Community driven: The dbt Labs and AWS partnership from Coalesce 2023

“Open source began as a way to solve problems and share solutions.”

David Nalley, Director of Open Source Strategy and Marketing for Amazon Web Services, discusses the relationship between AWS and dbt Labs. He also highlights the importance of open source and the significance of dbt in modern data strategies.

Open source has become the de facto for innovation

According to David from AWS, open source has become the standard for innovation. He notes, "For any given code base, we know that there is a 96% chance that they contain open-source software. And if they contain open source software, the average is that 75% of the code base is going to be open source." Thus, open source has transformed how problems are solved and solutions are shared in the software development community.

David also emphasizes how open source drives innovation in various areas, including big data, cloud-native scalable systems, and databases. He states, "Open source has become such a moniker for the public good and has such a halo effect that, whether it qualifies or not, people want to claim that."

The importance of community contributions in open source projects

“...the idea that anyone can go look at these code bases, that anyone can improve them, means that the community that surrounds them becomes a community of practice–a community of experts.”

David emphasizes the importance of community contributions to the success of open-source projects. He mentioned that the currency of open source projects is contributions and without them, open source is just a license.

He states, "The community around dbt is an excellent example of a very healthy and vibrant open-source community. There are regular bug fixes coming in. There are regular permissions to innovate and to build new adapters. No one's gating that type of activity."

He also emphasizes the role of community contributions by saying, "We have a shared fate, and that means that we can invest our time and our energy into improving things–into making them better into improving our shared destiny."

AWS's commitment to open source and dbt

AWS relies on open source for its services and products, and the company is committed to contributing to open-source projects like dbt. AWS values the health and sustainability of open-source projects as they directly impact their services and customers.

David explains, "AWS probably should really be doing more. We're working on features and bug fixes inside both dbt Core and the adapters." This highlights AWS's commitment to contributing to the open-source community.

He also notes, "When we're recommending open source solutions to our customers, we don't want them to take a solution that may be obsolete in two years because no one can take the time to contribute to it." This signals the importance of a healthy and vibrant open-source community to sustain the software for the future.

Insights surfaced

• Open source is ubiquitous and is involved in every aspect of technology
• 96% of scanned code bases contain open-source components
• Open source has become a crucial part of innovation and solving problems in the tech industry
• The dbt community is thriving with 90,000 members, 30,000 companies, and 325 contributors in the past 12 months
• AWS is built on open source and considers it a shared responsibility to contribute to its development and improvement
• AWS is looking to contribute more to dbt and open-source projects in general.