🛣️ Fast.BI at a Crossroads: Our Pipeline Management Foundation After the dbt-Fivetran Announcement

[GediminasKr]

🛣️ Fast.BI at a Crossroads: Our Pipeline Management Foundation After the dbt-Fivetran Announcement

Hey Fast.BI Community! 👋

By now, many of you have seen today's announcement that dbt Labs is merging with Fivetran to form a ~$600M ARR combined entity. While Tristan and George have made strong commitments to keeping dbt Core and Fusion open source under their current licenses, this news puts us at an important strategic crossroads.

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🎯 The Reality

dbt-core has been the foundational glue of Fast.BI since day one. Our entire platform architecture—from data replication through Airbyte/dlthub, transformation via dbt, orchestration in Airflow, to governance with DataHub—is interconnected because of dbt-core's role as our transformation layer.

💡 It's not just a component; it's the backbone that makes Fast.BI work as a unified platform.

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❓ The Question

While the open-source commitments are reassuring on paper, this merger fundamentally changes the landscape of "open data infrastructure." As dbt Labs becomes part of a larger commercial entity with different priorities, we need to think critically about our long-term architecture decisions.

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💬 This Discussion is About:

• 🤝 Trust & Commitment: Should we double down on dbt-core, trusting the open-source commitments?
• 🔍 Risk Management: Do we need to evaluate alternative transformation engines to reduce dependency risk?
• 🏗️ Innovation: What would a "Fast.BI-native" transformation layer look like?
• ⚖️ Balance: How do we balance stability for existing users with strategic flexibility for the future?
• 🌟 Opportunity: What opportunities does this industry consolidation create for platforms like ours?

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🎯 Our North Star

Fast.BI has always been about empowering data teams with open-source tools without vendor lock-in. This moment challenges us to live that value in our own architecture decisions.

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🗣️ We Want to Hear From You

📢 Calling all: developers, contributors, users, and anyone invested in Fast.BI's future.

What direction should we take for pipeline management and transformation?

This is a community decision, and every perspective matters.

• 💭 Share your thoughts
• 🔧 Propose solutions
• 📊 Bring data and experience
• 🤔 Ask tough questions

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🚀 Let's build this together.

Drop your thoughts below ⬇️

[GedasKr]

Good news – it looks like we're in the clear! 🎉
Since 2024, dbt-core has been released under the Apache 2.0 license, and based on the licenses FAQ, it appears the dbt + Fivetran merger won't impact this licensing model.
This should provide some reassurance around our Fast.BI architecture decisions going forward.