero GPLv3 has been a recurring topic during RethinkDB's existence,
but I cannot substantiate the same having been an issue for MongoDB. Links
appreciated.

Some instances of people asking about GNU Affero GPLv3 and RethinkDB:

(2014-11-16)
[https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/3347](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/3347)

(2015-06-16)
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rethinkdb/g5UEck3sqM...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rethinkdb/g5UEck3sqMs)

(2016-10-10) [https://sagemath.blogspot.com/2016/10/rethinkdb-must-
relicen...](https://sagemath.blogspot.com/2016/10/rethinkdb-must-relicense-
now-what-is.html)

(2017-01-09)
[https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/6221](https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/6221)

~~~
zb
Yes, this is a giant issue for MongoDB. For example here's Yahoo explaining
(in 2014) why they will never use it:

[http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-
dev/2014-Marc...](http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-
dev/2014-March/030510.html)

For the record, I personally think that this is 100% pure FUD (the thinking
behind it is described as "preposterous" later in the thread). Nevertheless,
if someone with the title of "Sr. Director Of Open Source, Open Standards" at
a company the size of Yahoo can buy in to this FUD, then most smaller
companies have no chance of distinguishing between fact and fantasy, and many
will steer clear as a precaution.

~~~
dublinben
Unfortunately, it's neither new nor surprising that a director of "Open
Source" at a large company would be spreading unfounded doubt about a strongly
copyleft free software license. It is ultimately against their employer's
interests to be compelled to publish their modifications.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
If you're playing the incentive game, you missed the obvious one: the _A_ GPL
remains completely untested in court (unlike the other one) and "FUD" is a
sensible approach to managing corporate risk in the absence of established
precedent. There is a lot of uncertainty about how far the AGPL's requirements
will go if the license is pressed in court, and how much of a vendor's
proprietary code will be "threatened" (I know this term is loaded, but think
from the perspective of the lawyers).

I realize every hacker on the planet feels that they have the finer points of
AGPL interpretation under firm mastery and are in a position to explain
contract and licensing law to lawyers, but a _vast_ number of lawyers at the
large shops have looked at AGPL now and advised caution in dealing with it
nearly across the board. If you want to characterize that as "unfounded doubt"
(which I've translated to FUD for you instead of pressing you on what
"unfounded" means without precedent), you're not technically wrong, but it
polarizes what is otherwise a reasonable position of uncertainty on a
significant amount of corporate risk. There are people who spend their entire
lives managing risk, and hackers are very quick to dismiss such concerns --
even beyond AGPL, a number of various risks could rapidly unravel an entire
corporation, and I'm often in conversations where the solution seems obvious
to an engineer.

The term FUD itself is dangerous, because very often uncertainty is a
perfectly valid approach to a legal problem such as licensing. Belittling
uncertainty by equating it to fear creates the flawed impression that we
should all act rashly all the time. Sometimes caution is good, even if it's
the other side of a debate you feel passionately about, and polarizing it will
not help you win over the cautious folks. Understanding their concerns and
meeting them at the table will go much further.

Knocking open source groups at large shops with scare quotes like that is a
bit weird, too. So Yahoo! starts an open source team, speaks openly about
their thinking around licenses, generally invests a lot of thinking in license
compliance and how to contribute back (Yahoo! is one of the bigger
contributors to FOSS that I can think of -- hello, Hadoop?), and then after
all that, free software advocates make comments like this one and cast some
aspect of the work as hostile to free software. That seems self-defeating to
me and I wish this whole conversation were less polarized, given that most
companies don't even have an "Open Source Intern."

~~~
tormeh
Isn't this just a problem with common law? In Civil Law, I would imagine the
license in itself would be enough information, no?

~~~
jsmthrowaway
No, because there's never been a ruling on legal interpretation of some
significant clauses in the AGPL, some of which can create unexpected exposure
of IP in unkind interpretations. You are correct in that people licensing
under the AGPL are entering into what they feel is their interpretation, but a
conflict over the terms of the license has not yet been decided impartially,
meaning there is still uncertainty over how such a conflict would play out if
pushed. Even for most companies with a progressive FOSS policy there is still
a vast ocean of proprietary code and systems, and many companies (including
both large companies who have studied the issue in my own career) have decided
the uncertainty of that IP exposure is enough to forbid usage of AGPL software
in totality.

This is not uncommon in the industry. To preempt that this attitude entails a
hatred of free software or GPL-style licenses, I should point out that the
same legal teams often approve GPLv3 software (which can be equally
contentious).

------
caniszczyk
FYI also Stripe has generously agreed to match up to $25,000 in donations:
[https://rethinkdb.com/contribute](https://rethinkdb.com/contribute)

------
eicnix
Awesome.

Although I wanted to use RethinkDB for new stuff I was very hesitant to
introduce a probably discontinued product. Using a Linux product with Apache 2
instead makes the decision to introduce RethinkDB much easier.

Is somebody already working on a operator for kubernetes like coreos did for
etcd [1]? What is your recommended kubernetes deployment for RethinkDB?

[1] [https://github.com/coreos/etcd-operator](https://github.com/coreos/etcd-
operator)

~~~
cpuguy83
While the CNCF helped front the funds to get the this going, RethinkDB is
totally under the Linux Foundation and not a CNCF project for now.

~~~
eicnix
Thank you for the correction.

------
divbit
Am I reading this right? Rethinkdb is now under apache 2? That's awesome news
- such great software.

~~~
chrisabrams
Yes this is currently in the works; going from AGPL -> ASLv2 is not as simple
as a Github PR, but we should hopefully resolve it in the next week or two.

~~~
tshannon
That is absolutely fantastic. I feel much more confident about the future of
rethinkdb now.

------
tyingq
Curious what they paid for the IP rights to do it. The earlier discussion
posted here indicated the IP holder wanted a fairly large figure to sell it.

~~~
dankohn1
We paid $25 K. (I'm the CNCF executive director.)

[https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/06/cncf-purchases-
rethinkdb...](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/06/cncf-purchases-rethinkdb-
source-code-contributes-linux-foundation-apache-license)

~~~
nacs
That seems like a great deal to me. Nice work by both parties.

------
kepano
This is very exciting. We've been using RethinkDB in production at Lumi for
the past two years and it's been nothing short of perfect. The prospect of
switching has been a nagging dread, but the continued pace of positive
announcements is reassuring. We've been contributing back in small ways here
and there, but plan to do so more actively now.

------
josephg
This is fantastic! I'm working on a little piece of fun realtime streaming
database tech, and up until now I thought I'd have to implement my own
realtime querying piece. Being able to lean on rethinkdb will make the whole
thing way easier to implement, and provide a better experience for my users.

My concern has been that there's a few missing features in rethinkdb - I want
to be able to resume query after a client gets disconnected without re-
downloading the result set. (If the data hasn't changed) and I want deeper
integration with rethinkdb's versioning system. But I've been too nervous
about making those changes myself and build on top of rethinkdb because of
license taint. Now this has all been solved. Its starting to look like a good
time to crack open the code and submit some patches! Thanks everyone who's
made this happen!

~~~
jwr
FWIW, I would also love to be able to resume queries. For the moment I
redownload the initial data, which is suboptimal (though honestly performance
hasn't been a problem yet).

------
overcast
So awesome, I didn't want to give up using RethinkDB! By far my favorite
database.

------
gkya
A work on the colours of this page: IDK if it's me only but light-grey font on
white background stabs my eyes, I can't even look at it. Why is this a la mode
now? Why go lighter than, say, #333 for text that's meant to be read?

~~~
GrinningFool
Pages like this I end up having to select the text to invert it and make it
readable. It works, but doesn't give feedback to the author that their color
choice is a bit broken...

------
z3t4
I think GPL did make sense before, but APL make more sense now. I do not fully
understand APL though, but it seems, like with MIT, there can be hostile
forks, where a competitor takes not only the code, but also the community and
the business.

------
gbrown_
It's great to see commercial bodies as well as CNCF not only take interest in
these sorts of things but actually push them forward for the benefit of all.

~~~
dankohn1
Thanks, though note that the CNCF (and our parent, the Linux Foundation) are
actually a 501(c)(6) non-profit. Most of our funding comes from corporate
members, though.
[https://www.cncf.io/about/members](https://www.cncf.io/about/members)

(I'm the CNCF executive director.)

~~~
andy_ppp
Looking at that page it's easy to forget sometimes how much value
GNU/Linux/etc. being free has made the world.

------
bpicolo
That's really awesome news, and makes the future of RethinkDB a very exciting
prospect!

~~~
devoply
Probably paid legitimate salary + bonus for the time the developers spent
developing it. That would be a fair compromise.

------
distantsounds
RethinkDB is a fantastic piece of software, I'm glad to see this happen.

------
tracker1
OT: Man, that font is way too thin and hard to read... really wish the weight
were closer to 500 instead of 300 (injected a style into head to make more
readable for me).

At least they only specified the one font-family and fallback (without
helvetica/arial, like a sane person)

~~~
dkersten
Too thin and too bright. I couldn't read it at all on my phone without using
the safari readability feature.

------
the_mitsuhiko
This is amazing. Thanks so much for everybody who made this possible!

------
jordigh
This really bugs me. Copyleft has always been feared by lawyers and corporate
people alike. Let's not forget how Ballmer called the GPL a cancer that
infects everything it touches. Yet, copyleft is our only defense against
abusive proprietary software and without copyleft we might not have the
fertile collaboration of projects such as Linux, git, or OpenWrt.

The AGPL is just an updated GPL. Back when software mostly came in boxes, the
GPL was as feared as the AGPL is now. Now that software mostly comes from the
internet, the AGPL is there to address this new distribution method. Now the
AGPL is the new cancer.

Overzealous lawyers trying to "protect" copyrights have indoctrinated an
entire generation of hackers that sharing code is a danger and the AGPL is the
prime threat. I have spoken to too many Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, or Google
employees that are convinced that sharing their source code would be
tantamount to death. The result is a world where their secret software
controls the news we read, the ads we see, the people we talk to, and even the
emotions we feel.

"Open source, but licensed under the AGPL.", says the article. There is no
"but" here. The AGPL is the very definition of "open source", because it
defends openness. If you have nothing to fear from open source, you have
nothing to fear from the AGPL.

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
I'm very outspoken against the GPL so take this comment with a grain of salt.

> The AGPL is just an updated GPL.

The AGPL is significantly more than an updated GPL and there are loads of
companies which have a blanket policy in place to not even get anywhere close
to AGPL code because of the uncertainties about how it actually works.

> The AGPL is the very definition of "open source", because it defends
> openness.

Maybe it's the definition of free software but it's definitely not the
definition of open source. Many of us in the open source community see our
work as something that should be open for everybody to use.

~~~
Flimm
If we're going to sink our time into the old copyleft vs permissive licenses
debate, I wish we would be more precise with our words.

AGPL is an open source license, according to OSI, the only authority on what
constitutes open source.
[https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0](https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0)

You say "open for everybody to use". Both open source licenses and free/libre
licences guarantee that the software is open for use. You're actually talking
about freedom to combine with closed source/proprietary software, not about
end-users freedom to use the software.

~~~
throwaway91111
If nobody uses a piece of software, its freedom is debatable.

I don't know of anyone using agpl'd code to build software people use.

~~~
SamReidHughes
You never heard of anybody using MongoDB?

~~~
ralfn
Yeah, that would be a great example of AGPL used to FORCE many parties to PAY
for a non-AGPL license.

For example, imagine Digital Ocean using MongoDB to store server
configurations. AGPL would force them to open-source their whole
infrastructure. All of it. Or pay to get a different license.

I don't have a moral argument to make here -- just making sure people realize
the actual trade-offs. AGPL is theoretically for a world where closed source
software is simply not allowed to co-exist with opensource, even if you don't
distribute it, but simply run it / host it / use it. But that world doesn't
exist, so it does the opposite: it is actually used to make sure some of your
users have to pay. It enables a business model.

~~~
jdelaney
> For example, imagine Digital Ocean using MongoDB to store server
> configurations. AGPL would force them to open-source their whole
> infrastructure. All of it. Or pay to get a different license.

I don't think that's correct. From MongoDB the company[0]:

> Note however that it is NOT required that applications using mongo be
> published. The copyleft applies only to the mongod and mongos database
> programs. This is why Mongo DB drivers are all licensed under an Apache
> license. You application, even though it talks to the database, is a
> separate program and “work”.

[0] [https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/the-
agpl](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/the-agpl)

------
netcraft
Great news! Excited to see what the community can do with it!

------
abraae
Sometimes the beauty of the free market is a joy to behold.

~~~
huragok
The company behind the software died an inglorious death. What does the market
have anything to do with this?

~~~
abraae
That it's financial burdens died with it but it's worthy parts were reborn in
a new form.

------
gigatexal
Glad to see this occur, would hate to have production code running without the
DB being supported. Kudos to everyone involved. Another win for OSS.

------
makkesk8
This is great, I see a bright future for rethinkdb!

I've used rethinkdb quite a bit and I was wondering if anything thinks its
suitable for time series data?

------
porker
How much did the CNCF have to pay for the code?

~~~
SkyRocknRoll
$25K

------
fcanesin
Was horizon included in the deal ?

~~~
mglukhovsky
Yes, Horizon was included. Since it's MIT licensed, it's already freely
available, but it joins The Linux Foundation under RethinkDB's aegis.

