Why GitLab is building Meltano, an open source platform for ELT pipelines

What this post added

This post announces the strategic direction of Meltano, focusing on building an open-source, self-managed platform for ELT (Extract, Load, Transform) data pipelines. It argues that data integration should be a commodity and that an open-source alternative is needed to compete with proprietary solutions. The post draws parallels with GitLab's open-core model and emphasizes the power of community collaboration to develop and maintain data source connectors (extractors and loaders). The core technical contribution is the strategic positioning and justification for building Meltano as a self-managed ELT platform, aiming to democratize data integration.