Typesense is truly open source search
This week we’re joined by Jason Bosco, co-founder and CEO of Typesense — the open source Algolia alternative and the easier to use ElasticSearch alternative. For years we’ve used Algolia as our search engine, so we come to this conversation with skin in the game and the scars to prove it. Jason shared how he and his co-founder got started on Typesense, why and how they are “all in” on open source, the options and the paths developers can take to add search to their project, how Typesense compares to ElasticSearch and Algolia, he walks us through getting started, the story of Typesense Cloud, and why they have resisted Venture Capital.
This week we’re joined by Jason Bosco, co-founder and CEO of Typesense — the open source Algolia alternative and the easier to use ElasticSearch alternative. For years we’ve used Algolia as our search engine, so we come to this conversation with skin in the game and the scars to prove it. Jason shared how he and his co-founder got started on Typesense, why and how they are “all in” on open source, the options and the paths developers can take to add search to their project, how Typesense compares to ElasticSearch and Algolia, he walks us through getting started, the story of Typesense Cloud, and why they have resisted Venture Capital.
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Sponsors:
- Fly.io – Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs.
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- InfluxData – All of the open source software InfluxData creates is either MIT-licensed or Apache2-licensed. These are very permissive licenses. But why are they all for permissive licenses? Paul Dix shares his thoughts on the spirit of open source and why freedom, evolution, and impact drive them to license InfluxData’s open source software as permissively possible. Learn more at influxdata.com/changelog
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Featuring:
- Jason Bosco – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
- Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
- Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn
Show Notes:
- Typesense on the iconic Nasdaq billboard in Times Square
- typesense.org
- typesense/typesense
- Typesense Cloud pricing
- Typesense on HN
- Why Upgrade to GPLv3
- Airbyte
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Timestamps:
(00:01) - This week on The Changelog
(01:23) - Sponsor: Fly.io
(03:44) - Welcome Jason
(04:13) - Search landscape and getting started
(11:02) - Good compression!
(11:26) - It can't be THAT hard
(15:18) - Typesense is GPLv3
(19:07) - The license of Linux
(20:45) - Sponsor: Sourcegraph
(22:36) - Strategies for implementing search
(28:49) - Can't the data live in one place?
(32:12) - Typesense vs Algolia vs ElasticSearch
(34:43) - Using the pain of ElasticSearch to improve Typesense
(38:07) - How do I use it?
(40:14) - Typesense admin UI
(41:41) - On prem?
(43:47) - Sponsor: InfluxData
(45:23) - Sponsor: Retool
(46:37) - Typesense Cloud and resisting VC
(53:00) - The tension VC can bring on creating value
(54:50) - The sheer size of the search market
(58:16) - Transparent pricing for Typesense Cloud
(1:02:52) - Typesense Cloud helps improve the open source binary
(1:05:57) - Algolia's give it for free to open source playbook
(1:09:07) - What happens when AWS offers Typesense as a service?
(1:13:03) - What's on the horizon? What's next?
(1:15:43) - Closing out the show
(1:16:22) - Outro plus a clip from #353 with Adam Jacob