I think DGraph looks really interesting, but I’m a bit concerned about the long-term fate of the project. In particular, the software is developed by a company that got a couple of seed funding rounds, and it’s not clear what are the interests of the various stakeholders. Do you already have a business plan? Will DGraph change license at some point, perhaps turning into a proprietary software? Or perhaps adopt one of those oss/proprietary dual licenses where important features are only added to the non-free version?
Hey @dudette,
The fact that we have funding means we can hire top engineers to work on Dgraph. In particular, we’re VC funded (not angels or individuals); which is quite significant for seed stage.
Our shareholders are in Dgraph for the long term. They want the project to succeed. We do in fact have a business plan; without that it would be hard to get funding.
You can read more about our licensing and business plans here:
Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, that link shows precisely what I was worried about…
we’ve started working towards a closed-source enterprise version of Dgraph. This version would contain many features useful to companies, namely:
Cluster management and monitoring
User authentication
Access control lists
Data encryption, and more
and
This simple change ensures that only Dgraph Labs owns the rights to add proprietary features
I’m thankful for what you’re releasing under GPL, but the point is that this “free” version is no different than an evaluation copy, or a “bait” to get people to use your proprietary, blobbed code. Indeed, you’re keeping important features out of the libre version on purpose!!
Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable to start learning and contributing to a new software that constantly tries to make me dependent on non-open, proprietary, essential features.
Your model doesn’t add anything of value. You’re just “another graph database like all the others”.
Our reasons for having a proprietary version is clear. We want to build the best graph database out there, and having money helps us do that. Our free version contains all the features that would be needed by a startup to run and scale their operations. The presence of proprietary features doesn’t make something crippleware. If we removed features, then yes, but we didn’t do that. So, I won’t expand or defend that any further.
But, just to guide you, if you’re looking for a graph DB where there’s no commercial interest by any particular company, or the developers of the software, you should look at http://janusgraph.org/. It’s a fork of TitanDB.
I’m not an expert about licences, but I think you missed an important part if you’re looking to contribute, I’m quoting the same post.
It looks like you’re only looking something to dispute.
I think the core is pretty solid with the current features to be useful in different scenarios.
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