GoKawiilrqlite creator marks 12 years of Raft-replicated SQLite project
The developer behind rqlite, an open-source system that pairs SQLite with the Raft consensus protocol, published a retrospective marking the project's origin in September 2014. He recounts building it to solve a storage problem at jut.io, switching its Raft implementation from goraft to Hashicorp's Raft in 2016, and designing it as a CP system where writes require majority acknowledgment through a leader node.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The post pushes back on a narrative that dates the 'distributed SQLite' category to around 2021, asserting rqlite was the first open-source project to combine Raft and SQLite and that it predates now-funded and acquired competitors in the space. This kind of origin-story framing can matter for a small open-source maintainer seeking recognition as venture capital flows into similar commercial projects.
- rqlite, combining SQLite with Raft consensus, was first released on GitHub in September 2014.
- The project switched from goraft to Hashicorp's Raft implementation in early 2016 and kept its CP (consistency-over-availability) design throughout.
- The author contrasts rqlite's history with other early efforts like Expensify's Bedrock and the Erlang-based ActorDB, as well as newer, venture-funded entrants in the category.
Source: philipotoole.com, 2026-10-24
Published there as: “Twelve years of distributed SQLite”
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