Stay Young, Stay Humble -- Celebrate GreptimeDB's wonder of 'One' Since Open Source

Preface ​

GreptimeDB was officially open-sourced on GitHub on November 15 a year ago, in 2022. Since its release, we have gained attention and support from over 10 countries. Let's take a moment to reflect on GreptimeDB's journey of open-source.

From Dennis, Greptime's CEO

Perhaps way before we chose programming as our profession, we were already deeply connected with the concept of "open-source". It's hard to imagine what the world would be like without open-source. To give an example, it's like if recipes were no longer made public, and every restaurant had to develop its own recipes. It's as if you couldn't enjoy a dish of Kung Pao Chicken unless you traveled to China. Thanks to open-source, we can be both foodies and amateur chefs at home with online recipes.

As software developers in the 21st century, we all benefit from open-source. We three founders also have been involved in the creation and maintenance of open-source community since the early days of our careers, and we have continually given back while benefiting from the community. We are either owners or maintains of several open-source projects (such as SOFAJraft, handlebars-rust, aviatorscripts), some projects have gained more attention and influence than GreptimeDB on GitHub.

For years, there has been an idea lingering in my mind, which is 'to create a world-class IT infrastructure software.' What is never forgotten will surely be remembered. When another co-founder, Jeremy Feng and I were asked to develop an Intelligent AIOps solution at Ant Group, we had to choose to develop on our own from the scratch because there was no existing platform at the time for handling large-scale time-series data that met the business needs. At the same time, another co-founder from DiDi, Ning Sun, also saw a strong demand for time series storage and analysis in the field of connected vehicles. The three of us quickly agreed, and this 'world-class IT infrastructure software' became clearer -- we decided to build a time-series database which meets evergrowing business needs and solves real-world problems related to time-series data.

Our three co-founders are technology "geeks" and pursuers of perfection, as is every member at Greptime. Our team members are very talented and possesses some seems-to-be “irrelevant” but extremely useful hidden skills other than programming. Our front-end lead is also a part-time stand-up comedian and naturally became our open-source advocate for his public speaking skills and quick-witted mind. Our marketing lead was a technical start-up founder and he helped the marketing team increase productivity greatly by inventing lots of handy tools. And there are also a part-time blogger, a fluet player, an amateur latte artist in the team who have been giving back to the open-source community in their own unique way.

Working in the filed of IT infrastructure is quite challenging, and when combined with open source, it becomes a game of exceptional skills and powerful mind. But this small yet diverse team has shaped Greptime into what it is today and made the journey interesting and fulfilling. Building upon open-sourced GreptimeDB, our team has continuously evolved and iterated to create two other products: the time-series database GreptimeCloud and the Observability AI tool GreptimeAI.

Highlighted Open-source Statistics ​

Open-source Journey ​

GreptimeDB has iterated from v0.1 to v0.4 during the past one year. Each release signifies a milestone in the growth and improvement of GreptimeDB. From framework to architecture restructure, from the standalone to the distributed version, and last but not least, the innovation of the recently released new engine, Mito, GreptimeDB has been continuously evolving on its journey.

• 2023.3.8 GreptimeDB v0.1: Standalone Version
  • Supports Compaction, Python, PromQL and Object Storage
• 2023.4.19 GreptimeDB v0.2: Transition to the Distributed version
  • Enhanced Standalone version
  • PromQL 50% Compatible
  • Introduce the Procedure Framework
  • Prepare for Cloud and Distributed version
• 2023.6.7 GreptimeDB v0.3: Alpha version of Distributed mode
  • Enhanced distributed version
  • Optimized querying performance
  • Improved stability
• 2023.10.10 GreptimeDB v0.4: Query performance improved by 5-20 times
  • Newest Storage engine Mito2
  • Enhanced stability
  • Enhanced user experience
  • PromQL 70% Compatible

GreptimeDB will continue to iterate and evolve from both the product and open-source community governance.

What is open-source to us? ​

"Another database project startup!" is the most frequently heard phrase at the exhibitions we attendended throughout the year. There are indeed many vendors in the database field, but it also indicates that there are many areas of improvement. The tremendous demand has given rise to many new database solutions each year in the market, with each vendor striving to outperform the others in the race, however, current products in the market have their own shortcomings in terms of performance, and that's exactly where the value of open-source comes in. For GreptimeDB, open-source means exploring the unknown together with like-minded individuals from around the world, putting the puzzles together and form a full splendid picture of the technology. It not only accelerates the iteration of our products among a wide range of users and developers but also builds a collaborative community, in where everyone's voice can be heard, and every line of code embodies the sparks of wisdom.

Greptime provides both open-source and commercialized products. Looking back on this year, our open-source product GreptimeDB and commercial product GreptimeCloud have consistently progressed together, both are the symbols of the wisdom and efforts of the community. So, on this special day, we are not only celebrating a milestone but also praising an open, collaborative, and win-win culture.

Open-source Community ​

Social Footprints ​

Us as participants ​

We attended various technical gatherings this year with a goal to seek like-minded individuals: we discussed cutting-edge topics at the Global AI Developers Pioneer Conference, shared our insights on the open-source journey while celebrating the 5th anniversary of SOFA, explored the future of software at the QCon conference, looked ahead at tomorrow's innovations at World of Tech 2023, discussed the possibilities of Rust at the Rust China Conference, exchanged ideas about the significance of being open-source at COSCon'23, and had in-dept conversations about programming at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in Chicago with professionals from around the world... It is programming that has brought us together, and it is open-source that has connected us, witnessed our growth.

Us as host ​

In addition to participate in all kinds of tech events, we also organized 4 online meetups as host to introduce our community and products, we collaborated with EMQX, KubeBlocks, and Pika to host two face-to-face meetups, gaining recognition and support from peers, and strengthening our connection with the wider community.

Our Influence ​

GreptimeDB has continuously welcomed nearly 50 contributors, among whom 2 became committers, they are Eugene from the United Kingdom and Niwaka from Japan. They accepted the title and became our committers to work closely along side with Greptime's team of developers because of their dedication and passion for building a great TSDB 🫶. They have consistently contributed valuable PRs to GreptimeDB, allowing our framework to continuously improve and gradually become more complete.

Benefiting from our geographical advantages, our contributors primarily come from China, but we also have many contributors from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, etc. The support and recognition from China are heartwarming, and the support from outside of China fills us with confidence in our product and what we are doing. In addition, contributors from Nigeria, India and Japan remind us of the significance of time-series databases in the world of IT infrastructure, and we had enjoyable and valuable exchanges with our contributors. Greptime always welcomes technophiles worldwide who are interested in Rust, TSDB, and infrastructure to connect with us, join us, and work together to build a wonderful open-source community.

The Future of Open-source ​

We understand that open-source is not just about open repositories of code, building a community of openness and continuously to inspire the sparks of thoughts are the key to make an impact. We welcome anyone willing to provide suggestions and contribute to GreptimeDB, and we will continue to improve in the following areas:

• We will continue to actively advance the core functionality of GreptimeDB, incubate and implement more features with the wider community; improve system performance and stability, and provide users with a more comprehensive tool.
• We will build an ecosystem of tools, plugins, and services around GreptimeDB, providing a richer integrated solution to shorten the learning curve for developers and business users.
• In order to better reflect the true voices from the community, we will gradually introduce an open governance model and engage in face-to-face communication with more community participants.

The journey of open-source is a filled with challenges and opportunities. We are determined to create a collaborative future with our global partners.