COCKROCHDB announced changes to its licensing policy, which will result in the discontinuation of the free Core Certificate for its DBMS and significant restrictions on free options. These changes are set to take effect with the release of version 24.3 in November. The code for Cockroachdb will still be available, but with limitations imposed by the license (“Code is available”). Previously, the company offered two options for its DBMS: a free Cockroachdb Core with basic functionality, and a paid Cockroachdb Enterprise with advanced capabilities for ensuring failure tolerance, scalability, and data protection.
The free version of COCKROCHDB Core is no longer available. Instead, the company is expanding its offerings with two new Enterprise options on its servers, which include all the advanced features but come with usage restrictions. The new options are Cockroachdb Enterprise Trial, which can only be used for 30 days, and Cockroachdb Enterprise Free, which has no time limit but is restricted to use by individual developers, students, and small companies with annual revenues under $10 million.
This move marks the second phase of COCKROCHDB’s transition to an open development model. Initially distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, the DBMS shifted to the Business Source License (BSL) in 2019, which is not free and imposes restrictions on certain user categories. Under the BSL, expanded functionality code can be used for free for a limited time, subject to additional conditions that may require the purchase of a commercial license. For COCKROCHDB, one such condition is the prohibition on selling commercial versions of the DBMS as cloud services.
COCKROCHDB’s DBMS is designed for creating highly geographically distributed, horizontally scalable databases that prioritize high availability and disaster recovery. It ensures ACID transaction integrity, supports SQL for data manipulation, allows schema changes on the fly, and offers features such as indexing, foreign keys, automatic replication, and storage rebalancing.