DuckLabs to Join AWS, Projects to Remain Open Source
25 points by stephenr
25 points by stephenr
Well, crap.
I'm not even a user of DuckDB (yet) and already this seems not great for anyone except Amazon and the handful of people who just got rich.
As I understand it, DuckLabs and MotherDuck are separate companies.
Considering MotherDuck is also selling cloud infrastructure for DuckDB, I wonder how this affects their position.
Yes the structure of DuckDab is somewhat complex. There's three entities:
In theory the fact that the foundation exists should mean that the source of DuckDB is somewhat insulated from AWS changes but given all the engineers who work full time on DuckDB are employed by DuckLabs, doesn't seem the best sign...
I met one of the founders at a conference once and they were very proud of never taking venture capital like Polars, so they can be independent. Seams to be the end of that era…
It does seem like such a change, I can't help but wonder if Amazon made them an offer they couldn't refuse - join us, or we'll fork it and compete with you for revenue.
I'm not saying I agree with the outcome even if that was the scenario - just trying to understand the decision they made.