RethinkDB is shutting down
It seems that unfortunately RethinkDB the company was architected in such a way that the success of their product, in terms of performance and developer experience, led to a decrease in revenue.<p>This shutdown therefore goes a long way to say how talented and ethically correct the team was, something extremely evident in how they put correctness and reliability in front of performance.<p>In short, RethinkDB is a very solid piece of software that does well where (many) other NoSQLs fall short, that is:<p><pre><code>  * easy HA and automatic failover
  * easy auto sharding
  * rational query language
  * ease of administration and awareness (webUI)
  * realtime capabilities
  * perform well on the Jepsen test!
</code></pre>
Now, what could have they done differently to stay afloat? 
What avenues do we have to fund fund such great projects, whose <i>point</i> is being OSS? 
(I mean, one of the selling points of RethinkDB is that one can trust it in this land of NoSQLs that promise but don&#x27;t deliver, and this is in part thanks to their open  development processes)