Crate.io has pushed out CrateDB 4.5, the latest version of its clustered SQL database for developers building machine data applications. With this release, the product is also now fully open source with all enterprise features of the database available under the Apache 2.0 license.

Detailing the changes on its blog, Crate.io said it will no longer implement its Enterprise License, under which organisations paid for commercial use of the product. Instead, the complete set of CrateDB features will be available in a single open source version licensed under Apache 2.0.

Crate.io had previously experimented with splitting its offering into a free open source build while asking businesses to purchase an enterprise licence for additional enterprise features. It then switched to a scaling limit of three nodes for the free version. Crate.io has now decided to revert to a fully open source ethos, but will still draw revenue from paid support and its fully managed CrateDB Cloud service.

“For enterprise customers interested in an on-prem version of CrateDB with premium support, of course we will continue to offer it, including SLAs and project and incident management. The same is true for partners that want to embed CrateDB into their stacks, such as an IoT Platform or OEMs,” wrote technical marketing manager Carlota Soto.

As part of this move, CrateDB 4.5 now makes all the Enterprise features available to developers currently working with the Community edition, including user management for multiple database users, user privilege configuration and database management with authentication.

In addition, CrateDB 4.5 includes a number of enhancements including performance optimisations, PostgreSQL tool compatibility, and deeper-level SQL support.

Despite using SQL as its query language, CrateDB otherwise has more in common with NoSQL platforms, and is able to handle time series data, geospatial data, JSON documents and relational data. It is designed to be scalable, and is implemented as a shared-nothing cluster of identically configured nodes that distribute write and query operations between them.