Cockroach Labs, the entity behind the powerful cloud-native distributed database CockroachDB, announced significant changes to its licensing model, signaling a potential retreat from its open-source roots.
As of November 18, 2024, the company will consolidate its offerings into a single, more restrictive license structure. This shift encapsulates the evolving business strategies prioritizing proprietary advantages while compromising on the open-source freedom that once drew in a vast community of developers.
But first, let’s say a few words about the software for those unfamiliar with it. CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database designed for cloud scalability and resilience. It automatically replicates data across multiple nodes to ensure high availability and immediate consistency, making it extremely robust against system failures. Now, back to the topic.
Traditionally, the database is available in two versionsโa free Core version and a feature-rich Enterprise versionโcatering to a broad audience that includes individual users as well as large enterprises. However, this is about to change because of the following.
Despite its state-of-the-art resilience, CockroachDB’s versatility led to a paradox where scaled businesses could operate using the less feature-intensive Core version, bypassing the costly Enterprise license. Spencer Kimball, CEO at Cockroach Labs, Inc., said:
“Two trends have emerged in the usage of our Core product. First, startups and other small businesses have often shown a desire to use Enterprise features not available in Core. And second, a growing number of scaled businesses are compromising on using the full capabilities of CockroachDB, eschewing the Enterprise license for free usage of Core. The irony of CockroachDBโs state-of-the-art resilience is that as the product has matured, use cases can increasingly be run in production with minimal operator overhead and support requirements.”
In response, Cockroach Labs has decided to streamline its offering into a single Enterprise version, which will be available as both a free and a paid service, depending on the user’s revenue scale and requirements.
This new licensing model will replace the Core version entirely, with the company vowing to keep its code “source available” rather than truly open source.
This leads us to a question that’s been discussed many times before: Why did this happen? The answer is trivial: large cloud providers often use developers’ work without properly compensating them.
They incorporate these developers’ solutions into their own systems, bypassing the companies that originally developed the software. The “source available” license is one safeguard to avoid this. It provides access to the softwareโs source code, allowing users to study and modify it. However, it restricts its commercial use, redistribution, or the creation of derivative works unless additional conditions are met.
So, under the new model, CockroachDB will offer a 30-day trial and a free tier for individuals, students, and small businesses with annual revenues under $10 million. These changes are designed to draw smaller entities towards using the Enterprise capabilities without the financial burden, yet they subtly push larger businesses towards a paid model.
However, things can also be seen from a different angle. For open-source supporters and a significant portion of the tech community, this move away from a fully open-source model to a more controlled “source available” framework may raise concerns about the dilution of open-source principlesโtransparency, collaboration, and unrestricted access.
And these concerns are not without basis. Just a reminder: CockroachDB started in 2014 as fully open-source software licensed under Apache 2.0. In 2019, however, the database switched to BSL (Business Source License), which allows companies to release their software as open source with certain restrictions.
Now, its latest strategy looks a lot like Oracleโs: offering both proprietary Enterprise and Cloud versions alongside a free tier. From here on, it remains to be seen what will happen.
Just a heads-up: over the past year, tech companies like Hashicorp with Terraform and Redis have made similar shifts in licensing policies. Both transitioned from open-source licenses to more restrictive ones.
This led to an immediate reaction from the open-source community, resulting in several new project forks. Some of these, like OpenTofu and Valkey, have gained significant traction and success. We’ll find out in the coming months whether history will repeat itself with CockroachDB.
For more information, refer to the official announcement.
