Redgate acquires (but commits to widening) open source Flyway
Database development company Redgate has been to the shops.
The Cambridge, UK-based firm has bought eggs, fresh bloomers (no, the bread kind) and, direct from the meat counter, a US$10 million portion (i.e. all of it) of cross-platform database migrations tool, Flyway.
Redgate’s mission in life is to enable the database to be included in DevOps, whatever database its customers are working on.
The company thinks that database development is often a stumbling block in the development of virtuous DevOps cycles and so, hence, it has a natural interest in software (like database migrations tools) that allows it to be included.
Open source pedigree
Flyway was originally developed as an open source project by Axel Fontaine to make database migrations easy on multiple platforms — it has seen an estimated 23 million downloads of its free community edition.
A commercial customers paid-for edition also exists.
Flyway supports a wide range of databases, from Oracle to MySQL, PostgreSQL to Amazon Redshift.
The acquisition is hoped to enable Redgate to extend its product roadmap beyond database DevOps for SQL Server to new database platforms.
Redgate wants its ambitious plans to reinforce Flyway’s place as the open source database migrations tool of choice.
“We’ve spent the last five years developing a portfolio of SQL Server tools that enable developers to include the database in DevOps and we want to give those same advantages to every developer on any platform,” said Simon Galbraith, CEO and co-founder of Redgate.
Axel Fontaine will now work on Flyway alongside a development team at Redgate.
“Redgate has years of experience in the database market and also has the resources to further develop and enhance Flyway many times faster than I can. This will make both the community and the commercial editions better for everyone,” said Fontaine.
Open pledge
Redgate will continue to maintain a free version of Flyway, available under the open source Apache v2 license. The firm is committed to supporting and growing the open source community that has helped in its development.
It already offers free versions of tools that work with open source software, like MySQL Compare and was instrumental in backing the development of Glimpse, the open source diagnostic platform for the web.
