Original Presto creators left Facebook and renamed their fork Trino after a trademark dispute. Linux Foundation backed.
Trino (formerly PrestoSQL) is a distributed SQL query engine designed for fast analytic queries against data of any size. It can query data from multiple sources — including HDFS, S3, relational databases, and NoSQL stores — through a single SQL interface. It's used by companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, and Lyft for interactive analytics over massive datasets.
Presto was born inside Facebook in 2012, created by Martin Traverso, Dain Sundstrom, David Phillips, and Eric Hwang to solve Facebook's need for fast interactive queries over their massive Hadoop data warehouse. It was a genuine engineering triumph — a distributed SQL query engine that could query petabytes of data in seconds. Facebook open-sourced it, and the wider data engineering community loved it.
Then Facebook decided it wanted tighter control. In 2018, Facebook management began granting commit rights to internal developers who had no prior Presto experience, bypassing the meritocratic process the founders had established. It was a classic corporate override of open source governance: the company that hosted the project decided its employees should have more power over it, regardless of contribution history.
The three co-founders — Traverso, Sundstrom, and Phillips — didn't stick around to argue. They left Facebook in late 2018, founded Starburst Data as a commercial entity, and forked the project as PrestoSQL. The Presto Software Foundation was created in January 2019 to provide independent governance. But Facebook wasn't done: in September 2019, they established the Presto Foundation at the Linux Foundation and promptly began enforcing a trademark on the 'Presto' name.
This forced the final rebrand. On December 27, 2020, PrestoSQL became Trino — a clean break with a new identity. The name change freed the project from Facebook's trademark claims and marked the point of no return. Since then, Trino has become the de facto successor, with significantly more active development, faster feature advancement, and broader adoption than Facebook's PrestoDB. The creators took their project, their community, and their vision — and won.
Presto created at Facebook by Traverso, Sundstrom, Phillips, and Hwang
Presto open-sourced by Facebook
Facebook tightens control, grants commit rights to inexperienced internal devs
Traverso, Sundstrom, and Phillips leave Facebook; fork project as PrestoSQL
Presto Software Foundation created for independent governance
Facebook establishes Presto Foundation at Linux Foundation, enforces trademark
PrestoSQL rebranded as Trino to avoid trademark conflict
Trino demonstrated that in open source, the creators and community matter more than corporate sponsorship. Despite Facebook retaining the 'Presto' name and the Linux Foundation affiliation, Trino became the more actively developed and widely adopted project. Starburst, the company built around Trino, raised over $400 million in venture capital, proving the commercial viability of the fork.
The Presto/Trino split also served as a warning to companies that host open source projects: if you alienate the original creators by overriding meritocratic governance, they can simply leave and take the project's soul with them. The code stays, but the talent, vision, and community follow the people who built it.