I love the idea of an Airtable/Notion open source alternative, but I haven't seen any projects yet that look like a solid long-term bet.
NocoDB is neat, but looks like it's a single vendor-driven project that could go open core or die altogether if funding dries up.
Baserow also looks good, but already appears to be open core and another single-vendor project.
Undb might be a more community driven project over time. Hard to say - it looks like there's 6 contributors currently and there's not much info I could find by way of governance or company info to determine where they want to go.
Single-vendor open core (SVOC) can move quickly but it tends to degrade and disappoint over time. I would love to see a project of this sort that's actually trying to be truly community driven.
That's probably unrealistic, but I don't know if there's a ton of value in an open core solution over just using Airtable or Notion if some of the best bits are closed anyway and the fully closed alternatives are more polished and straightforward.
We're trying to build a community driven project in this space - https://github.com/centerofci/mathesar. We just did our alpha release a couple of months ago.
I'm philosophically opposed to open core (Mathesar is run out of a non-profit), but I can see why other projects do it – finding funding for a big project like this is difficult without VCs (who expect returns).
Regarding the inevitable degradation of open core, is your experience that they get actively worse or just stale? How would you balance that against something that’s good enough today for what you need today? (Ie, is being good enough today enough signal that it will stay good enough in the future if requirements don’t expand?)
In general, I think it gets actively worse - there may well be exceptions. And I'm less concerned about open core built on things like Apache projects where open source project is not controlled by a single vendor (or shouldn't be) but vendors can add proprietary things or expand out from the core project. But generally I am hesitant about SVOC.
The thing about open core is that the non-core parts are usually the ones bringing money home to pay for the development of the core. So most times the alternative wouldn't be a fully open source project, but probably a nonexistent one.
"So most times the alternative wouldn't be a fully open source project, but probably a nonexistent one."
That may be true. Or it may stall development of a truly open project, if the open core is widely adopted and people accept it as good enough until what's considered "core" shrinks (e.g. features closed that used to be open) or some other shift.
NocoDB is neat, but looks like it's a single vendor-driven project that could go open core or die altogether if funding dries up.
Baserow also looks good, but already appears to be open core and another single-vendor project.
Undb might be a more community driven project over time. Hard to say - it looks like there's 6 contributors currently and there's not much info I could find by way of governance or company info to determine where they want to go.
Single-vendor open core (SVOC) can move quickly but it tends to degrade and disappoint over time. I would love to see a project of this sort that's actually trying to be truly community driven.
That's probably unrealistic, but I don't know if there's a ton of value in an open core solution over just using Airtable or Notion if some of the best bits are closed anyway and the fully closed alternatives are more polished and straightforward.