[zerebubuth]

I think that one of the great benefits to open source platforms such as PostgreSQL, Hadoop, Kafka and others is that their open license guarantees no vendor lock-in. This means users can relax in the knowledge that the platform won't disappear if the original company disappears (or hikes prices), and means that it's possible to support the platform forever - even if that means bringing it in-house.

The Wallaroo license seems to be non-free, which I think is very unfortunate and a misses an opportunity to be more widely used: https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2017/09/open-sourcing-wallaroo...

[spooneybarger]

Those are certainly legitimate concerns. In the end, we are positioning ourselves as an open-core business. Some of what we offer with Wallaroo is always going to be commercial (even if the source is available). That part of what you raise isn't something we can really address. It's the business model we are comfortable with and think from talking to other companies that are the primary developers of an open source project is sustainable as a business.

Business model aside, I think you raise some interesting points about hikes prices, company disappears etc. This is something we'll be discussing over the next couple weeks. Its definitely an area of ambiguity that we need to address. Thank you for raising it.

[maelkum]

> The Wallaroo license seems to be non-free, which I think is very unfortunate and a misses an opportunity to be more widely used: (...)

Maybe. But then, if they require you to buy a license when you're using it to make money yourself (and don't try tell me that you can afford to run your hobby project on more than 24 CPUs but can't throw some money on the devs of your tools) then it is no longer "unfortunate" - it's just business. And don't forget that programmers need to eat too. "Widely used" does not directly translate to "making tons of money".

Bonus points to them for doing it from the beginning, instead of changing the licensing mode mid-flight.

[zerebubuth]

I absolutely agree that Wallaroo Labs wrote the code, and they get to decide what license is on it. It is, as you say, their business.

> And don't forget that programmers need to eat too. "Widely used" does not directly translate to "making tons of money".

I hadn't forgotten that; I wish every success to Wallaroo Labs, and hope that they are soon "making tons of money". I think their product could be very exciting.

Personally, I think their product would be even more exciting if it were fully open source. I think more people and companies would get involved, and that this would accelerate development and adoption. There are other business models which could support this (paid support, hosted instances, etc...) which are not incompatible with the software being fully open source.

Ultimately, the decision belongs to Wallaroo Labs. Their assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the available business models is clearly different from mine.