Options for a startup using Couchbase 6.x community edition

We are a startup using community edition of couchbase. Moving to 7.x is not an option for us due to the change in license terms. What are our options.

  1. Can we continue to use 6.x using the old licensing terms.

  2. If there are critical bugs, we would like to fix them on 6.x branch and contribute back to community. Is this allowed.

  3. Are there anyone in the community fixing critical bugs on 6.x. Happy to contribute.

  4. Are there anyone in a similar situation and would like to know what options were considered

Thanks

Hi Shikhat,

I can answer a couple of your questions. It sounds like you’re looking for the opinions of other community members, so I’ll start with the disclaimer that I’m a developer at Couchbase, but I work on the SDK team – not on Couchbase Server. This is my view from the bottom :wink:

  1. Can we continue to use 6.x using the old licensing terms.

Yes, absolutely. Anyone may continue to use Community Edition 6.6 and earlier under the old license terms. Reference: Couchbase Community Edition License Package Modified

  1. If there are critical bugs, we would like to fix them on 6.x branch and contribute back to community. Is this allowed.

Couchbase Server is open source, and contributions from the community are welcome. However, according to the documentation on the Community Edition (CE) vs Enterprise Edition (EE):

The release version of CE is several months behind EE. CE also does not include the latest bug fixes.

Reference: Couchbase Server Editions | Couchbase Docs

Historically, it’s unusual for Couchbase to release more than one or two patch versions for each minor release of CE (which has been a contentious issue in itself).

@ingenthr might have a better perspective on this.

Thanks,
David

David,

Thanks for your answers, it was really helpful.

We like couchbase and want to continue using the open source version. Heres what we have decided. Your comments and opinions and others from the community are welcome.

  1. We plan to build 6.x version of couchbase server from the source code and make sure we can self support in case of critical bugs. How do we get started on this. I see a manifest file for 6.x below, Am I looking at the right place. Are there instructions to build from source.
  1. If we don’t succeed in step 1; we may have to migrate out of couchbase altogether.

  2. I am actively working on this and would like to hear from others in a similar situation. Looking for collaborators as well.

Thanks
shikha (shikhat125@gmail.com)

Hi @Shikhat , I’m curious to hear more details about why you’re unable to move to 7.x due to the change in license terms. Self support would be quite the undertaking and our server team is always introducing new and exciting features, fixing complex edge cases, and making performance improvements. In the grand scheme of things, I would also think that Capella would be a great cost proposition for a start-up.

At any rate, I’m on the SDK side of things also, but I’m just curious to learn more about your situation because I can’t imagine that self support is going to be cost effective. Also, unless you’re doing the most trivial of document store operations, and don’t need any of the more advanced capabilities we offer, nobody really compares to the scalability, features, and performance that we offer (in my opinion).