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Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

Try the "Services" section. As far as I know they only offered commercial support and training. I'm not sure whether they also had a "dual licensing" model (i.e. allowing customers to give them money to get a copy of RethinkDB with a proprietary license instead of AGPL) but it's certainly not mentioned on the website.

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hmm...dual licensing should really have been clearly advertized, together with corresponding commercial pricing. Most enterprise customers won't evaluate products that are on AGPL only, even for internal needs.

To be honest, I didn't realize it was AGPL until they shut down (though I have to admit I haven't used it in any real project and thus haven't really evaluated it too deeply).

My understanding would have been that AGPL means all code that interfaces with the database (i.e. all code that uses ReQL) must also be AGPL. That would have instantly disqualified RethinkDB for me (whether the understanding is right or not) and I'm sure I'm not the only one to think that way.

Considering even GPL-licensed software often prominently advertises commercial dual-licensing, this seems like a major oversight (if it wasn't for ideological reasons).

> My understanding would have been that AGPL means all code that interfaces with the database (i.e. all code that uses ReQL) must also be AGPL.

The client drivers are licensed separately under the Apache license. Only the database server itself is AGPL. Read the last question on the rethinkdb.com FAQ: https://rethinkdb.com/faq/

Oh, absolutely. That is why I said "intuition". It doesn't matter what the license actually means. It only matters that it's a huge red flag that may prevent people from investigating further.

I agree that people will have exactly your concerns (despite that the drivers are apache). If Slava re-releases everything under the Apache license, I think that the chances of RethinkDB having a future are much greater. Considering a relicense is issue number 2 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fy-drBGDTyibwEBBAX6G5otq...

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