Path to Open Source

This document covers the development history of Actionbase before it was open-sourced. Future development will be tracked in public repositories.

MVP Phase

The MVP phase represents the entire period from project inception to open-source release. During this period, Actionbase was applied to various services and evolved through real-world use.

Phase 1: Foundation Building (April 2023)

Focus: Validating technical feasibility and establishing a technical foundation.

This period was invested to ensure a technical base that would support stable development in subsequent phases.

Key milestones:

• Project kickoff and initial planning
• Core design and implementation

Phase 2: Service Integration (March 2024)

Focus: Validating through real-world service deployment.

The system was safely integrated into production by maintaining the existing system, applying dual writes, and gradually migrating read functionality after sufficient validation.

Key activities:

• First production service write/read migration

Phase 3: Stabilization (July 2024)

Focus: System stabilization and tenant expansion.

Starting from a multi-tenant architecture, this phase introduced support for independent tenant configurations to ensure service isolation and enable isolated deployments.

Key improvements:

• System stabilization and tenant expansion
• Support for independent tenant configurations to isolate services
• Operations automation and monitoring enhancement
• Applied across KakaoShopping

Phase 4: Building Sustainable Operations (January 2025 - April 2025)

Focus: Improving operational efficiency and developer experience, addressing technical debt.

During this phase, Actionbase continued to be applied to various services while improving its operational foundation. Key efforts included reducing operational overhead, improving developer tooling, and addressing accumulated technical debt.

Phase 5: Preparing for Open Source (May 2025 - December 2025)

Focus: Preparing for open-source release and expanding adoption across Kakao’s major services.

Building on the foundation from Phase 4, this phase focused on making Actionbase ready for open source. The reimplementation process led to the decision to open-source Actionbase. While legacy code remains, the reimplementation continues to progress toward a more maintainable codebase. During this period, Actionbase expanded its adoption across Kakao’s major services including KakaoShopping and KakaoTalk.

Key changes:

• Maintained API compatibility with existing systems
• Redesigned API structure
• Repository separation and organization
• Separated internal and open-source areas
• Expanded adoption to major services in KakaoShopping and KakaoTalk

Open Source Release (January 2026)

After this MVP period, during which Actionbase was applied to various services, Actionbase was open-sourced in January 2026.

The codebase released is the same one that was developed, operated, and refined inside Kakao. Only minimal modifications were applied to remove security-sensitive or organization-specific details, and some internal features will be opened gradually as they are reviewed.

Why We Open-Sourced Actionbase

1. Transparent real-world history

The codebase grew organically in production environments. By releasing it as-is (with only essential sanitization), we aim to share its genuine journey rather than a rewritten or polished version.

2. Long-term sustainability

The system has gone through multiple generations of requirements, contributors, and architectural changes. Open-sourcing it helps create a healthier long-term lifecycle and encourages community-driven improvement.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Kakao’s leaders and engineers, who helped the team build and operate the system.

Special appreciation goes to the HBase engineers at Kakao. Actionbase’s reliability benefits from the stability provided by HBase.

This release reflects the efforts of those who contributed to the system and the teams who supported its development. We look forward to continuing this project together with the open-source community.