From Black Box to Open Source: Embracing Transparency
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re open-sourcing Bemi! 💥 This is a fundamentally different approach to company building and we'll explain why this is the right decision for us.
For context — Bemi is a platform to automatically track contextualized PostgreSQL data changes and allows devs to leverage real-time data in their applications.
Building trust
At the heart of our decision is the desire to build trust. We're committed to eliminating data black boxes by providing a direct line of sight into the inner workings of our platform.
Users sometimes express concerns about access to specific data. To address this, we can now easily point to the code and affirm that unless a table or column is explicitly specified, it remains unseen. This tangible proof ensures users that their data is handled as intended and instills confidence in our cloud offering.
The long tail
Transparency comes with a greater surface area for feedback, making open sourcing a key approach for expanding our software's functionality. It invites a diverse range of perspectives, ensuring compatibility with different systems, and uncovers fresh applications—especially important for more generic infrastructure or database software.
Open source acts as a catalyst, guiding us towards a broader range of capabilities that meet the current diverse needs of developers. An example of this is the increasing popularity of PostgreSQL and MySQL over proprietary Oracle and MSSQL database incumbents.
Giving back to the community
We’re built on top of open source giants like Debezium and NATS. Open sourcing is our way of reciprocating the support we've received and giving back to the developer community.
At Bemi, we’re developer obsessed and we want to give the best possible developer experience we can. This means no vendor lock-in and ensuring our libraries are easily accessible. This is our contribution to nurturing collaboration within the developer community. Who knows, maybe one day there'll be tools built on top of what we've built.
Exploring paths in open source
Companies embrace open source for various other reasons. Some, like Supabase, use it as a key differentiator, positioning themselves as the open-source Firebase alternative. Others, like CommaAI, use it to ignite diverse applications and innovations through encouraged repository forking.
There’s also clearly merit to other approaches to company building as well, evident in the success on each side, such as Gitlab vs. Github or Meta AI vs. OpenAI. Open sourcing isn't a one-size-fits-all strategy, but for us, it emboldens our company vision and goals.
Looking forward
We want to keep focusing on building the best products with our users, and not in isolation. We’re looking forward to the start of our open source journey 🚀, check out and star our GitHub to stay in the loop on updates!