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01 December 2011, 17:21

Apache CouchDB developers respond to UbuntuOne issue

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Apache CouchDB logo Jan Lehnardt, Chairman of the Apache CouchDB Project Management Committee (PMC), writing on behalf of the CouchDB developers, shed some light on why Canonical dropped its use of the CouchDB NoSQL database from the cloud synchronisation service Ubuntu One. The announcement by Canonical had created some uncertainty about CouchDB and its capabilities. The message from the developers is "Do not worry, the project is alive and well" said Lehnardt.

According to Lehnardt, although the planned use case in Ubuntu One "seemed perfect for CouchDB" there were issues which meant that "at some point in the past" Ubuntu developers developed patches to adapt CouchDB to their Ubuntu One use cases. This divergence made it harder and harder to manage the code and also made it harder to merge new CouchDB features into Ubuntu One's version of the code. It is presumed by Lehnardt that at some point in the recent past Canonical gave up on this effort and switched to developing their own U1DB; he wished Canonical "the best with their development".

The PMC did take issue with Canonical's description of CouchBase as "The company behind CouchDB". Couchbase was formed from a merger of MemBase and CouchOne, the latter being the company formed by Damian Katz, founding author of CouchDB. CouchOne, and later CouchBase, had some dealings with Canonical over Ubuntu One's use of CouchDB. As with all Apache projects there are no corporate project sponsors; however, "We are fortunate to have a number of companies who employ our committers or sponsor individual people to work on the project" said Lehnardt, who goes on to point out that these people contribute as individuals, not as representatives of corporate entities.

(djwm)

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