Umair Shahid presented on open source licenses, the impact on PostgreSQL, and the future of databases. He began with an overview of open source licenses including permissive, copyleft, and restrictive licenses. PostgreSQL uses a very permissive license allowing any use and modification without restrictions. Umair discussed how databases are evolving to better support modern applications, and how decision making is shifting to be more bottom-up driven by developers needs. He concluded that the future of databases will be driven by balancing relational and specialized capabilities, ease of use for developers, and maintaining the spirit of open source freedom.

1. Open source licenses,
The impact on PostgreSQL,
& The future of databases
Umair Shahid
Head of PostgreSQL at Percona

2. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
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postgres=# select * from umair;
-[ RECORD 1 ]-----+-------------------------------
name | Umair Shahid
location | Islamabad, Pakistan
family | Wife & 2 kids
kid1 | 16 year old boy
kid2 | 13 year old girl
brief_description | PostgreSQL veteran of 19 years

3. Open Source Licenses
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and the following slides do not constitute legal advice)

4. © 2021 Percona
What is open source software?
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What is open source software?
5
● Code is publicly accessible
● Development is decentralized
● Collaborative and relies on peer review
● License belongs to the community

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Copyright vs Copyleft vs Permissive
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Allowed by all
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Why should you
care about the
license?
● Commercial use
● Distribution
● Modification
● Private use
Restrictions by some
● Patent use
● Disclose source
● ‘Infectious’
● State changes

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And then someone went overboard
…

9. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Do What The F*ck
You Want To
Public License
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DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, December 2004
Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar
<sam@hocevar.net>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim
or modified copies of this license document, and
changing it is allowed as long as the name is
changed.
DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING,
DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. You just DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO.

10. © 2021 Percona
But then someone realized …
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11. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Do What The F*ck
You Want To But
It’s Not My Fault
Public License
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DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO BUT IT'S NOT MY
FAULT PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 1, October 2013
Copyright © 2013 Ben McGinnes <ben@adversary.org>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or
modified copies of this license document, and changing
it is allowed as long as the name is changed.
DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO BUT IT'S NOT MY
FAULT PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR
COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. You just DO WHAT THE F*CK YOU WANT TO.
1. Do not hold the author(s), creator(s), developer(s) or
distributor(s) liable for anything that happens or goes
wrong with your use of the work.

12. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
● Patent use
○ Express grant of patent rights by contributors
■ Yes: Apache License
■ No: BSD3 License
● Disclose source
○ Source code must be made available when the
licensed material is distributed
■ Yes: Mozilla Public License
■ No: MIT License
Restrictions and
Examples
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Restrictions and
Examples
● ‘Infectious’
○ Modifications must be released under the
same or compatible license when distributing
the licensed material
■ Yes: GPL - GNU General Public License
■ No: Artistic License
● State changes
○ Changes made to the licensed material must
be documented
■ Yes: EU Public License
■ No: Creative Commons Universal
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14. © 2021 Percona
● GPL → LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License)
○ Derivatives that use libraries from LGPL software are exempt
from ‘infectious’ license and source code distribution
● GPL → AGPL (GNU Affero General Public License)
○ Network use is considered distribution
● AGPL → SSPL (Server Side Public License)
○ as-a-Service is considered distribution
○ Introduced by MongoDB, later adopted by others
○ Not recognized as free software by Open Source Initiative
(OSI)
Restrictions, explained further …
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15. The Impact on PostgreSQL?

16. © 2021 Percona
Copyright vs Copyleft vs Permissive
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The PostgreSQL
License
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PostgreSQL Database Management System
(formerly known as Postgres, then as Postgres95)
Portions Copyright © 1996-2022, The PostgreSQL Global Development Group
Portions Copyright © 1994, The Regents of the University of California
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is
hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and
the following two paragraphs appear in all copies.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BE LIABLE TO ANY
PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE
SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS NO OBLIGATIONS TO PROVIDE
MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.
● 163 words
● Do whatever
you want to
● Don’t blame
The University
of California

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The journey from
“PostgreSQL is cheaper”
to
“PostgreSQL is better”

19. @ 2020 Percona | Confidential
PostgreSQL is
popular

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PostgreSQL is
popular

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PostgreSQL is
popular

22. @ 2020 Percona

23. The Future of Databases

24. What got you here won’t get you there
- Marshall Goldsmith

25. 1 - Databases are evolving
2 - Decision-making is evolving
3 - The spirit of open source

26. 1 - Databases are evolving
2 - Decision-making is evolving
3 - The spirit of open source

27. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Databases are
evolving
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Over the past decade …
● Growing popularity of specialized databases
○ Examples include MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis,
Neo4J, …
● Evolving needs of rapid application development
○ Inability of relational databases to offer effective
solutions to modern problems
● Going beyond the bounds of SQL
○ Breaking free of the restrictions imposed by the
relational model

28. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
But then …
● Limitations of non-relational data
○ Converting data into information
○ From “No SQL” to “Not Only SQL”
● General purpose ‘relational’ features in
specialized databases
○ ACID guarantees in MongoDB
○ Graph, JSON, & time series in Redis
○ Streaming capabilities in Cassandra
○ Relational data in SingleStore (MemSQL)
Databases are
evolving
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In the meanwhile …
● Specialized features in Relational Databases
○ GIS data and computations
○ Unstructured data, especially JSON
○ Time series and IoT data
○ Distributed workloads
Databases are
evolving
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The future of databases will be driven
by how well they balance their
relational capabilities with the need to
scale modern applications.
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Conclusion #1

31. 1 - Databases are evolving
2 - Decision-making is evolving
3 - The spirit of open source

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Decision-making
is evolving
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Decision making of the past …
● 80s & 90s - Sales Led Growth
○ Top-down decisions
○ Handshake deals on golf courses and yachts
● 2000s & 10s - Marketing Led Growth
○ Still mostly top-down, though more distributed
○ Focus on inbound instead of sales-led
○ Reliance on brand development, advertising, &
content

33. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Decision-making
is evolving
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Percona’s Open Source Data Management Software Survey
… and almost 50% respondents were DBAs!

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Decision-making
is evolving
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Today’s decision making …
● Product Led Growth
○ Bottom-up decisions
○ End users get to decide what tech to use
○ The only way to succeed is to delight the end user
● Application developers - The end users of databases
○ Application developers are not database experts
○ Focus on efficient development and ease-of-use for
higher productivity
○ The drive behind cloud-native application development
For far too long, database vendors have been able to get away
with complicated UIs and poor UX

35. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
The future of databases will be driven
by how easy it is for application
developers to deploy, use, and
maintain their database.
Conclusion #2
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36. 1 - Databases are evolving
2 - Decision-making is evolving
3 - The spirit of open source

37. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Why is open source so popular?
● The Community
○ Passion brings like-minded people together
○ Globally dispersed contributors bring diversity
○ Roadmaps based on what’s good for the project
● The Quality
○ Passion drives perfection
○ Obsession with quality drives reliability
○ Rapid development cycles lead to rapid project evolution
Most of all, open source is popular because it is free
The spirit of
open source
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38. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
The freedom of choice
The freedom of usage
The freedom to scale
The freedom to deploy - whenever & wherever
The freedom to modify
The freedom to distribute
The freedom against vendor lock-in
But wait - what does ‘free’ mean?
The power of open source comes from freedom
The spirit of
open source
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39. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
The future of databases will be driven
by maintaining and promoting the
spirit of open source software
FREEDOM
Conclusion #3
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40. What does that mean
in today’s world?

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The rush towards
cloud-native
application
development

42. © 2021 Percona
Kubernetes & Databases
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Interesting
relationship …
Initially designed for
stateless applications
… and databases are
the exact opposite of
stateless
Improved in recent
years for stateful
applications

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Promise of
Kubernetes
Operator for your Application Stack -
Management of all processes
Self Healing - Robust mechanics to deal
with node failure
Framework - Automating complex
database operations

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Our approach to
Kubernetes
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Operator for
Databases
Install
directly or
through
Helm Chart
Hardened
with
Enterprise
Features
Open Source
Always!

45. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
Unsolved
Problems
45
Running Business Critical Stateful
applications on Kubernetes is
“Black Belt” level skill
Not an easy task for non
Kubernetes expert

46. © 2021 Percona | Confidential
“State of Art”
simplicity for
databases
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Managing High
Availability
Database Patching Backups (Some)
Performance
Tuning
Easy to Scale
DBaaS Removes a lot of “Toil”

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“Don’t worry - DBaaS is open source compatible”
‘Hotel California’ compatibility

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Our Vision
Provide DBaaS Experience in Public and Private Cloud with Open
Source Software and No Vendor Lock-in

50. © 2022 Percona | Confidential
Portal Account
Monitoring
Query Analytics
Advisor Insights
Alerts
Management
Inventory
Backup
Private DBaaS
Percona Monitoring
& Management (PMM)
Data
PostgreSQL PostgreSQL Ecosystem
High Availability | Disaster Recovery | Security | Performance | Scalability
Management
Linux Bare Metal | VM
Kubernetes Operators
Kubernetes Linux Bare Metal | VM
AWS | Azure | GCP | Other Clouds | On-Premises
Runtime
Support and
Services
On-demand database
experts
Support SLAs for
mission-critical services
Easily file tickets with
Support through Portal
Self-service support with
Knowledge Base access
Percona Platform for PostgreSQL
Migration
from
Proprietary
Databases

51. Percona stands for evolution
Percona stands for ease-of-use
Percona stands for freedom
Databases run better with Percona
Questions?
pg_umair