[nirvana]

Riak is Open Source. It contains a very complete platform. Riak Core is a dynamo style distributed system platform (not database specific), Riak Pipe is workflows, Riak KV is a KV database, Riak Search is full text search over that database. And there's lot of other stuff I'm not even mentioning (like bitcask, the logging stuff, etc.)

When you go to the Riak project on github, what you find is actually sort of a skeleton, that has as dependancies all those projects I mentioned above, such as riak_kv, riak_pipe, etc.

Riak ES, the commercial offering, is a superset of Riak. It has Riak as a dependency, and adds the feature of cross datacenter replication. I think the real reason you buy Riak ES is because you're wanting to buy support.

Riak ES being a commercial product doesn't make Riak any less open source, than Oracle Server being a commercial product makes Linux less open source.

Also, Basho is keen to develop users of Riak ES, and customers of Riak (who don't spend any money) still get some support from Basho. Basho has a "Riak ES for startups" program, which gives you a huge discount.

I'm building my business on Riak because Riak is open source. IF Basho goes away, I'll still have Riak. There's nothing missing from Riak that I need.

I figure if I get big enough where I want to be running out of multiple data centers, I'll be big enough to afford Riak ES, and if I can't afford Riak ES at that point, then I'll be able to build my own solution. (I don't think it would be that hard, actually.)

[gizzlon]

I guess what he mean was this: "Open core (a.k.a. proprietary relicensing[1]) is a business model where an open source product is also made available commercially with non-open-source additions" [1]

I cant speak to Riak, but generally this model can create a conflict of interest between the "enterprise features" on the one hand and open source commitments on the other. For example if someone submits code to the opensource version that duplicates/overlaps an "enterprise feature"

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_core

[neonkiwi]

> I figure if I get big enough where I want to be running out of multiple data centers, I'll be big enough to afford Riak ES

I was thinking along those exact same lines, but a big unknown was pricing on their enterprise offering. That information is unavailable on the web, and despite my skepticism in contact-us-for-the-price situations, I filled out their online form, which is a request to be contacted by a representative.

I haven't heard from them, but they did put me on a mailing list—I got an email about this 'milestone release' today! Not quite what I wanted to know, though :)

Nirvana, or someone using their Enterprise offering, perhaps you could fill us all in on the price?

[mshneider718]

Hey neon...work for Basho so would like to research why you were not contacted...any details are greatly appreciated