YugabyteDB Open Source Community Update – November 2020

We just released YugabyteDB 2.5, and open source software like this doesn’t happen without an awesome open source community backing it. As the year draws to a close, we’d like to take the opportunity to call out some YugabyteDB community highlights from 2020.

Our commitment to open source

First, it is worth restating that YugabyteDB doesn’t pay lip service to open source like other database projects. We don’t trick you into downloading software that has time-bombed enterprise features that you can “try,” but ultimately have to “buy”. Advanced features like read replicas, encryption, change data capture, and multi-master async replication are all available under the Apache 2.0 license. To learn more about our commitment to open source, check out, “Why we changed YugabyteDB licensing to 100% open source.”

Half a million (and counting) distributed SQL clusters deployed

At Yugabyte, our goal is to build a large, lasting community of users. Increased usage of YugabyteDB  is critical to achieving this goal. The number of YugabyteDB clusters created has been increasing at 10x year over year.

We are very excited and proud to share that over half a million clusters have been deployed in the lifetime of the YugabyteDB project! These numbers were measured using opt-in call home diagnostics, so likely the actual number of clusters deployed thus far is much higher.

The sky-rocketing usage numbers show that YugabyteDB addresses a lot of critical use cases for developers, which can be realized relatively quickly. Developers can also get productive with YugabyteDB extremely quickly, which is not surprising given the re-use of PostgreSQL query layer in the YSQL API, dramatically simplifying the learning curve to getting started and building a cloud-native application.

If you haven’t already, install YugabyteDB and let us know what you think.

2,000+ community Slack members

We know that development teams working on fast moving projects with tight timelines need to get answers to their questions quickly from the folks who are actively developing YugabyteDB. They also want to exchange learnings with experienced community members who have “been there and done that.”

YugabyteDB’s Slack channel is the community’s “center of gravity” on the Internet for helping make everyone’s project a success. In November it became over 2000 members strong. You can join the conversation here, our community is standing by!

200+ YugabyteDB certifications and badges granted

Over 200 developers have passed the “YugabyteDB Fundamentals” exam and received certifications in just the first month of offering community training courses! Congratulations go to Jesus Bastidas from Colombia for being the first person to pass the exam!

Missed one of our previous trainings and would like to attend a future one? Make sure to sign up for the YugabyteDB Community Slack and join the #training channel. This is where we will be making announcements about upcoming training events, new courses, and certifications. We are still putting together our final schedule for 2021, but already have the following events scheduled that you can register for:

• Jan 28, 2021 – “YugabyteDB Fundamentals” training and certification (co-presented with the Kubernetes & Cloud Native Online Meetup based in Bangalore)
• Feb 25, 202 – “YugabyteDB YSQL Development” training and certification (co-presented with Cloud Study Network Meetup based in Germany)

Additional courses and certifications planned for 2021 will include:

• YugabyteDB YCQL Development
• YugabyteDB DBA Fundamentals
• Jamstack Development with YugabyteDB
• YugabyteDB Advanced Security
• YugabyteDB Schema Design Fundamentals

Again, the #training channel on YugabyteDB Community Slack is the best place to be among the first to find out about upcoming training and certifications.

130+ contributors to open source

We recently crossed 130 contributors to the YugabyteDB project on GitHub who have helped make the core database software more functional, faster, and more reliable. Are you ready to make a contribution? Check out our contributors documentation on how to get started.

Announcing Distributed SQL Summit Asia

In September 2020, we held the second annual Distributed SQL Summit. 750+ people attended the virtual event, 26 speakers participated across three days, producing 900 minutes of content. Attendee feedback was very positive, the engagement level was high, the Yugabyte dance party was a pleasant surprise, and the talks were amazing! You can see the presentations on our Vimeo channel.

We did hear from some people that they couldn’t attend live due to timezone reasons. So we decided to take action and take the virtual event around the world, starting with Distributed SQL Summit Asia, taking place Jan 20-22, 2021. You’ll hear companies such as Astronomer, Brikl, Buoyant, Cast.ai, Hasura, Manetu, and more to be announced, share their distributed SQL database journeys and innovative use cases. Join the YugabyteDB Slack channel in #announcements to be among the first to find out when registration is open and the schedule is live. See you in January!

YugabyteDB community meetups

Events big and small went virtual this year. Seeing that virtual events will likely be a norm for most of 2021, we are excited to bring virtual, locally produced events to your city via 13 new YugabyteDB Users Group Meetups. Sign up to learn when upcoming events will be scheduled and to suggest topics.

• Austin
• Bangalore
• Berlin
• Boston
• Chicago
• London
• Minneapolis
• New York City
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Silicon Valley
• Singapore
• Toronto

1,000+ YugabyteDB community rewards sent worldwide

In  the last year, we have mailed over 1,000 limited edition t-shirts destined to over 75 countries to sharp-eyed developers who have spotted the easter egg hidden in plain sight in the YugabyteDB admin UI. Want a reward for yourself? It’s simple, just install YugabyteDB on the platform of your choice and have a look around.