Hello!!
Perhaps you could expand on what the couchdb project should do to “target IoT
device developers” with a proposal of the work you would undertake to deliver
it if the wider community agrees?
Before presenting a formal proposal I would like to understand how
people who have devoted their time and effort to the CouchDB ecosystem
would like to see it grow. This includes the developers, maintainers,
marketers, and users alike. They may have a better future for CouchDB
ecosystem in their minds. If the IoT future doesn't excite them then the
whole discussion is in vain. Their excitement about the future they are
building will help fuel the growth of CouchDB.
I will eventually send the proposal in case of low number of response.
On 08/07/19 3:43 PM, Robert Samuel Newson wrote:
Hi,
As Jan has also posted, the CouchDB project does have a position on what it is
for and we have been around for over a decade so we have seen what people use
it for (both successfully or otherwise). I don’t recognise the lack of focus
you are implying.
If you, or indeed anyone, has suggestions about future direction, or how the
project runs or presents itself, you are invited to post those suggestions to
the mailing list for wider consideration. The recent post on marketing@, and
all these replies to it, have not made anything concrete enough for anyone to
respond to so far.
Perhaps you could expand on what the couchdb project should do to “target IoT
device developers” with a proposal of the work you would undertake to deliver
it if the wider community agrees?
B.
On 8 Jul 2019, at 10:16, Chintan Mishra <chin...@rebhu.com> wrote:
Hello,
On 08/07/19 1:32 PM, Robert Samuel Newson wrote:
Hi,
I understand what marketing is, but I also understand how this project is
organised. The dev@ mailing list is where project direction and development is
discussed, and where all decisions must be made, which is why I asked that the
conversation moved here. Not many are signed up to the marketing mailing list.
I hear and share your concerns about “IBM employees” (and I am one, but was not
one for the majority of my involvement with CouchDB, like all the others that
are now IBM employees). We have bylaws and a code of conduct and a PMC with
many non-IBM employees. It should go without saying that those committers and
PMC members who are also IBM employees are mature adults capable of working in
open source with integrity. Were that ever to stop being the case, there would
be consequences.
The conversations about future direction (foundationdb et al) happened here on
this mailing list and everyone was welcome to raise the concerns you did. Those
conversations, and RFC’s, will continue to happen here. Ultimately, the project
moves forward in the direction that active contributions take it under the
watchful eye of the PMC.
Chitan’s thoughts on IoT are very welcome, which is why I wanted the
conversation here, where project ideas can be discussed with everyone
interested in them. I also hope my reply that pointed out why CouchDB is not
yet ideal for IoT was constructive. It is not just a question of marketing
CouchDB as it is today, it should inform CouchDB project direction.
B.
either
Johs raised some genuine concerns.We all are raising our voice/concern because
we believe in CouchDB. I have failed to see the masses love it as I do. I have
been using CouchDB for around 1.5 years, probably lot lesser than most other
subscribers here. In this time, I quickly realized that CouchDB is sitting on
an underutilized goldmine. I share the concerns raised by Johs regarding
unclear market, lack of unique competitive advantage, and unclear future
direction while keeping existing user base. These are all the things that
confused me in 2016 while deciding a suitable NoSQL Document DB for my use
case. After trying 3 NoSQL Document DB, I was lucky to finally choose CouchDB.
Robert, I understand bylaws and other rules in place are for us to keep this
civil, maintainable, and organized.
We are living in an era where products are consumer centric and some
discussions will not have a clear boundary. The discussions will revolve around
tech and market. Most of the time we will end up discussing both. We will talk
about arising the customer/developer/industry needs and how we can build
CouchDB which helps them excel. I see why IoT stuff cannot be done right now.
And I wouldn't recommend as it is today.
CouchDB led the way by realizing that future infrastructure will hugely rely on
HTTP and built the first DB with a HTTP API for accessing and manipulating
data. Newer advancements in technologies will always demand us to rethink our
market position. We need to discuss that few years from now when IoTs,
spatial/location-based services(drones, self-driving vehicles), analytic, etc.
are the new normal then who will still use CouchDB despite other products in
the market. Once we have figured who we want to build for, we all can start
focusing on building it.
PS: If you have 180 seconds to kill: https://youtu.be/DFeeNLElBgU
Regards
Chintan
On 8 Jul 2019, at 07:08, Johs Ensby <j...@b2w.com> wrote:
I find Chitan's reflections very interesting,
even if the current direction for CouchDB points in a different direction.
The problem is that CouchDBs future is difficult to understand, as marketing
discussions are discouraged.
This is a very good example of how it is done:
Briefly, this mailing list is for marketing only. If you wish to discuss
project direction, post to the dev mailing list instead.
This reveils a total lack of basic understanding of what marketing is.
Just as a hint: Marketing is not the same as promotion. Marketing is a concept
and a dicipline that arose in the 1960's as two previous concepts failed to
capture the challenge of bringing products to the market.
The "producion concept" worked as long as the market was underserved and you
could focus on production, the market would swallow all available products (early days of
mass production and hitech dev)
The "sales concept" was characterized by strategies for pushing the products to
market.
The "marketing concept" turned the whole thing around and focused on
identifying needs and wants in the market to which products could be developed in order
to create value for the user/customer.
A definition of marketing used by my professor at Harvard Business School was:
Marketing is to create value and retain a fair share of that value.
The notion that writing blog posts is marketing, unfortunately brings us to the
pre-1960's thinking of how to bring a product to market.
I am increasingly worried about the CouchDB project being dominated by IBM
employees, and that new versions will require major workovers of CouchDB
without concern as to:
- what market is targeted
- what competitive position in this market is being targeted
- how to build on the existing user base for future success
The latter point is crucial in order to make any technology adoption work, this is based on another
theory that has been known since the 60's ("The diffusion of innovation" by Everett
Rogers), popularised and brought to hitech in the early 90's by Jeff More's "Crossing the
chasm".
Chitans reflections on how to serve markets in need of new solutions is the
kind of marketing discussion that CouchDB would benefit greatly from inviting.
johs
On 7 Jul 2019, at 19:55, Robert Samuel Newson <rnew...@apache.org> wrote:
Hi,
The main (current) difficulties in running CouchDB on embedded devices is
running erlang there coupled with our clustering stack. To scale everything
down to fit within the typical constraints of an embedded device requires
effort, I don’t think couch “just works” there.
The future release that replaces the clustering technology with FoundationDB is
what I refer to by “getting harder in the future”. While fdb does scale down
well, it might still need porting to platforms it’s not currently supported on.
As for suitability for IoT, couch is certainly used in that field, but care
must be taken, especially around the core notion that couch retains information
about a deleted document forever. This small amount of data can build up, and
you need to plan for it.
B.
On 7 Jul 2019, at 08:02, Chintan Mishra <chin...@rebhu.com> wrote:
Dear team,
Quoting myself from <market...@couchdb.apache.org>
----
3. A *way forward for CouchDB is focusing on what it is best*at viz.,
being a database for _*C*__luster __*O*__f __*U*__nreliable
__*C*__ommodity __*H*__ardware_. Being deploy-able at edge devices.
Focusing on this will invite people building for IoTs towards
CouchDB. And this will drive a whole new set of users/customers
towards CouchDB and IBM's Cloudant project. We already use
Cloudant's sync-android and CDTDatastore in our startup's(Rebhu
Computing) product.
----
I would like to draw attention to this point. I firmly believe that
CouchDB can benefit by targeting IoT device developers. IoT
developers don't want to worry about sending data from edge devices
to server for processing. CouchDB already has battle-tested
replication strategy. Extending this for IoT devs will drive the
next age developers. CouchDB is already made for unreliable systems
and what is more unreliable than an IoT lying in the sea connected
with worldwide GSM/CDMA (2G) network.
Quoting Robert Newson's <rnew...@apache.org> response
It’s a good point but not for the marketing list unless you are talking just
about producing blog posts or other materials to promote couchdb for that
market?
I think to make couchdb more useful for iot would require some development
work. Running couchdb on embedded devices is already a challenge and it’s only
going to get harder in future. As a server side hub, the retention of a small
amount of data after document deletion presents further problems.
Briefly, this mailing list is for marketing only. If you wish to discuss
project direction, post to the dev mailing list instead.
Thanks.
@Robert_Newson can you shed some light on the issues that arise while deploying
CouchDB on embedded devices? Also, what is going to get harder in the future?
--
Chintan Mishra
Founder and CEO
Rebhu Computing
