While DBOS looks like a nice system, I was really disappointed to learn that Conductor, which is the DBOS equivalent of the Temporal server, is not open source.
Without it, you get no centralized coordination of workflow recovery. On Kubernetes, for example, my understanding is that you will need to use a stateful set to assign stable executor IDs, which the Conductor doesn't need.
I suppose that's their business model, to provide a simplistic foundation where you have to pay money to get the grown up stuff.
> Conductor, which is the DBOS equivalent of the Temporal server,
Just to clarify, Conductor is not anything like the Temporal server. In Temporal, the server is a critical component that stores all the running state and is required for Temporal to work (and blocks your app from working if it's down).
Conductor is an out of band connector to give Transact users access to the same observability and workflow management as DBOS Cloud users have, but it isn't required and your app will keep working even if it breaks.
You can run a durable, and scalable, application with just Transact, it's just a lot harder without Conductor to help you.
You are correct that the business model is to provide add ons for Transact applications, but I'd say it's unfair to call Transact a "simplistic foundation" and not "grown up".
Transact is absolutely Enterprise grade software that can run at massive scale.