[vamega]

This looks pretty great. The UI looked fantastic, and the post mentioned that it was open source. However what's open source appears to be the DuckDB extension, which forwards the requests to a remote URL. I've not been able to find the code for the actual UI.

Is the actual UI open source, or is that something MotherDuck is allowing to be used by this while remaining proprietary? Right now it doesn't appear like this would work without an internet connection.

[xemoka]

Yeah, this is really concerning. The handwaving around "keeping the ui up to date" by hosting it on ui.duckdb.org instead of embedding it doesn't taste great to me.

At least it's hosted on duckdb.org and not mother duck, but I really would expect to see that source somewhere. Disappointing unless I've missed it.

Breadcrumbs in the extension src: https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb-ui/blob/963e0e4d4c6f84b2536...

[xemoka]

Yes. So confirmation from Jeff Raymakers, a software engineer at MotherDuck, the UI is not open source.

> Jeff Raymakers — Today at 9:25 AM

> The language in the blog post is misleading, and we're going to correct it.

> The UI extension is open source, but the UI itself is not.

[plipt]

How is this promoted as a "local UI" if it gets the UI from a remote URL?

Maybe the closed source UI is downloaded upon first execution for installation and then cached locally?

Or is this a web app that loads from the remote URL each time?

[daveguy]

It's a web interface, but it is served from the local machine. The default is http://localhost:4213/

See the note just above this link on data locations and the optional and explicit opt-in to motherduck:

https://duckdb.org/2025/03/12/duckdb-ui.html#features

[jarpineh]

The docs say that the extension's server is configured here: https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/extensions/ui#remote-url

But yeah, I can't find docs nor source for the UI. And the extension docs refer to MotherDuck's own UI: https://motherduck.com/docs/getting-started/motherduck-quick...

So, a bit confusing way this is set up.

[radicality]

It’s quite funny the docs also say this about the configurable url:

> Be sure you trust any URL you configure, as the application can access the data you load into DuckDB.

That’s certainly not what I would expect if someone gave me a “local UI” for some database. I’ve only just once toyed with duckdb, was planning to look more at it - looks like will need to have my guard and see what actually is “local” and doesn’t ship my data to a remote url.

[szarnyasg]

I'm a co-author of the blog post. I agree that the wording was confusing – apologies for the confusion. I added a note at the end:

> The repository does not contain the source code for the frontend, which is currently not available as open-source. Releasing it as open-source is under consideration.

[rastignack]

Some people work in serious work environments, on heavily regulated data. Thanks for another software landmine !

Make it opt-in, or not installed by default please, it’s so hazardous.

[memset]

The actual UI is not open source.

(Someone could write an actually open source UI extension for duckdb, but that would require a lot of investment that so far only motherduck has been able to provide.)

[dowager_dan99]

I've looked at quite a few options, and this one (the product of a single person) is a great base, and MIT licensed: https://github.com/caioricciuti/duck-ui

If you want to support a real OS UI take a look.

[frankc]

I find the SqlLab in apache superset to be very good, and I have duckdb as a data source (anything that supports SqlAlchemy works). It works very well. To be honest, when I first saw the screenshot, I thought it was SqlLab. I haven't actually tried the duckdb ui, though.

[rastignack]

And so the malware-izarion of duckdb begins. Investors need revenue I guess.

[IshKebab]

Honestly I hope they keep some things proprietary. Just making everything FOSS is not a sustainable business model, and I would quite like DuckDB to continue to exist.

I have similar concerns for Astral. Frankly they're single-handedly unshitifying Python, and it would be a tragedy if they run out of money and we're back to dealing with Pip.

[bigfatkitten]

So just to clarify, it's not really a local UI, ie I can't use it on an airgapped machine?

[thenaturalist]

Concur, this is rather confusing wording and the GUI components are closed source as far as I can see.