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Comment by shitgoose | Hacker News Reader

"they are sitting on one of the most impressive software achievements around and refusing to share it"

they tried. About a year ago they released 32 bit version for free with shockingly liberal license - anything goes, including commercial use, unlimited. About couple of months ago they pulled it back and replaced with free non-commercial use only. well, they are the owners, it is their call, but still k will remain as "one of the most impressive software achievements around", orthogonal to most of the [fucked up] IT trends of the past 15 years. It is a shame if it fades into a quantitative elitist oblivion.

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This is the classic "innovators dilemma". My 2-cents: Kx has a good business selling kdb+ licenses to the big banks and trading firms. They've been exploring how to expand beyond this niche, but many big data/analytics startups go straight for the FOSS solutions. In addition to the cost/licensing advantages of FOSS, a large user-base and ecosystem has developed around things like mongoDB, giving them compelling business advantages over kdb+ (even with kdb+ performance advantages).

Although mongoDB is a demonstration of how to build a successful business around open-source, it's very different to start out that way rather than move that way after you're already established as closed/licensed product. Kx would have to essentially kill-off their existing profit stream with the goal that they could build a larger business around FOSS kdb+. That's a risky proposition, fraught with many pitfalls.

It is a shame they backed-off of the fully-open 32-bit version. At least that had some potential to spur some user-base/ecosystem growth (at a minimum, this could have encouraged the development of novel clients/editors/REPLs/debuggers/charting/etc...), without threatening their core profit stream.

It's not obvious to me that an open core business can sustain the necessary margins to be interesting as an engineering company rather than a glorified services business. There are been very few examples (friend of mine argues it's just RedHat).

You are correct though that their model over the years has been to extract a large amount, up front, from a small number of users. They (mostly FD) have failed to make the leap to users outside finance due to what I'd call cultural reasons. They also lack strong technical leadership imnsho (they're, at heart, not an engineering company).

I'd certainly take a swing at doing an open source version for them but not clear to me that they'd know how to play it.

If you got a free 32-bit version while while the terms were "shockingly liberal" then maybe those are the terms that govern the use of that binary? I don't know for sure.

I do know in addition to changing the license they have made changes to the software since that time. The size of the binary has increased.

I worry more about Kx being acquired by some large company, maybe a competing database vendor, that cares little about software quality.

yes, if you got the binary during that "liberal" period, you are free to use it under "liberal" terms.

KDB with a 2GB addressable RAM limit is almost pointless. It was good that they were at least trying to encourage new developers, but you could never build anything serious with that limitation.

Ask the commenter one down from me, 'wsfull, he knows what I'm talking about!

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