Apple Open-Sources NoSQL Database FoundationDB

Apple has open-sourced FoundationDB, a distributed ACID-compliant NoSQL datastore, three years after acquiring the company that developed the technology.

According to a new blog post, Apple is continuing its open source campaign by releasing FoundationDB on GitHub so than individuals and companies can now use it for their backend to help speed up projects and make them less expensive to maintain.

“We believe FoundationDB can become the foundation of the next generation of distributed databases,” Apple wrote in the blog post announcing the move.

While FoundationDB is far from Apple’s best-known product, it’s the database underlying iCloud. Apple describes FoundationDB as a scalable “distributed datastore, designed from the ground up to be deployed on clusters of commodity hardware,” focusing on data consistency.

“The great thing is that FoundationDB is already well-established — it’s actively developed and has years of production use,” the post continues. “We intend to drive FoundationDB forward as a community project and we welcome your participation.”

The move to open source FoundationDB, which began as a startup in 2009, is expected to please members of the community previously disheartened with Apple’s decision to discontinue software downloads, with FoundationDB marking a shift in its approach towards a more community-led development strategy.

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