The trend is this: any loved technology that's been around a little while (Rails, Node, Mongo, etc) makes for dramatic farewells on hackernews. It's not unlike supermarket tabloids.
I disagree. The trend is this: any hype has an equal and opposite anti-hype. 10gen have spent (probably) millions of dollars and countless hours representing MongoDB and singing its praises in various media (conferences, user groups, Web, etc.). If you do so, you need to expect equally fierce reactions when people realise your claims are unsubstantiated (or, at the very least, not as universal and problem-free as you originally portrayed).
Very good point. I never thought about it that way.
I have been criticizing them for their default settings (no response to write requests, safety turned off by default) for a while.
But actually it is not as much for settings themselves, but for lack of a clear red flashing warning on their front page. As their default settings could (still can?) lead to silent data corruption. The worst possible thing to happen to a database. That is shady and shitty practice if you ask me.
They are trying to market their technology to other developers, I expect them to at least try to be honest and open about the characteristics of their product. If they treat other developers like they are customers for male enhancement pills in 4am commercials, then I think they should also expect some backlash from said developers when they choose Mongo and then hit all the hidden assumptions and un-delivered promises.
Sure it is in the fine print. But if it is important, why not put it in the big print. It is a lot less painful for everyone in the long term.
As a former Aol employee, I know of a large support contract between them and 10gen. I think a lot of money comes from large companies who have teams that want to use MongoDB, and the large company buys a huge support contract for that team and any other possible team who wants to use it. Maybe that was just Aol, but I'm guess that pattern is that same in other large tech companies too.
