AirBNB Opensources Chronos, a Cron Replacement

First time accepted submitter victorhooi writes "AirBNB has open-sourced Chronos- a scheduler built around Apache Mesos (a cluster manager). The scheduler is distributed and fault-tolerant, and allows specifying jobs in ISO8601 repeating notation, as well as creating dependent jobs. There's also a snazzy web interface to track and manage jobs, as well as a RESTful API." It's under the Apache License as seems to be the fashion with businesses releasing software nowadays. It looks like it might be useful if you have to manage a lot of machines with interconnected recurring processes; I know I wish this had existed a few years ago.

Comments

Chronos, and Apache License thoughts

[ciurana]

Chronos looks very yummy. Over the years I've deployed a number of schedulers (launchd on OS X and Quartz come to mind) but cron always comes back because it's so available and flexible. While it has many shortcomings, it's reliable and easy to grasp. Chronos, with the ISO 8061 job scheduling syntax will have an edge over the nasty mess of launchd, and the cron-like extensions and idiosyncrasies in Quartz. The first glance at the GitHub pull shows clean code. I'm looking forward to taking it through its paces on OS X and Linux.

Unknown Lamer wrote:
> It's under the Apache License as seems to be the fashion with businesses releasing software nowadays.

It's not a matter of fashion, it's a practical reality. No sane business wants to be the who defends the GPL in court. It'll be expensive and messy, and if the result goes against GNU/GPL "accepted wisdom", it will be a PR nightmare. The Apache License strikes a good balance between permissiveness and restrictions: less restrictive than the *GPL, less permissive than BSD or MIT. I advise various companies (startups, public, etc.) and venture funds on this regard. We recently advised someone using mongoDB (GPL3) to ensure that they built a very flexible abstraction layer between the app and the database that, by design, would allow swapping to something different (e.g. Cassandra, CouchDB, etc.) with a less restrictive license than *GPL and with similar characteristics. That single item, mongoDB's license, could be the deciding factor between getting funding/being acquired or not.

Cheers!

pr3d

Re:Chronos, and Apache License thoughts

[ciurana]

Like you said, it's case-to-case. And until *GPL is contested in court we won't know for sure.

At Very Large Retailer I engaged Bruce Perens and his team (circa 2006) and we went through education. It paid off. Irrational fear of the GPL was squelched.

At other deals, especially startups, i try to advise them to find the best tech first, then worry about the license, and whenever possible to just avoid *GPL in their products to preempt potential issues. They will have a full plate if they end up in a funding situation. It's my fiduciary obligation to smooth due diligence for them or to protect the investor's interests. If using Apache licensed components reduces friction and increases their chances of having a successful partnership, I would be in breach for that endeavor if I didn't advise them to go with whatever works best for that situation.

At a personal level, I prefer less restrictive licenses than *GPL. I don't know that using or avoiding it is stupidity, as you suggested in your reply. It's just a license, and use or avoidance are specific to each situation. No license is inherently good or bad. As an engineer I rather solve the problem than engage in a phylosophical fight. If *GPL works for some case, then I will suggest to use it.

Cheers!

pr3d4t0r