[HN Gopher] Show HN: SpacetimeDB - The database that replaces yo...
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       Show HN: SpacetimeDB - The database that replaces your server
        
       We just released our database, SpacetimeDB, on GitHub under the BSL
       1.1 license. It converts to a free software license after a few
       years.  The point of the database is that you upload application
       logic into the database as a WebAssembly stored procedure, so
       instead of clients connecting to a webserver they connect directly
       to the database. The database itself does authentication and you
       write your own authorization logic just like you would inside a
       webserver.  We've developed our game, BitCraft
       (https://bitcraftonline.com) entirely in this way. All of the game
       state is stored and synchronized with clients via SpacetimeDB,
       including player positions and movement.  We also plan to allow you
       to horizontally scale your applications in two ways:  1. By having
       multiple databases that can send messages to each other (i.e. the
       actor model) 2. By having distributed databases which partition
       data over multiple machines, similarly to CockroachDB, although
       this approach would cause a commensurate increase in latency in
       accessing data  Curious to hear your thoughts!
       https://spacetimedb.com
        
       Author : cloutiertyler
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2023-08-16 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | bob1029 wrote:
       | Very cool concept!
       | 
       | I really like the idea of mainframe-style deployment models these
       | days. My patience for 'devops' has zeroed out as of a few years
       | ago. I've been pushing us on a cloud native function war path for
       | the last ~period of time.
       | 
       | Overall, I would say your presentation is fantastic. I was able
       | to try it out in a few minutes and see the actual product for
       | myself. I also really like the fact that you went for C# support.
       | I was going to suggest synergies with the Unity crowd but I see
       | you've already included a guide in your docs about this.
       | 
       | Seems like you might be on to something. I will be keeping an eye
       | on this project for sure.
        
       | rapnie wrote:
       | > BSL 1.1 license. It converts to a free software license after a
       | few years.
       | 
       | Oof. That's a pity. Otherwise interesting innovative concept.
       | 
       | Btw, in the README:
       | 
       | > This is not an open source or free software license, however,
       | it converts to the AGPL v3.0 license with a linking exception
       | after a few years. Note that the AGPL v3.0 does not typically
       | include a linking exception. We have added a custom linking
       | exception to the AGPL license for SpacetimeDB. Our motivation for
       | choosing a free software license is to ensure that contributions
       | made to SpacetimeDB are propogated back to the community. We are
       | expressly not interested in forcing users of SpacetimeDB to open
       | source their own code if they link with SpacetimeDB, so we needed
       | to include a linking exception.
       | 
       | Is that open source then? I never heard of a linking exception
       | before.
        
         | cloutiertyler wrote:
         | It is, yes. It's more permissive than the AGPL because it
         | allows you to use SpacetimeDB as a library without licensing
         | your own code under the AGPL. We were trying to solve the
         | problem that there is no Lesser AGPL, and linking is the reason
         | by Google doesn't allow AGPL in their codebase at all:
         | 
         | https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/using/agpl...
        
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       (page generated 2023-08-16 23:02 UTC)