OrioleDB Patent: now freely available to the Postgres community
71 comments
·September 10, 2025iam_saurabh
wslh
I think no-open-source is a no-go for closed source systems. In the "best" case it adds a lot of friction in a sales funnel for premium offerings. You can avoid open source in special cases, mostly without complementary offerings.
916c0553e164269
from the blog: "The patent is intended as a shield, not a sword, to protect Open Source from hostile IP claims."
vs. the current license:
"IF ANY LITIGATION IS INSTITUTED AGAINST SUPABASE, INC. BY A LICENSEE OF THIS SOFTWARE, THEN THE LICENSE GRANTED TO SAID LICENSEE SHALL TERMINATE AS OF THE DATE SUCH LITIGATION IS FILED."
imho: the current wording might discourage state organisations, since even a trivial lawsuit (e.g. a minor tax delay) could terminate the licence - perhaps a narrower patent-focused clause would work better (or an OSI-approved licence?).
kiwicopple
(Supabase ceo)
I’ll revisit this with legal to try make it clearer.
Our intentions here are clear - if people have examples that we can follow we will do what we can to make this irrevocable (even to the extent of donating the patent if/when the community are ready to bear the cost of the maintainance)
oefrha
Facebook famously dropped Patents from their BSD + Patents for React and a bunch of other projects, and went MIT unencumbered.
https://engineering.fb.com/2017/09/22/web/relicensing-react-...
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tux3
Google has a strong patent shield situation with AV1. Despite burning interest from patent trolls, no one is going after AOMedia members directly.
916c0553e164269
Appreciate the intent!
For practical adoption, especially in larger orgs, OSI-approved licences are much easier to get through legal review than custom ones.
kiwicopple
The current license is PostgreSQL (which is OSI approved)
We could also change to MIT/Apache but we feel PostgreSQL is more appropriate given our intentions to upstream the code
gobdovan
Can you acquire atlasgo too, or is that still on the secret roadmap?
kiwicopple
we will have something to announce in this space within a few months
(if the atlasgo team are reading this feel free to reach out too)
916c0553e164269
Apache 2.0 has a better patent clause - against hostile IP claims, so tax dispute is not terminate the OrioleDB license:
"If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."
crote
It also seems a lot less strict on what is being terminated.
On violation the Apache 2.0 license terminates the patent license. I might be mistaken, but that reads an awful lot like you're still allowed to use the software provided you do so in a way which doesn't violate the patent.
On the other hand, the OrioleDB license seems to terminate the entire license - so the way I read this it would include parts of the software which aren't covered under the patent itself.
crote
Does the current license even allow for friendly forks, or redistribution?
It starts off nice with the usual:
> PERMISSION TO USE, COPY, MODIFY, AND DISTRIBUTE THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION FOR ANY PURPOSE, WITHOUT FEE, AND WITHOUT A WRITTEN AGREEMENT IS HEREBY GRANTED
.. but then there's the:
> HEREBY GRANTS A (..) LICENSE TO UNITED STATES PATENT NO. 10,325,030 TO MAKE, HAVE MADE, USE, HAVE USED, OFFER TO SELL, OFFERED TO SELL, SELL, SOLD, IMPORT INTO THE UNITED STATES, IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED STATES, AND OTHERWISE TRANSFER THIS SOFTWARE
.. which to me seems to be missing some kind of "modify" clause? Sure, it seems like you're allowing me to distribute it as-is the way a store like Amazon distributes boxes, but what happens when I start modifying the code and distributing those modifications? Is it still "this software", or has it become a derivative? Is the license I get to that patent even sublicensable? What happens to users of a fork when the forkee sues Supabase: do they also by extension lose their patent license?
The GPLv2, for example, has a clause stating that "Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor" which makes it very clear what happens. If you're adding a poison pill to open-source code, you really shouldn't be this sloppy: it should be painfully obvious to every reader what the implications are, or nobody will ever risk using it.
yellow_lead
A shield for Supabase, not for us
Reubend
So what? I don't see any conflict between what they said and what the license says. As they stated, it's being used as a shield. If you're suing them, you probably don't deserve a free license to their patented tech.
graemep
The difference is that the license is terminated by ANY litigation against Supabase - e.g. if you sue them for breach of contract completely unrelated to the software.
Use as a shield would mean limiting it to patent litigation against a user of the software.
It also only covers litigation against Supabase - it does not provide a shield against litigation against OrioleDB users.
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cwillu
Or litigation from a future license violation
giancarlostoro
Sounds like the MS-PL which Microsoft used to use but switched to MIT. MS-PL is basically MIT but cover your butt against patent litigation.
gethly
Software patents is such an americanism. In this case, I prefer Chinese approach to ignoring patent law altogether.
navigate8310
That simply kills innovation and dries up funding for research.
Zetaphor
China is far ahead of the US in many sectors, notably electric cars and solar panels which are two industries whose progress heavily depend on research and innovation.
throw0101d
> China is far ahead of the US in many sectors, notably electric cars and solar panels which are two industries whose progress heavily depend on research and innovation.
Ahead in production. Did China research/innovate/develop those industries, or were they 'just' fast followers? (Early in its history the US used the same 'tactics' relative to the UK and other European countries.)
henry700
It's what I think too, BUT curiously is not the case for China. Imagine if the DeepSeek breakthroughs were patented and closed instead of published in the open. And here we are, and they're not patented and not built on patented technology.
fuzzy_biscuit
I strongly dislike the idea of patenting data structures.
kiwicopple
fwiw, this is not our m.o. - oriole was under development before we took on the maintenance/development.
Our goal now is to ensure that it’s as F/OSS as possible given the pre-existing conditions
samlambert
This is not an open source license and it's untrue to say it's an open source project when it's licensed this way.
"IF ANY LITIGATION IS INSTITUTED AGAINST SUPABASE, INC. BY A LICENSEE OF THIS SOFTWARE, THEN THE LICENSE GRANTED TO SAID LICENSEE SHALL TERMINATE AS OF THE DATE SUCH LITIGATION IS FILED."
This is a poison pill. At best the licensing is naive and blocks even customers of Supabase from using OrioleDB, at worst it's an attempt for Supabase to provide themselves unlimited indemnity through the guise of a community project. It means the moment you sue Supabase for anything. Contract dispute, IP, employment, unrelated tort you lose the license. They could lose your data and if you try do anything about it they can immediately counter sue for a license violation. Using the brand of the postgres license to slip this in is pretty wild.
OrioleDB looks like a promising project and undoubtedly an great contribution from Supabase but it's not open source or really usable by anyone with this license.
jitl
I recall Facebook had a similar rider on the React license for many years until eventually removing it. It’s visually similar to the Apache2 patent clause but not scoped to just the licensed software use
seveibar
Isn’t this just Apache 2-style permissive licensing?
samlambert
lol no they both read as permissive on the surface. apache 2 doesn't include a termination clause that broadly protects an entity against any litigation. this is incredibly broad and not community safe.
0xb0565e486
I did not know you could patent data structures like that.
jonathaneunice
IP owners often play the game of “patent what you can, threaten with the rest.” So you might not be able to strictly patent the way data is laid out, but specific, novel algorithms that update or manipulate that layout and improve what was possible before? Those can be understood as key steps of an “innovative process”—and courts have been willing to uphold process claims, especially when tied to what they understand are genuine technical improvements. Fighting even a marginal patent usually means a long, expensive slog with plenty of downside risk.
IANAL nor a patent judge, but this is my understanding after watching the space for some years.
wokkel
You can in the US. Not so much in the rest of the world.
psychoslave
That's juridiction dependent. Europe didn't allow such a thing last time I checked. But lobbying to do so as been recurrent on this topic, just like putting governmental backdoor everywhere. They will try until it passes. There should be legal penality for such a stubborn will to destroy civil liberty. At least in this case they can't play the card "think of the children, nazi pedophiles use this".
dkhenry
I am super bullish on OrioleDB. It really seems like the next logical progression for scaling Postgres for 99% of all databases out there. I have been following their development for a while and running benchmarks to see if their performance claims are legitimate, and so far it has been amazing
kiwicopple
Thanks for verifying the benchmarks. We’re close to a full RC, aiming for December
Just to add: if anyone wants to contribute (beyond code) benchmarking and stress-testing is very helpful for us
Sesse__
I assume you get this a lot, but how much patching is left in PG 18?
kiwicopple
We are tracking the patches here:
https://www.orioledb.com/docs#patch-set
The actual storage engine is written as an extension - these patches are mostly to improve the TAM API. If these are accepted by the community then it should be simpler for anyone to write their own Storage extensions.
I think (correctly) it will take a lot longer to upstream the extension - the PG community should take a “default no” attitude with big changes like this. Over time we will prove its worthiness (hopefully beyond just supabase - it would be good to collaborate with other Postgres providers)
btown
Based on the README [0] and discussion [1] it seems like it might especially shine on high-write-volume workflows, with the implementation of anti-bloat measures. Do you have a sense for whether it would shine even further where those rows have large text/JSONB fields that might be TOASTed?
And more generally, curious if you have any sense for what might make up the "1%" of workflows this wouldn't be advisable for? Any downsides to be aware of?
[0] https://github.com/orioledb/orioledb?tab=readme-ov-file#orio...
dkhenry
I haven't explicitly tested how it handles TOASTed column's, but since there is an upcoming RC I will try it out next time. I don't generally like using JSONB/text columns for very large rows as they have other performance problems on the DB like causing lots of WAL write overhead.
In term of other workloads it might not be great for, all my testing has shown a great improvement in every workload I have thrown at it.
hardwaresofton
Supabase consistently delivering massive value to the postgres ecosystem
dangoodmanUT
> OrioleDB tables don't support SERIALIZABLE isolation level.
This is an unfortunate limitation to be aware of when evaluating
https://www.orioledb.com/docs/usage/getting-started#current-...
btown
For what it's worth, this does appear to be just a temporary situation, as mentioned in that linked document and in code comments e.g. https://github.com/orioledb/orioledb/blob/7f3b3a9a8e195ba31f...
MrHamdulay
that message was put there 2 years ago. soon may not be coming.
victorbjorklund
Non go when it includes a poison pill.
8cvor6j844qw_d6
Is OrioleDB just PostgreSQL but with some underlying modifications for cloud environments?
How does it compare with Neon DB?
916c0553e164269
"The differences between OrioleDB and Neon" ( June 20, 2025 )
LtdJorge
It’s a different storage engine for Postgres
boxed
The "cloud environments" part sounds like marketing fluff. "The cloud" is just someone else's servers after all. There's nothing special about it.
IgorPartola
That’s like saying a chair is just a tree that has been modified. Technically true, practically there are some very specific differences.
throwaway894345
What are the relevant differences? I’m not as cynical as the parent commenter, but I’m also unclear about what OrioleDB is doing that is meaningfully “CloudNative”. From skimming the main page, it seems like it’s just doing storage differently, but so far I’ve seen nothing to suggest that difference is “leveraging cloud services” or anything else.
pbronez
In this case, it seems to refer to their support for S3-compatible object storage as for persistence.
pbronez
OrioleDB is new to me.
According to the docs, it “uses Postgres Table Access Method (TAM) to provide a pluggable storage engine for PostgreSQL. […] Pluggable Storage gives developers the ability to use different storage engines for different tables within the same database. Developers will be able to choose a storage method that is optimized for their specific needs: some tables could be configured for high transactional loads, others for analytics workloads, and still others for archiving.”
Open-sourcing a patent in the database space is rare. Do you think this signals a shift where companies will realize that open ecosystems drive adoption faster than closed IP walls?