Episode 511: Ant Wilson on Supabase (Postgres as a Service)

Licensing

Supabase's approach to licensing is centered around permissiveness, primarily using Apache 2.0 or MIT licenses. Ant Wilson emphasizes that as long as the licenses are permissive, they are not overly concerned about specifics. This flexibility allows them to inherit and contribute to various projects without stringent restrictions 1. Jeremy Jung notes the trend of companies moving towards less permissive licenses, but Wilson remains optimistic about maintaining their current approach 2.

It's mostly apache two or MIT. And then obviously postgres has its own postgres license. So as long as it's one of those, then we're not too precious.

--- Ant Wilson

This strategy reflects Supabase's commitment to open source principles, ensuring their tools remain accessible to a wide audience.

   

Open Source

Supabase's dedication to open source is not just a business strategy but a core philosophy. Ant Wilson hopes to keep Supabase's offerings open source indefinitely, viewing potential competition from giants like AWS as a sign of success 3. This commitment extends to future developments, including functions and GraphQL, which they plan to keep open source 4.

Yeah, I really, really, really hope that we can stay permissive forever. It's a philosophical thing for us.

--- Ant Wilson

Wilson shares that many of Supabase's features are initially developed for internal use, such as their logging tool Logflare, which they eventually acquired and now offer to customers 5.