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MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux [UPDATED]

Posted by kdawson on Wed Dec 13, 2006 10:35 AM
from the any-color-as-long-as-it's-black dept.
volts writes "MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions — Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general." Update: 12/13 20:52 GMT by J : MySQL AB's Director of Architecture (and former Slash programmer) Brian Aker corrects an apparent miscommunication in a blog post: "we are just starting to roll out [Enterprise] binaries... We don't build binaries for Debian in part because the Debian community does a good job themselves... If you call MySQL and you have support we support you if you are running Debian (the same with Suse, RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu and others)... someone in Sales was left with the wrong information"

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  • Oh well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0racle (667029) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:37AM (#17223332)
    Is it really a problem? If you worried about support wouldn't you be using a distro that also offers support contracts?
    • Re:Oh well by morgan_greywolf (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:07AM
      • Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mr_mischief (456295) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:14AM (#17223912)
        (Last Journal: Thursday April 19 2007, @10:15PM)
        Maybe Canonical should step up and offer MySQL support on Ubuntu.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Oh well by Doctor Memory (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:27PM
        • Re:Oh well (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ultranova (717540) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:54PM (#17227466)

          Maybe I'm off track here, but I could certainly understand MySQL not wanting to offer an enterprise-level product for a platform that wasn't also enterprise-level.

          Is MySQL "enterprise-level" nowadays ? Every time there's been a story about databases, people have told horror stories about MySQL quietly corrupting data in database.

          And just what does "enterprise-level" mean, anyway ? Scales to infinity ? Reliable ? Costly ? Doesn't get the IT manager fired when the CEO find out he bought it ?-)

          [ Parent ]
    • QUIETLY? by Viraptor (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:07AM
      • Re:QUIETLY? (Score:5, Informative)

        The real problem? "MySQL Quietly Drops Support..." ? Ok - so what should they do? Place posters all around your city saying "WE DROP SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN USERS!!!"?

        I think the point is that they haven't made it clear, even on their website [mysql.com] that they have made a business decision to ignore everything but Red Hat and Suse. From the story: "We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.'". So a company got bitten by using a generic (Debian) Linux then asking for support and finding out that "generic" means anything but.

        They really should make some sort of statement, even if it's market spun, e.g. "...for the benefit of our enterprise customers we are concentrating on supporting the two most popular commercial distributions... we expect third-party support companies and the active MySQL community to continue supporting less popular and non-commercial distributions". (P.S. for the benefit of anyone flicking through, I made that up!)

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:QUIETLY? by Viraptor (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:39AM
      • Re:QUIETLY? by Sexy Commando (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
      • Re:QUIETLY? Why not a message on their site by walterbyrd (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:36PM
      • Re:QUIETLY? by NitsujTPU (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:36PM
    • Re:Oh well by John Hasler (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:12PM
    • Re:Oh well by Da_Weasel (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:10PM
      • Re:Oh well by Nutria (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:29PM
        • Re:Oh well by turbidostato (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:08PM
        • Re:Oh well by rainman_bc (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:48PM
          • Re:Oh well by Nutria (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @09:43PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Those mother... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unoti (731964) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:38AM (#17223336)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday March 23 2004, @07:55PM)
    Clearly we need to get some tough mother forkin programmers on this...
  • Bit misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:38AM (#17223344)
    MySQL (the database) still works with Debian, but MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.
  • I've used MySql in a number of different companies. In many cases knowing that they could buy a support contract let me bring in MySql. I also really like Kubuntu these days.

    I guess it time to dig in and learn another tool to replace it.

  • Solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shawn is an Asshole (845769) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223378)
    Loudly drop support for MySQL. Here are two excellent alternatives:

    PostgreSQL [postgresql.org]
    Firebird [firebirdsql.org]

    Still, Debian provides good MySQL packages. Use them instead. If you need support, I'm sure you could find someone to provide it for you.
    • Re:Solution by PatrickThomson (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:56AM
      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:03AM (#17223750)
        Ahh, the good old "who do you sue" chestnut. How's suing Oracle working out for you whenever you find bugs in their database, or if you got bad advice from their support techs?
        [ Parent ]
        • Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Svartalf (2997) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:18AM (#17223972)
          (http://www.earlconsult.com/)
          The "who do you sue" line's as old as the hills and, largely speaking, irrelevant because you're never
          going to get to first base unless it's a screw-up of epic proportions. Even then, it's more likely to
          be a colossal waste of your time and merely an exercise of fattening your lawyer's wallet.
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:Indeed... by lyz (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:Solution by styrotech (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:27PM
      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Interesting)

        by virtual_mps (62997) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:06AM (#17223814)
        you think that mysql support will buy unlimited legal/financial liability for costs incurred by downtime of your mysql installation?

        really?

        seriously?

        hahahahahahaha

        What your support contract buys you is the ability to call someone on the phone. If it makes your boss happy to have someone to call and yell at when shit breaks, well, ok.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Solution by SamTheButcher (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:26PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        I have never in my entire life seen a softare company held financially liable for lost sales as a result of a database failure. Please, feel free to cite one single lawsuit if you can find one.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)

        by peragrin (659227) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:28AM (#17224150)
        You know in the software industry that is a bunch of bullshite.

        If that were true then MSFT wouldn't have any money at all as they would be responsible for billions in lost sales annually. Just one Virus through one product line(not even windows but MS SQL) a year would be expensive. Yet MSFT doesn't have to pay so why would Mysql, or IBM, or any other software company for lost sales or data?
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Solution by giorgiofr (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:01PM
          • Re:Solution by j79zlr (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @04:57PM
      • Re:Solution by Shawn is an Asshole (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:35AM
      • Re:Solution by spiritraveller (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:36AM
      • Re:Solution by kilgortrout (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:53PM
    • Re:Solution by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:22AM
    • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:31AM
      • Re:Solution by Sxooter (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:01PM
        • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:35PM
          • Re:Solution by Sxooter (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:15PM
            • Re:Solution by saleenS281 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @06:34PM
    • sqlite by fyoder (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:19PM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Generic, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223390)
    (http://honeypot.net/ | Last Journal: Friday April 07 2006, @09:33AM)

    I guess that's fair - my company migrated to supporting only "generic Red Hat Database", aka PostgreSQL.

    Seriously, except in cases where you have no choice about database availability, I can't see a single reason to use MySQL these days. All of their cool features are owned by their competitors, and they're starting to pull desperate financing tricks like whittling away tech support and partnering with SCO. Are people still using it for new deployments, and if so, why?

    • Re:Generic, huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR (28044) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:47AM (#17223494)
      (http://www.gemstate.net/friends | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @10:32AM)
      Simple. Every nickel and dime hosting company uses MySQL so every CMS blog, and forum supports MySQL.
      Up to and including Slashcode.
      It is now catch 22. Everybody uses MySQL because everyone uses MySQL.
      Heck I use MySQL for our CMS because not every module supports PostgreSQL.
      I would much rather use PostgreSQL for everything but I don't have time to re-invent the wheel.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Generic, huh? by syphax (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:53AM
    • Re:Generic, huh? by Jay Pipes (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:59AM
    • SCO by Amazing Quantum Man (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:31PM
    • Re:Generic, huh? by Slashdot Parent (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:09PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Oh well (Score:3, Informative)

    by xenocide2 (231786) <jld5445@@@ksu...edu> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:41AM (#17223394)
    (http://dugger.notsoevil.net/)
    I can't say for sure whether it's the same level of support, but there's always Canonical [canonical.com] for Ubuntu and Progeny [progeny.com] for Debian support.
    • Re:Oh well by MECC (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:56AM
      • Re:Oh well by xenocide2 (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:54PM
  • And yet... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by merc (115854) <slashdot@upt.org> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:42AM (#17223402)
    (http://upt.org/lane)
    They're more than happy to be a SCO/Canopy partner.

    I know where I'll not be spending my IT budget next year.
  • Fork or Spoon (Score:5, Funny)

    by Paulitics (1036046) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:42AM (#17223418)

    MySQL only lets me spoon it.

    But Postgre lets me fork it all night long.

  • Get Ready... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eno2001 (527078) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:43AM (#17223426)
    (http://www.kickthebobo.com/erotech/index.html | Last Journal: Friday October 26, @11:51AM)
    I see that a definite split of "Premium Linux" vs. "Unsupported Linux" is coming soon to a vendor near you. That doesn't mean that Linux will die, it's just going to smell funny (possibly like pee).
  • by iamjoltman (883526) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:44AM (#17223438)
    I see there's already a few comments that the code should be forked. The thing is, what is forking going to do for it? They are dropping support for Linux distros, but that's not saying it won't run on other distros, just that it's not supported. The only way a fork would do anything is if the forked version had it's own support as well.
  • All of my servers run Debian (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maynard (3337) <maynard@jCHICAGOmg.com minus city> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:44AM (#17223446)
    (http://www.daduh.org/ | Last Journal: Friday July 20, @11:20AM)
    While I don't currently have or need a support contract from MySQL, I wouldn't transition away from Debian within our machine room just for their sake. I can't say this is a mistake for them, as I don't know what sales numbers they see, but here's one potential customer that's gone as a result.
    • Re:All of my servers run Debian by PHPfanboy (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:00AM
    • Re:All of my servers run Debian (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chundo (587998) <jeremy@@@jongsma...org> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:01AM (#17223714)
      I doubt that's the point. I'm sure they just decided that rom a cost/benefit perspective, money spent training their support staff on Debian wasn't worth the amount of business they were getting from Debian customers. Which makes a lot of sense to me - in my experience, people that run Debian servers have a more thorough knowledge of the system and administering it, and consequently have less need/desire for software support (yourself included, it sounds like). And assuming that's true, it's also not much of a stretch to assume that someone that interested in the guts of a system would choose something like Postgres over MySQL anyways if they had a choice, since it's had more advanced features for much longer than MySQL has.
      [ Parent ]
  • Why fork it? (Score:2)

    by syphax (189065) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:46AM (#17223470)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @05:22PM)

    I don't see this as a technical deficiency of the software. This is a business issue.

    Do you have Debian and MySQL expertise? Find yourself someone business-savvy (hint: it's probably not you) and sell support for MySQL on Debian. Be your own boss (hint: make sure your business-savvy person isn't a PHB). I think MySQL AB has been pretty clear in the past that they are but a small (if central) part of the MySQL ecosystem, and they clearly want to focus on their high-margin customers. Might be a smart move, might not, but it sure opens the door to players who want to seize the other niches.
  • by xantho (14741) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:49AM (#17223524)
    MySQL just said, 'We don't think that your business is profitable to us,' for whatever reason they might have. Well, I'm willing to bet that MySQL support for Debian in the enterprise setting is plenty profitable for some other people.

    The only thing that really happened is that MySQL cleaved off a part of their business and gave it away for free to anyone who wants it. And I'll bet plenty of people do.
  • Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Archangel Michael (180766) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:50AM (#17223532)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday September 22 2004, @11:13AM)
    "Generic Linux"???

    Isn't "Linux" "generic" almost by definition. The only differences between packages are choices and package manager and usually only a few homegrown eye candy pieces.

    No really, I'm not trolling. I'm serious. I've used all sorts of different "distros", Redhat, SuSE, Debian, Slackware etc and I am able to quickly move between them because at the core of it, its all but the same. And I'm not a Linux expert by any stretch of the imagination, so if I can manage, why can't the big boys who do nothing but Linux?
    • Re:Linux by Just Some Guy (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:06AM
    • Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:51AM
      • Re:Yes, and No by grahamm (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:08PM
        • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:32PM
          • Re:Yes, and No by Archangel Michael (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @04:34PM
            • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @06:32PM
              • Re:Yes, and No by Archangel Michael (Score:2) Thursday December 14 2006, @11:40AM
              • Re:Yes, and No by camperdave (Score:2) Thursday December 14 2006, @02:25PM
      • sudo bash by tinkerghost (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:42PM
      • Re:Yes, and No by Constantine Evans (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:51PM
      • Re:Yes, and No by JayAEU (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:03PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Why all the drama? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by derrickh (157646) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:51AM (#17223560)
    (http://www.deadpixelnews.com/)
    Why is this such a sore spot for so many people? Just because MySql no longer supports the flavor of the month distro of Linux, you all throw up your hands crying 'I never liked you anyway'.

    The vast majority of mysql users will never buy a support contract, and those few who do, will probably be RedHat or Suse. (When was the last time a Debian user admitted he needed help for anything?)

    Instead of having to support dozens of distros, Mysql is supporting the main two. It may be Open Source, but it's still a business.

    D
  • Almost there (Score:2)

    by glwtta (532858) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:53AM (#17223594)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    So now they just have to drop RedHat and SUSE and we are finally done? Great!

    I've been getting kinda tired of the whole cult surrounding MySQL's substandard "RDBMS".
  • by SocietyoftheFist (316444) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:55AM (#17223640)
    Who is actually running MySQL Enterprise?
  • If you need support... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sabalon (1684) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:56AM (#17223650)
    Chances are that if you need the support they offer, then you are not just running some little fan site using MySQL to store what avatar's people choose. Most likely if you have support for the db, chances are you probably have some sort of support contract in place for the OS as well and the rest of your critical infrastructure. You are probably already playing by their rules using certain OS releases, etc...

    That would be my guess at least.

  • This looks liike an opportunity for Postgres to come out with some better documentation on installation and configuration of Postgres and attract some new users.
  • Did anyone catch the relationship? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bright Apollo (988736) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:57AM (#17223674)
    (Last Journal: Friday February 02 2007, @11:08AM)
    SUSE and RedHat are also the only IBM supported distros. Is IBM going for MySQL, ala Oracle grabbing Innobase and Sleepycat?

    -BA

  • by Dareth (47614) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:04AM (#17223778)
    MySQL has varying levels of support for different versions and architectures.

    The linked support list was to the Enterprise version, but check out Cluster and MaxDB versions.
    Oddly enough, they claim FS - full support for Debian 3.0 on the PowerPC architecture.

  • No need to fork! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Builder (103701) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:10AM (#17223868)
    There are a lot of calls here to fork the code. I'm a bit wary of calls to fork a project by people who lack the reading comprehension to understand the project. These may not be the best people to direct a project :)

    Just to clarify the crappy summary, MySQL are not saying that their software won't run on Debian or Ubuntu or whatever... It will still run on most OSs and distros, but if you are using Linux, MySQL AB will only sell you a support contract for MySQL if you are running on Dead Rat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or Novhell (SLES?).

    Get it? Got it? Good!
  • Do many mid-size to large (read shopping for juicy support contracts) enterprises use Debian?
  • by Chanc_Gorkon (94133) <gorkon@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:12AM (#17223898)
    SO, essentially they are giving you no Linux distros that are totally known for their freedom. Only Red Hat and SuSE for Linux flavors and Solaris, AIX and Windows for the others. Really dumb guys, but not really that much of a concern. Someone else can step up and support MySQL. No big deal in the long run I guess except it gives people less choice initially if their job requires them to have a support contract and believe me alot of companies require this as silly as it sounds. What I see happening is some other Linux company will step up and support MySQL as well as their OS.

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Moo (Score:1)

    by Chacham (981) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:19AM (#17223990)
    (http://tkatch.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @02:09PM)
    Wow, i am very happy about this!

    As a Database Programmer (and erstwhile DBA) i am saddened by the haphazard mySQL being called a database. For a while it didn't even support transactions. It's actually more of a storage system with a quai-SQL front end.

    By dropping that facade from Debian people might be more inclined to use a real database such as PostgreSQL, which has been in the background for much too long.

    For the quality that Debian stands for, from my PoV, this is a very good thing.

    I would talk of progress here, but Progress is by far the absolute worst database system i have worked with. :)
  • Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)

    by houseofmore (313324) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:37AM (#17224280)
    (http://www.vendorama.com/)
    I've been using Mysql for many years, through several companies, small and large. Never once has mysql support ever been requested / needed -- it's rock solid. What does support conist of anyway, help with sql syntax?

    I doubt most Debian users will care.
    • Re:Who cares by GigsVT (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:26PM
      • Re:Who cares by houseofmore (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:23PM
  • This just in... (Score:2)

    by SQLz (564901) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:53AM (#17224518)
    (http://www.linuxplatform.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 16 2003, @04:31PM)
    Debian has quietly lost all its users to Gentoo and Ubuntu.
  • Screw this (Score:2)

    by Yvan256 (722131) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:56AM (#17224570)
    (http://www.yvan256.net/)
    I'm going back to flat text files.

    j/k
    • XML FTW by furbearntrout (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:23PM
    • Re:Screw this by jusdisgi (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:45PM
  • Too many linuxes (Score:2)

    by pr0nbot (313417) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:58AM (#17224596)
    Not sure what the big deal is. The Linuxscape has always been a fragmented land-of-a-thousand-distros, and contrary to received wisdom, they're not all compatible.

    Having just wasted a few days trying to get one bit of "Linux-compatible" software to work on another subtly different flavour Linux (thankyou RedHat for your borked gcc 2.96), I have some sympathy for saying "we only support flavour X".

    Is there such a thing as one Linux distro to suit all users? Probably not. Could there maybe be 2 or 3 that would suit virtually all users? I think so. This move from MySQL seems like a step towards that.

  • well - interesting news. i have an existing support contract and they answered my support request today. having said that, i've never had a support issue with (the excellent) mysql support guys that was at all related to the OS.

    fyi: if you run anything like a large site (we sustain 4000qps most of the day), i would highly recommend a support contract with them. it's very cheap for 24/7/365 access to the devs.
  • X not R! (Score:1)

    by chaeron (128155) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:20PM (#17224912)
    (http://www.chaeron.com/)
    Why bother with RDBMSes at all?

    Skip a generation and go with a good XML DBMS. Something like eXist perhaps? ;-)
    • Re:X not R! by Bacon Bits (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:04PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Wait for Ubuntu... (Score:1)

    by mikelang (674146) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:26PM (#17225016)
    ...to join the list of supported distros. I hope it happens soon...
  • by Voline (207517) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:04PM (#17225564)
    Well the OS vendor could offer support for MySQL, if they don't already. Debian isn't a company so you couldn't get it there, but Canonical could offer support for MySQL on Ubuntu. They could charge more for the extra service.
  • by massysett (910130) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:17PM (#17225790)
    (http://www.smileystation.com/)
    That's the name of the distro, not Debian Linux.
  • by mistralol (987952) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:27PM (#17225940)

    Install RedHat on a spare machine / vmware.
    Move your database to the temporary system.
    Reproduce the problem.
    Contact their support team.

    Since when debugging things your going to be using the offline system anyway ?
  • by DrHex (142347) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:28PM (#17225960)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday October 22 2002, @08:13AM)
    MySQL is an Open Source project, correct? Yes.

    that being said, is it the "Open Source" project which is only supporting these distributions?
    The link takes us to a link for MySQL Enterprise. Since MySQL AB provides contract based service for MySQL, this is one way MySQL generates corporate cashflow which allows them to continue to work on MySQL.

    Unfortunately, corporations have limited resources called humans who aren't always as zealous or passionate as people involved in an Open Source project. Therefore, they pick and choose which path to follow the money trail not their passion.

    The concept of Open Source is not the same as the traditional monetary based business model.

  • by Irvu (248207) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:58PM (#17226398)
    The real question is what this will mean down the road. While the support contracts are soley for paying customers (who as it has been noted would probably be on supported enterprises anyway) that still directs the future of the DB.

    The Mysql support staff are still a major force in the open-source aspects of the Database submitting bugs, patches, etc. If they cease doing Q&A on other distros then either the rest of the community will have to pick up testing their patches. Over tim I expect that this will, at least, bias the systems patchsets in favor of the "supported" distros.

    The real issues won't show up today but 2 to 3 years down the road.
  • by v3xt0r (799856) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:59PM (#17226420)
    I personally do not agree with the 'Support Licensing Scheme' business model or services offered by these vendors trying to capitalize from the open source software development model.

    However, some Managers do (generally those who talk more affectively than they manage IT), and most of those Managers will be using SuSE and/or Red Hat, as they would much rather pay some vendor for support, rather than face accountability issues when the ish hits the fan.

    I had a similar debate w/ our CTO regarding the matter, and of coarse, he chose RHEL over Debian. Most of it came down to the issue of vendor support, whereas I felt that I am paid to be the support tech, so why pay them as well.

    I guess the real question here should be: Why would a debian admin need to pay for support when he/she is (usually) experienced enough to find most of the answers on their own??
  • by bberens (965711) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:07PM (#17226606)
    MySQL began supporting Unbreakable Linux.
  • by element-o.p. (939033) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:00PM (#17227582)
    (http://www.gecko-ak.org/)
    I suspect that MySQL (the support company) took a look at the number of customers they had and compared that to the number of customers using various distributions, then made a business decision to offer support to the customers that made up the lion's share of their business. If they see that 90% of their customers use RHEL or Suse, then perhaps it simply cost them more money than it was worth to continue offering support for the small fraction of their (support) customers who run MySQL on Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, etc.

    IMHO, it isn't really a problem because, even though I've used MySQL personally and professionally for something like six years, I've *never* needed support on it. Let's face it, my Slack and Gentoo servers aren't "supported" either, nor is my Apache installation, my Postfix installation, my Bind installation, etc., etc., etc.--except by me, and so far, that's been good enough.
  • A lesson here (Score:1, Troll)

    by synthespian (563437) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:41PM (#17228272)
    Let this be a lesson regarding the GPL and the dual-licensing trap some companies set up, such as MySQL. What we see is the unfolding of another development of the loophole that the GPL license creates.

    It just proves there is no dual-licensing choice. This is effectively a proprietary licensing scheme (or scam). It's just another form of making the customer fall prey to the vendor. Now we see yet another facet of this loophole: the company ties support to vendors that charge per-seat licenses. A perfect scheme, a +/+ game for the vendors, both of the software and the OS. You loose, sucker.

    The BSD license does not have this loophole, and leverages the playing field for everyone. You want to "close" the BSD solution, and package it as a proprietary solution? Do it. You want it as free software? It's there. The GPL, on the other hand, by a flaw in design is used for the type of maneuvering we see in this case.

    Is it any wonder Google has chosen non-GPL licenses for a lot of their released open-source code?

  • what do you expect (Score:2)

    by cinnamon colbert (732724) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:41PM (#17228280)
    (Last Journal: Sunday October 28, @11:25AM)
    first, people say forking is good, then they complain that vendors won't support unlimited forks. YOu can't have it both ways.
  • Are we surprised? (Score:1)

    by petrus4 (213815) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:34PM (#17229888)
    (http://aqpeag.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday April 21 2007, @05:39AM)
    I can feel my karma taking another bruising here, but what the hell.

    Debian want to fork all and sundry, or at the very least create internal patchsets for pretty much everything they get their hands on, and then people don't understand why they don't get support from upstream vendors?

    Said people might support their own applications, but they are under no obligation to support Debian's own non-standard, patched versions of their apps.

    On a related note, I had my last negative compiling experience with Ubuntu the other night, and as a single individual at least am hereby boycotting Debian and its' derivatives entirely. The reasons are too numerous to count, but are both technical and political.

    As a positive alternative, I advocate a rennaisance of Slackware. It's a clean, sane, non-fragmented distribution. It doesn't use any seriously concrete form of package management by default, meaning you're free to choose your own...and it also by extension doesn't use a particular, unholy form of perverted evil known as subpackaging. It also doesn't see Linux's heritage as a UNIX clone as something to be ashamed of, or a hindrance to the goal of creating a perfect imitation of Windows.

    Going back to the parent topic, Slackware would also likely be great to use as a standard for vendors such as MySQL, *because* the Slack developers largely abstain from downstream patching, (at least AFAIK) and as mentioned are package management agnostic. Hence, it'd be a very easy distro to support.

    If anyone here hasn't tried Slack themselves, I thoroughly suggest it. You can look forward to a level of transparency and reliability you'll scarcely find anywhere else. It's a form of Linux which isn't afraid of being itself, and that tragically is a very rare thing these days.
  • Bad title (Score:2)

    by noz (253073) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @05:48PM (#17230068)
    MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux
    *yawn* Another poorly named /. article. Troll? Maybe. Does this happen too often? Yes.
  • by Jamesday (794888) on Thursday December 14 2006, @01:18AM (#17233206)
    Here's a copy of MySQL's official response to this story:

    -----

    MySQL's Commitment to Debian
    December 13, 2006

    MySQL AB apologizes for any miscommunication that may have implied that the
    MySQL database does not run on the popular Debian Linux operating system, or
    that the company does not offer technical support for MySQL Enterprise
    subscribers using Debian.

    We have a strong commitment to Debian and other forms of Linux - for both
    open source community developers and corporate enterprises.

    The Debian Linux operating system is an active, growing and successful
    platform for the MySQL database to run on.

    Our company offers freely-available downloads of the MySQL Community Server
    in source code and binary format at
    http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html [mysql.com] for Debian and other flavors
    of Linux -- including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise
    Server, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. -- as well as Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OSX,
    Solaris, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IBM AIX and SCO OpenServer.

    For paying customers, our company also offers 'MySQL Enterprise', a
    comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools,
    and premium support services.

    Since its official launch in October, we have delivered versions of the
    MySQL Enterprise Server software for RHEL, SLES and a general-purpose
    version that runs on other forms of Linux -- including Debian. Starting in
    Q1 2007, we will also deliver regular software updates for the Debian and
    Ubuntu platforms as well.

    As in the past, MySQL AB continues to offer paid technical support for
    customers running MySQL on Debian and other versions of Linux. This is
    available as part of our MySQL Enterprise subscription service. A complete
    list of MySQL Enterprise supported platforms is available here:
    http://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/en terprise.html [mysql.com]

    We will continue to monitor the popularity of other operating systems and
    user requests when considering extending our platform support in the future.

    Again, MySQL AB regrets any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have
    caused.

    -----

    James Day, Support Engineer, MySQL AB
  • by Animats (122034) on Thursday December 14 2006, @06:12PM (#17246324)
    (http://www.animats.com)

    Just recently, support for Python's connection to MySQL, "MySQLdb", stopped working on Windows. See this discussion [sourceforge.net] in the MySQLdb help forum on SourceForge.

    Unlike Perl and PHP, the standard Python distribution doesn't support MySQL. There's a third-party add-on on SourceForge [sourceforge.net] for that. It has one developer, and he's not interested in maintaining the Windows version. The Python 2.5 update apparently broke the Windows build.

    Some help is being provided by a World of Warcraft guild [guildmanus.com], which has managed to build MySQLdb for Windows. But that hasn't been tested by anyone else.

    Also, although the current MySQL understands Unicode, and the current Python understands Unicode, the MySQLdb module in the middle is reported to crash on Unicode.

    I'd thought something as basic as a database connection for a language used primarily on web servers would be a solved problem, but for Python, it's not.

  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:5, Informative)

    by eln (21727) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:42AM (#17223416)
    I suppose you could do that, but unless you're planning on offering Enterprise support for your offering on a wide variety of platforms, you're not really gaining anything. MySQL will presumably still run on Debian, at least for now, but without the ability to buy support for it on that platform, you're not going to get approval to put it on that platform in any sort of business-critical environment.

    Now, if you wanted to start a new company that offered Enterprise support for MySQL on Debian, you might have something there. I don't know that you would make any money, but at least you'd be offering something that isn't currently offered.
    [ Parent ]
    • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jmorris42 (1458) * <jmorris AT beau DOT org> on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:50AM (#17223544)
      (http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/)
      > I don't know that you would make any money, but at least you'd be offering something that isn't currently offered.

      I doubt it. And more important than my opinion, MySQL doubts it and has the sales figures to show it. Companies don't normally kill off profitable products and services, not even evil/stupid corporations.
      [ Parent ]
      • Profitability (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Colin Smith (2679) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:23AM (#17224058)

        I doubt it. And more important than my opinion, MySQL doubts it and has the sales figures to show it. Companies don't normally kill off profitable products and services, not even evil/stupid corporations.
        Just because one person can't do something profitably, doesn't mean that someone else can't do it profitably.
         
        [ Parent ]
      • by brokeninside (34168) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:24AM (#17224086)
        If a company holds that it can make a 50% ROI on one product line and a 25% ROI on onther product line (and all other things being held equal) they will put their resources into the line with the 50% ROI until such time as the law of diminishing returns brings the marginal ROI for additional resources being added to under 25%.

        For example, when I was a kid a local pizza delivery chain started delivering breakfast pizzas. They made money hand over fist. But after a few months, the calculated that the additional cost of maintaining a third shift of workers and an expanded breakfast menu would bring in more money if put into opening additiona stores serving the traditional lunch, dinner, late night crowd with the normal pizzaria menu.

        Most likely what is happening is that the MySQL corporation finds that if it spends the same number of dollars training a support tech, those dollars bring in more money if the tech is dedicated to Redhat and/or SuSE than if the tech is also trained on Debian. This doesn't mean that there is no market for Debian support. It means only that MySQL has a higher relative profit from supporting just two databases. The calculation may be different for another company that has a different resource pool. For example a company that already supports Debian Linux, may have a very low marginal cost for adding MySQL on Debian support and, consequently, have a far higher ROI for supporting MySQL on Debian.

        [ Parent ]
      • UBUNTU ! Why Hath Thou Foresaken Me ? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:30AM
      • Re:Let's fork it! by Vlad_the_Inhaler (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:43AM
        • Debian might as well make a trademark-free policy by Kjella (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:14PM
        • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:4, Informative)

          by ciggieposeur (715798) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:53PM (#17226310)
          First, by support the article refers to technical support contracts, not whether or not the software will actually run on Debian. And MySQL has decided that they will provide technical support only for a very limited subset of the popular Linux distros. As far is this issue is concerned, Debian is in the same boat as a lot of other distros and was not singled out for special treatment.

          Second, the Mozilla trademark issue was at its core unavoidable. Debian has to be able to say to its derivative distros that everything in "main" is really free, Mozilla had copyrighted images that were NOT free, so Debian couldn't use them and Mozilla responded by saying they had to rename the browser. So they did, and the Mozilla-branded browser remains in "non-free" due to the copyrighted images. Everyone accusing Debian of hypocrisy on the trademark issue because they have an official logo is (to be blunt) wrong. Debian has an official logo (that they hardly ever use) to provide legal recourse to stop anyone else claiming to be Debian. It is otherwise of no use in the project and does nothing to prevent derivative distros from doing their own thing when they want to.

          Incidentally, the Mozilla trademark dispute has caused me to reinvestigate my use of ALL software from Mozilla. I'm finding that KDE software is far more user-friendly and powerful than the Mozilla software across a number of applications. KMail can be made (rather easily) to store mail in ~/Mail in mbox format, its mail filters execute much faster, I can right-click -> "Create Filter" -> "Filter on From" in seconds, and in dozens of other ways it kicks mozilla-mail's ass. Likewise KNode, Konqueror, and Kontact.
          [ Parent ]
      • Re:Let's fork it! by smellsofbikes (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:49AM
    • Re:Let's fork it! by Orange Crush (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:27AM
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nasarius (593729) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:46AM (#17223466)
    Why? Is there a problem with the code, or the license? You're free to start your own company and offer tech support and other services for MySQL, and there's always PostgreSQL. But if the MySQL coders are still doing good work, I see no reason to fork.
    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alchemar (720449) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:46AM (#17223490)
    The problem is support, not inoperability. The software still works, you just don't have anyone to call when it doesn't work the way you expected. Forking the project does not solve this problem. If a third party wanted to sell a customer support contract for it, they could do so without needing a fork. If MySQL started releasing later versions of the software without the source, then a fork would be needed to have a branch that could be supported by another company.
    [ Parent ]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Drasil (580067) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @10:51AM (#17223568)
    Guys, it's time to fork MySQL.

    ...or switch to the excellent Postgres [postgresql.org] which is more open and a more complete SQL implementation than MySQL anyway.

    Expect to see more things like this happening as the IT landscape undergoes it's coming changes.

    [ Parent ]
    • Re:Let's fork it! by Dan Farina (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:29AM
    • Re:Let's fork it! by killjoe (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:14PM
    • Re:Let's fork it! by Jamesday (Score:2) Wednesday December 13 2006, @04:03PM
    • Re:Let's fork it! by newt0311 (Score:3) Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:17PM
      • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by killjoe (766577) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @03:22PM (#17227978)
        Yes but it doesn't have what people REALLY want. Replication, clustering, failover, case insensitive where clauses.

        If you want high availibility you have to cobble together slony and pgpool (which does not support multi master replication) neither of which is suitable for working over a WAN.

        There is a reason why people choose MySql and that's because it delivers the features people really want first. Even the features are not 100% "correct" they are delivered "good enough" to get "real work" done.

        Take case insesntive where clauses for example. For the last five years or so that I have been following the pg mailing lists there must have been hundreds of requests from people who want to switch over from mysql, ms-sql, oracle, informix, firebird etc for a case insensitive collation option. They just get ignored and told to change all their queries to use ILIKE or *~ or some other stupid non standard postgres only SQL. Oddly enough their primary excuse for not providing it is that it's not a SQL standard.

        So if you using any kind of an ORM and you can not stomach asking your employees or web users to remember the exact capitalization of everything they have ever typed into your database then postgres is not an option.

        Sorry.
        [ Parent ]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:5, Interesting)

    Mmm fork MySQL? Why? There is nothing wrong with the code. You could try to fork the support and start a company specialized in MySQL support on Debian.....

    I think there is a market for this. The only thing you need is a couple of good people. You/we(the community) could also create a company GPL style. Create a pool of people willing to devote there time on solving MySQL Debian support problems. Create a ticket like system and assign questions to people in the pool.

    This way you can quickly create a non-profit company with little to non investments. The biggest "problem" is that you have to attract people willing to become part of you expert pool.

    While writing this, it might even be a good challenge to start this..... I will think some more about this. :-) Anyone in? ;-)

    Regards,
    Johan Louwers.
    [ Parent ]
  • by Cigamit (200871) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:01AM (#17223722)
    (http://cactiusers.org/)
    I believe you forgot a few steps...

    3. ????
    4. Profit!!

    Its an odd business plan, but it always seems to pan out in the end.
    [ Parent ]
  • As opposed to.... what? Windows? VMS? Solaris? Your Mother?

    I'm pretty sure that all operating systems, at some point, are hacked together by collections of individuals. How "craptastic" they are may have some variation, but I'd guess that, out of the hundreds of people who worked on Linux, some were "craptastic." Same for Windows. Same for VMS, the BSDs, etc.

    I can't tell you if, by and large, the people who worked on any particular OS are "craptastic."

    But you sure are!

    Ba-ZING!

    [ Parent ]
  • by brokeninside (34168) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:57AM (#17224590)
    I think it fair to say that Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution for web servers surveyed by Netcraft. It's also probably fair to extrapolate this to mean that Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution among all web servers. But I think it it quite the unwarranted stretch to take that to mean that Debian is the second most popular Linux in any market segment. I have no reason to believe that use of Linux in the business desktop, development database, database server, or application server follow the same trends. They may very well follow the same trends, but until someone studies the question and offers a cogent analysis that question has to remain unanswered.
    [ Parent ]
  • by TheAwfulTruth (325623) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @12:53PM (#17225370)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    Boy that's for sure :(

    USB subsystem changes between SUSE 10.0 and 10.1 produced some spectacular driver failures. New elements inserted in the middle of USB data structs in a point upgrade of a "stable" kernel?!?!? What is stable about that?

    The Linux development and distrribution process has a LOT to learn about system stability. Expecting EVERYONE to ALWAYS be 100% current and recompile EVERYTHING for EVERY distro and then NEVER updrade an installed kernel or libs again (you know to fix bugs or security holes?) without chancing having to rebuild the entire universe or suffer random breakages is completely and utterly wrong headed. :(

    This may have been fine in the good old days of "install and forget". But these days with the need to be CONSTANTLY up on security patches, it's become quite a nightmare to maintain a linux box for any length of time without having to do a complete reinstall because of unresolvable incompatibility problems between the Kernel, libs and software. Doing it by hand is a major recipe for disaster, but even keeping up with a distro's precompiled sets of upgrades is a crap shoot and has resulted in serveral system failures.

    Linux needs stability in a BAD way.
    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:2)

    by IdleTime (561841) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:31PM (#17226004)
    LOLOLOLOL Funniest comment today.

    I suppose you are an expert in database design and programming? Wanna start writing a cost based optimizer? How about an obfuscation toolkit? Or even better, write a new writer process that can perform writes to multiple database files based on requests over a network connection?

    ROFLMAO!
    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:2)

    by Da_Weasel (458921) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @01:41PM (#17226140)
    (http://www.codemonkeyx.org/)
    I have a better idea...why don't you go fork yourself!

    (I couldn't resist!)
    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:2)

    by aristotle-dude (626586) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @02:43PM (#17227262)

    Guys, it's time to fork MySQL. I am ready [and willing] to contribute. What do you think?

    Fork you.

    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Let's fork it! (Score:1)

    by DeathElk (883654) on Wednesday December 13 2006, @11:34PM (#17232826)
    (http://clubconway.com/)
    Get forked!
    [ Parent ]
  • 13 replies beneath your current threshold.