Comment by ddorian43 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ddorian43 | Hacker News Reader

> YugabyteDB: Fake Open Source. Special shout out here for not even linking to instructions for how to build the database in the readme.

All the features are open source. Here is how to build from source https://docs.yugabyte.com/latest/contribute/core-database/bu....

> What do I mean by Fake Open Source? A project that has a large percentage of its contributors beholden to a single organization/entity to me is not really open source in spirit.

Well, somebody gotta start the project, no? Feel free to contribute though. Since it reuses PostgreSQL, it directly inherits the "postgresql community commits". The same with being a fork of Apache Kudu fork.

> If there's an "Enterprise" product and the organization calls the source code for the main project the "Community Edition" or something like it, it's not Real Open Source.

The "Enterprise" edition is "just" some scripts that make deployment & monitoring easier (and includes 24/7 developer support). All c++ features are open source.

And it's still young. You can't compare against PostgreSQL that has 20+ years of being available.

Fair point re: "someone has to start the project". I think Yugabyte is neat, and I want to invest in it as a platform, but I can't help but look at the project and feel like it's not set up for success should the Yugabyte the company fail. I hope I'm wrong and in 10 years it looks something like the Postgres community.

I also did eventually find the docs for building the database. It just feels odd to have a roadmap in the readme but no actual information for getting set up on development. It's one of those things (and I grant it's a very small thing) that makes me feel like the platform isn't really for the community.

> should the Yugabyte the company fail

Probably true as of now. But they have enough funds for some time to seed the project in the worst case scenario.

> It just feels odd to have a roadmap in the readme but no actual information for getting set up on development

Because 99% of developers just want to use it instead of contribute in c++. And the docs are pretty big. We'll include a link for contributors/building docs in the readme.

It takes like 10 years to create a new database ready for production. And not everyone can contribute a quick patch to it, it needs some extensive skills.

But we're extremely open to outside contributors. And we've accepted fixes/features outside of the roadmap. And the license is free enough that you can build a competitor with it.

Source: I work there.

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