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MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 06, 2008 04:40 PM
from the good-on-them dept.
from the good-on-them dept.
krow writes "I am very happy to be announcing that MySQL will be forgoing close sourcing portions of the MySQL Server. Kaj has the official statement in his blog. No portion of the server will be closed source including backup, encryption, or any storage engines we ship. To quote Kaj 'The encryption and compression backup features will be open source.' This is a change from what was previously posted here on Slashdot. I've posted some additional thoughts on my own blog concerning how we keep open source from becoming crippleware. Word has it that we will also have a panel at this year's OSCON discussing this topic. Contrary to the previous Slashdot discussion, this shows Sun's continued commitment to Open Source."
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Sun May Begin Close Sourcing MySQL Features 509 comments
An anonymous reader writes "From the MySQL User's Conference, Sun has announced, and former CEO Marten Mickos has confirmed, that Sun will be close sourcing sections of the MySQL code base. Sun will begin with close sourcing the backup solutions to MySQL, and will continue with more advanced features. With Oracle owning Innodb, and it being GPL, does this mean that MySQL will be removing it to introduce these features? Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."
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Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone, including Sun, has the freedom to choose their own license. The Linux community, of all people, should respect that ideal. Unless, of course, you support having a Henry Ford mindset - "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."
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Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Informative)
Sun doesn't want the GPL anywhere near ZFS -- and for good reason. The GPL ought to be called the "Me Me Me PL". Let's say Sun did release ZFS under the GPL and it's adopted into Linux. Sun is shut out from any changes unless they release SunOS under the GPL as well. With the CDDL, anyone can use the code (without giving up rights to their own code) and Sun gets back any improvements (without affecting their other code). It's like the LGPL, but with much better granularity.
We see this attitude a lot with BSD/GPL conflicts. When BSD code is relicensed as GPL, the original code is denied access to any changes. Think about that for a minute. "We want you to share your code. So we won't share our changes to your code with you." Free as in "free room and board at gitmo".
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no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
As a practical matter, I suspect that virtually no one would switch OSes to use ZFS, but for some users this will be a good tradeoff.
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Re:no onus (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm reminded of a rather large company in Redmond, Washington that carried on similarly throughout the 90's and early 00's, eventually being zapped in the ass for their hubris.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I don't really care. Solaris is about where Perforce is--they can still make money, but the leading edge has passed them by, probably forever. The thought of using an OS/distribution with which I couldn't install (say) callgrind in 90 seconds is just about unthinkable at this point.
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Re:no onus (Score:4, Insightful)
In this case with ZFS, GPL is causing problems. There are other operating systems using the ZFS code Sun released, the odd one out is Linux because of the GPL.
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Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes I know I'll get modded as flamebait for this, but the truth hurts. Don't get me wrong, I use tons of GPL software and have contributed to some as well. I'm just sick of the more fanatical among the OSS crowd acting like it's the only license fit to ever use under any circumstances. As others have noted in this discussion it's also held Linux back in a few areas.
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Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:no onus (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, this is nonsense. There is a license incompatibility, yes, but it is because BOTH licenses make requirements the other does not fullfill, not just the GPL. In other words , the license of ZFS does not permit using it in Linux because the GPL does not fullfill the requirements of the CDDL. SIMULATENOUSLY the GPL does not permit combining Linux with ZFS because the CDDL does not fullfill the requirements of the GPL.
There are a lot of trolls here who try to interpret this as the FSF the GPL being fanatic and Sun and the CDDL being more reasonable, the reality is that the the incompatibility arises from similar terms that exist in both licenses, namely that you cannot impose any further restrictions on derived works. Since the set of restrictions in two licenses differ they are incompatible. So basically, if you are going to consider this "a problem caused by teh GPL" then it is as much "a problem caused by the CDDL" and vice versa.
Of course bashing the GPL on slashdot is a lot more fun, but the boring reality is that both Sun and Linus have picked a license of their choice, and they turned out to be incompatible. It is either the fault of both parties or neither. You can't have your cake and eat it.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Novell still (almost certainly) owns the SysV code.
Sun bought a liscence from SCO (that is probably invalid)so Sun could release OpenSolaris.
Novells ball...
Novell could easily wave it off with a stipulation that say... ZFS would become GPL or std BSD...
Sun would have the choice of killing OpenSolaris, or marginalizing it via GPLing the only parts of it that gives it any advantage over Linux.
Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:4, Interesting)
Novell said they have no interest in pursuing Unix copyrights.
Novell is trying to get their 95% portion of the license Sun paid to SCO. By saying the agreement between Sun and SCO was part of the APA between Novell and SCO they are affirming the deal between Sun and SCO. Sun actually helped write SYSVR4 with AT&T before Novell bought it. According to Schwartz, Sun paid AT&T about $100million for rights that basically gave them ownership. What was purchased from SCO were mainly device drivers since SCO's UnixWare had the best x86 support.
What is Novell's position going to be to the public? "We're an open source company but we're going to sue a company for releasing open source?" Nothing good can come to Novell if they challenge Sun.
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Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN (Score:5, Interesting)
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The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
InnoDB already has an online backup tool, and even if/when they revise their tool to use this new API, it's still going to be theirs, open or closed, not the property of the MySQL Group.
Online backup of the engines for CSV, Blackhole, and Memcached doesn't even make sense. Archive already has a publicly available open source online backup tool.
Online backup makes sense for Maria, I don't see MontyW writing crippleware into his work.
How about MyISAM? I think that work is already done, but, the horse is already out of the barn, in that the online backup drivers for it are already publically available..
Looking even closer, the part that was going to be closed was not even the entire online backup driver set, but just compression and encryption. Any halfway competent developer would be able to hook in the necessary calls to azio, zlib, and openssl, and replicate the work.
So this is a big tempest over something that doesn't matter, and couldnt have happened anyway.
Plus, best practices for backup dont even use or want online backup. The Right Way to backup a real production MySQL instances is via filesystem snapshot, using something like LVM or ZFS.
As a small aside, the Slashdot headline of the original article was not entirely accurate. It wasn't the Sun executives who decided this. It was the MySQL executives. What that means, especially in light of the keynote speeches given by CEO Jonathan Schwartz and VP Rich Green, is interesting, and remains to be publically seen.
Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that headline and this headline are completely inaccurate, because both mentioned a decision where none had been made.
MySQL had not decided to use a closed source license. They were considering many different licenses, including a closed source license -- but also including the GPL and other open source licenses. No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)... [slashdot.org]
The decision was made and then was reversed.
Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:5, Informative)
The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)... [slashdot.org]
The decision was made and then was reversed.
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Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Databases backups over filesystem snapshots? With the assumption that all database commits are automatically filesystems commits, and there is no buffering between those layers? And with no incremental backups through transaction logs?
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Yawn (Score:2)
This isn't much of a change. They hadn't made up their mind regarding what license would be used for the new backup utilities. They just hadn't ruled out proprietary licensing. Now they have.
It wasn't much of a story before, and it's only slightly more of a story now.
Good day for all (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good day for all (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing Sun was able to convince Sun to stick to Sun's official policy.
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Re:Good day for all (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Pushing" against whom? MySQL ceased to exist as a separate entity once it was acquired.
You know that companies are run by people right? Their not some big robot or computer program. People need time to adjust and get familiar with the new vision of their new company. You don't right click on MySQL AB, select Refactor and expect everything to just change.
Certain initiatives that were started pre buyout continued. When it was detected that those initiatives weren't inline with Sun's plans, it was corrected.
All the 400 or so employees that were with MySQL are now with Sun and they need to g
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
An open source company wants to close some of its new features. The "proprietary" software company that bought them wants them to keep everything open.
Somehow, everyone wants to paint the proprietary company in a bad light. The original blog post from the first story never even mentioned Sun but the title on Slashdot was about Sun closing MySQL.
Sun's management has MySQL change that decision and the headline is about MySQL reverting.
There's an obvious bias here that's laughable.
Mickos is
Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
Re:Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you not only believe:
1. Sun (a corporation) makes decisions not based on what will bring in the most revenue, but based on what "fanatics" want;
You also apparently believe:
2. The Slashdot crowd has the ability to shape corporate policies to their whims.
I think a reality check is in order.
Sun/MySQL were considering a variety of licenses (including closed source ones). To the extent that comments made on Slashdot (and other online sources) made sense, they were probably taken into account. However, the final decision was undoubtedly what they thought would maximize profits. Yes, maintaining community good-will is probably part of their strategy, since it gives them free advertising (evangelism, etc.) and some free development (patch submissions, etc.).
Frankly I don't see how this isn't a victory for both open-source and MySQL. The community gets open-source code, MySQL gets development and exposure. Win-win.
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"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"
Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.
MySQL AB needed to generate revenue directly from MySQL as that was pretty much their only product. They were looking for an IPO before Sun bought them so they needed to increase revenues.
Being part of Sun, MySQL doesn't have the same pressure to generate revenues directly from MySQL. Sun/Schwartz's plan is to drive revenue in Sun's other lines from MySQL. Hardware sales, support, etc.
Re:Alternate interpretation of events... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has explained numerous times in his blog that opensourcing your products increases your revenue stream in the long term. I invite you to read in particular this 2-day old post [sun.com] where he answers the FAQ "Why don't you just stop giving your software away?" and gives precisely the example of MySQL.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In some cases. Here, the hope was that they'll buy a license and support package. If they don't, no revenue.
Further, I'd argue that basing a business on support fees and licenses means that it's against your best interests to ever create a powerful easy-to-use product that DOESN'T need support. If you want income, then complexity and bugs are your friends.
Alternative ending (Score:2)
Sad enough this shows how Sun still have a hard time deciding what they want to, or more importantly should do, and if they should just dip their toes a little or go all in.
I do understand peoples critisism for it but it's their property and they are free to do whatever they want with it.
Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:5, Interesting)
Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.
So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change his strategy the headline is "MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source"
HAHAHAHAHA
Re:Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:4, Informative)
If anyone in the know had written the original article I doubt they would have put "Sun" in the title. It was pretty much a MySQL decision all along. The original article was not completely wrong, but it certainly was wrong on the Sun part.
Cheers,
-Brian
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I believe that I did mention Sun in the post, and I did so in a positive way. So I do not understand your comment.
Cheers,
-Brian
Re:Lol Slashdot is too much (Score:5, Insightful)
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! SUN DOES SOMETHING BAD!!!!
(actually, it wasn't really sun)
Today's story:
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! MYSQL DOES SOMETHING GOOD!!!!
(actually, sun may have been involved)
Understand now?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.
So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change hi
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't see any problem with close sourcing (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I would completely agree with you on this point. I added the link to my "crippleware" blog entry for this reason. While I believe it is best for the server to be open source, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing closed source extensions to their open source projects. As long as licenses are obeyed and a company acts in an even handed manner I believe that they will avoid creating crippleware.
Cheers,
-Brian
Re:ZFS next to be open sourced? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:ZFS next to be open sourced? (Score:4, Informative)
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Great to see? Want to make a bet? (Score:2)
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* MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
* so will the MySQL Connectors, and
* so will the main storage engines we ship.
In addition:
* MySQL 6.0â(TM)s pending backup functionality will be open source,
* the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
* the encryption and compression backup features will be open source,
where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.
The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware products.