Apple Open Sources FoundationDB (macrumors.com) 50
Apple's FoundationDB company announced on Thursday that the FoundationDB core has been open sourced with the goal of building an open community with all major development done in the open. The database company was purchased by Apple back in 2015. As described in the announcement, FoundationDB is a distributed datastore that's been designed from the ground up to be deployed on clusters of commodity hardware. Mac Rumors reports: By open sourcing the project to drive development, FoundationDB is aiming to become "the foundation of the next generation of distributed databases: "The vision of FoundationDB is to start with a simple, powerful core and extend it through the addition of "layers". The key-value store, which is open sourced today, is the core, focused on incorporating only features that aren't possible to write in layers. Layers extend that core by adding features to model specific types of data and handle their access patterns. The fundamental architecture of FoundationDB, including its use of layers, promotes the best practices of scalable and manageable systems. By running multiple layers on a single cluster (for example a document store layer and a graph layer), you can match your specific applications to the best data model. Running less infrastructure reduces your organization's operational and technical overhead." The source for FoundationDB is available on Github, and those who wish to join the project are encouraged to visit the FoundationDB community forums, submit bugs, and make contributions to the core software and documentation.
it begs the question (Score:1)
Is it webscale?
Re: it begs the question (Score:2)
Re: it begs the question (Score:2)
Fuck yeah!
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It's spelled Murphy's, you moron.
No, it [wikipedia.org] isn't.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Well that doesn't mean they're worthless to many. Regardless, a less misleading headline would be: "Apple is the 7000th vendor to open source their key value store after discovering the space is too crowded".
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They may have niches where they shine, but PHB's and resume buzzword padders may use them where not appropriate. For example, some fool stuck our shop with a "microservices" architecture when we don't need it, wasting time and money. Goddam idiots.
How is it free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you really want to be making Apple products better FOR FREE?
The point of Open Source is that EVERYONE gets a better product "for free" because by contributing changes Apple benefits - but so do you, or anyone else that chooses to use the code. Why would you choose to contribute if you were not also benefitting to begin with?
In fact in a very real sense Apple is not getting anything "for free". There is very real time that Apple is paying for, that has gone into building this system that Apple has opened, and also Apple is paying for time to monitor and curate and test contributions. All of that takes time and money and is not "free", far too many people think of actual code as the beginning and end but it is just a tiny part of a more complex puzzle.
Some are more equal than others (Score:2)
I thought the point of Open Source is that EVERYONE gets a better product "for free" EQUALLY
That is true to the extent you use the code. If someone does not use the code, they obviously get less benefit. However someone trying to do something with open source code can easily benefit FAR more than the original developer and maintainer - sure Apple benefited from WebKit for example, but it seems to me lots of companies got WAY more value out of it than Apple did, because they would have spent a far greater
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Do you really want to be making Apple products better FOR FREE?
The point of Open Source is that EVERYONE gets a better product "for free" because by contributing changes Apple benefits - but so do you, or anyone else that chooses to use the code.
And the point of Open Core is to release internals of your product as Open Source to appear more open and maybe to get people to serve as your unpaid employees while making sure you don't release enough code to be useful outside of your product and to limit contributions that attempt to re-implement those parts.
See Open Darwin as a successful example.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really want to be making Apple products better FOR FREE?
The point of Open Source is that EVERYONE gets a better product "for free" because by contributing changes Apple benefits - but so do you, or anyone else that chooses to use the code. Why would you choose to contribute if you were not also benefitting to begin with?
In fact in a very real sense Apple is not getting anything "for free". There is very real time that Apple is paying for, that has gone into building this system that Apple has opened, and also Apple is paying for time to monitor and curate and test contributions. All of that takes time and money and is not "free", far too many people think of actual code as the beginning and end but it is just a tiny part of a more complex puzzle.
I agree, that's how symbiotic relationships work. Apple originally forked KHTML, turned it into WebKit and then open sourced WebKit, people contributed to it and some of the WebKit code was even re-integrated into KHTML. WebKit was then forked by Apple's competitor Google to become Blink (Nokia also forked WebKit at one point) so KHTML in a number of modified forms is used in large number of browsers. The same goes for Cups, which Apple acquired, open sourced, and is used extensively by Linux distributions
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Taking the view that using this software is 'helping Apple' is a pretty simplistic attitude, the way FOSS works is considerably more complex than so that it can be reduced to 'AppleCode==evil'.
Exactly!
But it doesn't fit into the Slashtard/Freetard mantra.
Re: (Score:3)
"Do you really want to be making Apple products better FOR FREE?"
Sure. That's the same with other open source projects like WordPress. I make it better, I benefit from it, if the community likes it they incorporate it in the main line and everyone benefits. Works.
Re: (Score:1)
Do you really want to be making Apple products better FOR FREE?
Because if you provide code under a contributor license agreement to them, that is what you will be doing.
In theory, sure. In practice, not under this license. If they were to use GPL, then I'd be happy to make any contributions that were useful to me. Since they aren't, I'd rather use something else. Foundationdb does seem to be about the fastest thing around that does what it does, though. (I haven't used it, but I browsed around for a while before writing this comment.)
Re: Same issue as CUPS: (Score:2)
Like Webkit you mean? Actually 80% of MacOS has always been open source
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Like Webkit you mean? Actually 80% of MacOS has always been open source
So what? Wake me up when it's Free Software.
iPod (Score:2)
Shame it's not the DB format used on the later iPod Nano music players, because that would have been useful.
Re:Requires mono? (Score:5, Informative)
A quick look through the source code shows the vast majority is C++ with some Python thrown in. The only CSharp I can see is in "flow/ActorCompiler". There is not much there and it could probably be converted into Python with a little effort.
Now that this is an open source project it is likely that the CSharp will be rewritten in another language. The thought of having to install Mono makes me cringe - and I doubt I am the only one. Someone will consider it worth their time to make the change. It does not look like the CSharp components are used to facilitate binding to .NET so a change is likely viable.
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"I'll pass. Seriously wtf does a database need mono for?"
Lots of teens have it, it's a must.
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A good test for openness is whether something is in the NetBSD pkgsrc collection. This doesn't appear to be.
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Because it was just open-sourced this week???
Yay! (Score:2)
Burt Bacharach was wrong. What the world needs now is another distributed key value store.
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Burt Bacharach was wrong. What the world needs now is another distributed key value store.
Yep, exactly. That said, I'm curious about the 'layers' aspect. That seems to be the fun/cool distinguishing part of this engine. And what probably made it worth acquiring when they were bought.
So what do they call the API? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
FoundationDBKit?
OPEN is not Philosophy (Score:2)
Mac OSX which roots to DARWIN at its core is open source. FoundationDB open source I read as a strategic action preceding the launch of another or new Apple platform.
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Mac OSX which roots to DARWIN at its core is open source. FoundationDB open source I read as a strategic action preceding the launch of another or new Apple platform.
That's a pretty far reach, methinks.
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Open source is keystone to the technology Apple develops. The choice to open source a software which none of its current product line up depends is interesting. Apple is not in the open source business. So why? Why choose open source for a software that Apple API's neither support, integrate nor interoperate?
Re: (Score:2)
Open source is keystone to the technology Apple develops. The choice to open source a software which none of its current product line up depends is interesting. Apple is not in the open source business. So why? Why choose open source for a software that Apple API's neither support, integrate nor interoperate?
Interesting point.
Perhaps it will be rolled-out in the next major release of macOS and/or iOS, and this is Apple's way of Beta Testing it.