The once and future CockroachDB

Welcome to Runtime! Today: how one CockroachDB user plans to keep going rather than go along with a licensing change, why building new data centers is getting tricky, and the latest funding rounds in enterprise tech.

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Done and dusted

At this point, enterprises that built tech stacks around open-source software over the last decade are used to dealing with a steady parade of changes that restrict how that software can be used. But after Cockroach Labs announced earlier this month that CockroachDB would ditch one of those less-than-open licenses, Oxide Computer Company decided to take a unique approach.

Oxide plans to maintain older versions of CockroachDB that remain available under an open-source license rather than switch databases or sign up for Cockroach's new enterprise service, it announced last week. This plan will require the company to deal with any support issues themselves, including writing patches to fix the inevitable problems that pop up when using software over time, and it will prevent Oxide from using new features as they are developed and released by Cockroach Labs.

• "Software can be done," said Oxide co-founder and CTO Bryan Cantrill in an interview. "One of the unique properties of software that I have always believed in my career, that we inadequately appreciate, is that when software is done it can really become part of a shared infrastructure, a common infrastructure."
• Oxide is not a typical enterprise database user: The company designs and builds servers with custom-built software for companies that want to take advantage of the same cutting-edge infrastructure techniques used by cloud providers that aren't available in standard servers from vendors like Dell, HPE, or Supermicro.
• It uses CockroachDB to store data needed by the Oxide system's control plane to run the show, and chose that database because of its reputation for performance and resiliency, Cantrill said.
• When Oxide first decided to use CockroachDB in 2020, it was licensed under the Business Source License, which puts some restrictions on how the code can be used for three years after it was released.

But the BSL didn't address the real business problem for Cockroach, said co-founder and CEO Spencer Kimball in an interview. As the product matured and became more stable, lots of users — including Oxide — found they actually didn't need the premium enterprise features.

• "Our enterprise version has lots of other stuff, including support, of course, but as version after version after version [of our core product] has rolled out, you can get away with not having support," Kimball said. 
• The new licensing terms make all of the features previously reserved for premium customers available to all Cockroach users, but everyone must now sign up for a license.
• Free users will be required to send telemetry data back to Cockroach and any user generating more than $10 million in annual revenue to purchase a license.
• "I think that's a recognition of the changing reality in the business landscape," Kimball said. "We do need to be a company that survives for the future, for our customers, and for no other reason."

Oxide's approach to Cockroach Labs' licensing change is certainly unique, and it's unlikely that other enterprise users of the open-source project will be able to maintain their own forks or use Oxide's implementation, said Stephen O'Grady, co-founder of analyst firm Redmonk.

• "To even be considered by most enterprises, a Cockroach fork would require both a viable development plan — i.e., who would be maintaining and improving the code moving forward, given that most of the people qualified to work on it are employed by Cockroach — and alternate commercial vendor options," O'Grady wrote in an email.
• But it seems clear that as an era of enterprise open-source software draws to a close, vendors will need to develop new business models and users will have to think differently about how they build their tech stacks.
• "I would have liked to build this as a true open-core business forever," Kimball said. "But there are realities here, and I understand that there's some disappointment there, but I think there's plenty of options to mitigate that."

Read the rest of the full story on Runtime here.

Power moves

Sourcing enough energy to run a modern hyperscale data center has always been a primary concern for Big Tech, but the AI boom is putting that requirement at the top of the list. Three developments around the world this week show how data-center operators are going to have to get clever if they want to actually build the capacity they say they need for AI workloads.

In Ireland, Google Cloud was flat-out denied a permit to build a new data center near Dublin after it failed to explain "how the proposal will impact the power supply once operational," according to Bloomberg. On the other side of the world, Microsoft struck a deal to buy power from solar panels installed on government buildings in Singapore, snapping up the majority of the 300 megawatts of power Singapore has set aside for data-center construction.

And closer to home, Meta announced that it will partner with a startup using fracking techniques to tap into geothermal energy sources. Unless the fusion researchers come up with something quick, the hyperscalers are going to be fighting each other for energy for the rest of the decade. 

Enterprise funding

Cribl raised $319 million in Series E funding, valuing the data-management company at $3.5 billion.

Grafana Labs landed $270 million in new funding that values the observability vendor at $6 billion.

Cursor scored $60 million in Series A funding for its AI coding tool, which takes direct aim at the most successful generative AI product to date, GitHub's Copilot.

Opkey raised $47 million in Series B funding to build out its software testing platform, which helps ensure the different components of an ERP system play together nicely.

nOps found $30 million in Series A funding as it develops a cost-optimization tool catering exclusively to AWS customers.

Depot raised $4.1 million in seed funding to speed up the process of software container-image builds.

The Runtime roundup

Cisco acquired Robust Intelligence, an AI software security company, for an undisclosed amount.

Box matched and exceeded Wall Street expectations for revenue and profit, respectively, and raised its guidance for the year, although quarterly revenue grew at just 3% compared to last year.

Thanks for reading — see you Tuesday!