[jmakeig]

Argh! They didn’t charge for the component of their offering that was most valuable. Period. Good software doesn’t pay for itself. Consulting and training are difficult to scale, mostly because they require adding people. As such, the margins are minuscule compared to software. “Free” gets you downloads and publicity, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I really liked Rethink’s story and how well they executed things like branding and developer outreach, but without being able to capture the value of what they were producing it’s hard to see how that’s sustainable.

[godzillabrennus]

That doesn't mean they can't wrap the word "Enterprise" around a version of their product and sell it at $xxx per license so long as it comes with support. Redhat does this. They can even change to only do consulting on the "Enterprise" version of the software so revenue goes up.

Anyway, the company is wound down and the team has moved on. None of this speculation matters anymore.

[nostrademons]

Then they need an enterprise sales team to rival MongoDB's. Enterprise software doesn't sell itself - you need an expensive consultative sales process, which itself is a different core competency. A lot of the hate for MongoDB comes from them being a sales-driven company while RethinkDB chose to create an engineering-driven culture.