Sun May Begin Close Sourcing MySQL Features

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."

This is great news....

[poet]

For PostgreSQL :) http://www.postgresql.org/ [postgresql.org]

Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun?

Re:This is great news....

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I used to be one of MySQL's vociferous defenders, arguing that speed, ease of use, quality of documentation, and the size of the community made up for its limitations relative to PostgreSQL. But this is pretty much the end. Sun is clearly determined to destroy whatever's good about it. For small, lightweight projects, SQLite is the way to go, and for anything bigger, PostgreSQL is now the clear choice. I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.

The one remaining question is mindshare. For example, pretty much every ISP offers MySQL as part of a basic hosting package. No one's saying they have to stop doing that, but are they going to start offering other open source DBMSs in the same way now? I sure hope so.

Re:This is great news....

[sticks_us]

I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.

I've been using PostgreSQL on-and-off for about 7 years now, and I have to say: it's *all* gotten a lot better.

In fact, feel free to check out (I think it's on Safari) how slick things have gotten, try Korry Douglas' book (forgot the title right now). I think it's a stellar example of book writing in general, and does a very good job of explaining a lot of the advanced features (like clustering, failover, etc).

I won't miss MySQL one bit--PG rules!

Re:

[debrain]

I'm very happy to concur. I just tried to put triggers on MySQL databases, admittedly a relatively new feature for the little database that could, and it was a nightmare to manage them. phpMySql didn't have any interface to it, nor did any of the other tools for Mac OS X (which I'm using primarily). I'm not averse to the command line, but there are times when it's just nicer to have a visual interface. I've switched over to PostgreSQL, and its' web-management tool phpPgAdmin allows me to quickly view and ed

Re:

[ta bu shi da yu]

I'm wondering what part of "I'm not averse to the command line, but there are times when it's just nicer to have a visual interface" you didn't get.

The guy isn't complaining, he's just saying that PG does it better. And it's true.

Re:This is great news....

[debrain]

Are you seriously complaining about the fact that 3rd party tools don't give you WYSIWYG support for triggers, something that you can control entirely by simply writing a query?

No. I'm complaining about the fact that, for example, phpMySql requires you to type the following to view the triggers on your database:

SELECT TRIGGER_NAME, EVENT_MANIPULATION, EVENT_OBJECT_TABLE, ACTION_STATEMENT
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TRIGGERS
    WHERE TRIGGER_SCHEMA='dbname';

Let alone, ALTER/UPDATE statements.

Alternatively, here's what I do in phpPgAdmin: click Table, click Triggers. There's a list. I can edit it by clicking on a specific trigger. phpMySql has no such interface to triggers, and every view, creation and edit must be done by manually typing in the SQL (but, based on the tone of your reply, I'm sure you knew that). Maybe you have time for that, and it's not a big concern (on what terms do you get paid?). For any serious database development, it strikes me as a grotesque waste of time.

I mean, seriously, the CREATE TRIGGER statement is not rocket science.

Nobody implied that it was. However, complex trigger statements are what beget the necessity of being able to edit them handily- something that I would imagine you couldn't do with a WYSIWYG (exactly what would a WYSIWYG TRIGGER editor do, anyway?). Wasting 15-20 minutes typing the SELECT/CREATE/ALTER TRIGGERS statement in another editor and then running a blanket update over the whole SQL database strikes me as fundamentally wrong, especially where there is a trivial and effective interface in phpPgAdmin.

Besides, creating them programatically is just better business. I can keep a db_setup_triggers.sql in source control and make it part of automatic builds.

Who ever suggested or implied that you wouldn't create them programatically? Please, feel free to describe how else you would do it.

MySQL is far from perfect. But to criticize it for THIS?

I think you're fundamentally confused about what I was criticizing, meaning you either did not take the time to read my comments, are ignorant of MySql/phpMySql, and/or didn't take the time to think about either before you started ranting. If that be the case and you are fundamentally confused, you've contributed little if anything to the discussion, sounded condescending, acted presumptuously, and been indignant about something that does not even exist (a criticism about the lack of a TRIGGER WYSIWYG, the very suggestion of which reeks of ignorance). If indeed that is the case, next time you consider writing something, perhaps you could do us all a favour and not.

Re:This is great news....

[neoform]

By the way, there is a WYSIWYG editors for both mysql and postgres that handles triggers..

http://www.navicat.com/ [navicat.com]

Post / Grez / Queue /El

[paulthomas]

Post / Grez / Queue /El

Because it is such a common question (and such an odd name), it is aptly an entry in the PostgreSQL FAQ [postgresql.org].

If you don't like my phonetic spelling and prefer IPA, Wikipedia has you covered. [wikipedia.org]

Many people, myself included, simply call it Postgrez.

Re:This is great news....

[Cecil]

Having a good bit of experience with both, I'd say that the documentation and overall support structure for PG is about the same as MySQL these days.

The only caveat that typically hangs up new users (especially ones coming from a MySQL background) and is not particularly clearly documented is the default authentication mechanism.

By default (at least on many distributions), Postgres uses "ident" authentication, which means no password is required for database logins on a local socket. What *is* required, on the other hand, is that you must be logged in/running as the UNIX user of same name. Obviously this poses problems for webapps that want their own database user and is generally just very confusing for users who are used to the database having its own independent set of usernames and passwords (which Postgres still does, for remote connections... causing further confusion)

Of course, like any good database Postgres will be more than happy to handle its own user authentication entirely natively, you simply have to use md5 instead of ident in pg_hba.conf [google.ca]

Re:This is great news....

[gumbi west]

Is there good mirroring of databases? I use a laptop and desktop and appreciate that MYSQL lets my have my wiki with me when I travel because I mirror

Re:This is great news....

[sxpert]

as long as you use the same versions of postgres (well, really this should read "the versions you use are using the same disk format)) it should be a simple rsyncing the data directory to the laptop.

Re:This is great news....

[kisielk]

I would say I'm fairly new to Postgres, at least from an administration standpoint. I was just going through their online documentation the other day (which, by the way, is excellent!) and they explained the authentication mechanisms quite well.

Re:This is great news....

[rainhill]

Guy n Gals.. Lets just fork the thing.., then we can call it iSQL

Re:This is great news....

[Kennon]

Or how about: OurSQL...bitches.

yeah the whole thing.

Re:

[Heembo]

Make your life easier, just fork the backup stuff. The vast majority of MySQL is staying open source - Sun needs the free coders. It's just the backup stuff that Sun wants to privatize.

Re:

[headLITE]

There are close to no free coders involved. 99.999% of all MySQL code is currently being written by the more than 400 employees that joined Sun by way of being acquired along with MySQL AB.

The architecture that is being suggested for backup here is in fact open source friendly, as Sun could just as easily have decided to NOT implement the provisions for it in the GPL code base. As it is now, there will be plenty of opportunity to hook up your own backup stuff, which is a good thing.

Re:This is great news....

[burnin1965]

made up for its limitations relative to PostgreSQL

All the community, documentation, and speed in the world wont make up for lack of features.

I'm no dbms expert but when I first started learning about relation databases, wow, seems like 6+ years ago now, it was obvious from reading the features of mysql versus postgresql that there was no making up for the fact that mysql wasn't a real relational database. Since I was learning about relational databases I never even bothered with mysql and jumped right into postgresql. So I guess I'm biased but I never ran into a problem with tools, libraries, documentation, or community support.

Mysql has made many improvements since then, and I even started to play with it as I've been working on some open source projects which are web based applications and as such may need to support the widely popular mysql. So far its not bad, but it would be nice if their mysql command line tool would do TAB completion as psql does. It always takes me a few tabs before I realize that mysql isn't going to help my lazy ass out.

burnin

Re:

[Alpha830RulZ]

Um, maybe I missed something when I was snoozing, but how can something that implements SQL not be a 'real' relational database? Seems to me that Codd said, "A relational database is a time-varying collection of data, all of which can be accessed and updated as if they were organized as a collection of tabular time-varying tabular (nonhierarchic) relations of assorted degrees defined on a given set of simple domains." Since he and Date kind of defined the realm, I'm inclined to go along with his definitio

Re:This is great news....

[TheRaven64]

When I was doing my second-year undergrad database coursework (2001) it was possible in Postgres but impossible in MySQL because MySQL didn't support foreign keys. It's pretty much impossible to define nontrivial relations without foreign keys, or to get much beyond first normal form. I hear MySQL now has support for foreign keys, but I'd much rather use a database that has had this kind of core functionality for well over a decade than one that has recently bolted it on top of a flawed design.

Apples and Oranges

[ttfkam]

If your referential integrity is in your application then your database engine is broken. His professor had it right. He wasn't writing to a product, he was writing to just about any modern relational database management system *except* for MySQL and SQLite. At least SQLite never pretended to have a complete feature set. MySQL lacked and blamed its lack on "avoiding bloat."

And constraints in MySQL? Is that why CHECK constraints were silently ignored for so many years? What you call "constraints," I call "th

Re:This is great news....

[burnin1965]

It does not enforce the database schema

Well stated. :)

When your learning about referential integrity but the RDBMS doesn't support it your stuck in a conundrum. Unless you choose an RDBMS that actually does its job of keeping the database relational.

Re:

[burnin1965]

I wouldn't know about windows clients, haven't used them for years. Table name completion does work, column completion is basically worthless as it lists every column available in every table, not just the table you listed in the FROM portion of the statement. And there is no completion for any of the SQL commands.

At least that is the case in mysql 5.0.45-6

Re:This is great news....

[arodland]

I guess it's time to see if PostgreSQL's documentation and tools have managed to get any less user-hostile over the years.

Buh? Postgres had some really quality documentation before MySQL had much of anything, and a summarized version of it is even available live in the client. Yeah, it's slightly less verbose than MySQL's has gotten to be, but it's certainly not incomplete. It just isn't "SQL for Dummies". (Side note: that's one of the better "Dummies" books ever printed).

As to tools, I'm not sure what you're after, as postgres has less need for addon tools than mysql, doing more via SQL instead. The only thing that's especially tricky in configuration is pg_hba.conf -- but comparison with mysql's user auth shows the complexity to be worthwhile.

Re:

[Micah]

The only thing that's especially tricky in configuration is pg_hba.conf -- but comparison with mysql's user auth shows the complexity to be worthwhile.

Amen. User access privileges positively drive me nuts about MySQL. It is completely inane. Different passwords for the same user for different hosts and/or databases? Guuuuh!

PG works exactly as should be expected, with the added benefit of hierarchical roles. It may be good to change the default auth method from ident to md5, though.

Re:This is great news....

[kestasjk]

I used to be one of MySQL's vociferous defenders, arguing that speed, ease of use, quality of documentation, and the size of the community made up for its limitations relative to PostgreSQL. But this is pretty much the end. Sun is clearly determined to destroy whatever's good about it.

PostgreSQL is definitely better in terms of being free.

• No one company owns it; it's added to by individual companies which need additions, so no-one can buy it out and stomp it out
• No one company dominates support; you can go wherever you get the best price/service, and there's no incentive to try and get you to need support
• No dual licensing; it's all BSD licensed, which means if you want to take it and close the source for a commercial project you can. If you think you can take Postgres, close source it, and improve it to the extend that people would pay for it, then good luck to you (but I don't see it happening ;) ). More likely you'd want to embed Postgres, or extend it somehow and not have to worry about licensing or pay fees, and with Postgres (as with SQLite) you can.

So from a licensing perspective PostgreSQL is definitely a good deal safer.

For the web I started off with Postgres but eventually had to move to MySQL because it has such wide support, but as I use InnoDB I've grown more and more uneasy at seeing Oracle and Sun buy off chunks of MySQL.
Even putting aside any arguments about performance/features (not that Postgres is bad in this regard), PostgreSQL would be better as an FOSS DB standard, just because there wouldn't be any worries about license/ownership instability.


However, before we go nuts with Postgres love, I think it's safe to say Sun won't be close sourcing MySQL to a damaging degree; that'd be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
The reason MySQL is so valuable is because of its wide usage, and they'll want to use that to their advantage in more subtle ways than close sourcing and cashing in. The comments so far have been a bit OTT.

Re:

[bhtooefr]

What about StarOffice, which they bought, and later forked into OpenOffice?

Re:This is great news....

[Kristoph]

But this is pretty much the end.

You need to get a grip and possibly read for yourself what this is.

Sun is saying that they may (not yet decided) offer some add on components to mySQL backup that may (not yet decided) use a license other than GPL. The add on in question will be integrated through a backup API mySQL has for exactly this purpose (to enable 3rd party extended backup solutions).

What exactly do see wrong with that? First, nothing precludes building open source backup solutions for this API and nothing precludes other 3rd parties from building other solutions. Why should Sun not have the same right?

]{

Re:

[Beefpatrol]

I've been using PostgreSQL pretty heavily for the last year or so, and since the version of Gentoo I was originally using had 8.0.12 as the default version, and I am now using 8.2.6, I can say that it has improved tremendously just through those two minor releases. I have also not found the documentation to be significantly lacking. It is well organized and covers everything you need for even a fairly heavily used system.

I haven't tried doing any of the more esoteric things with it that the documentatio

Re:This is great news....

[Tony Hoyle]

sqlite is a very simple single user db. It's easy to integrate and because it doesn't need a server, works extremely well where you'd like to use SQL but don't need a heavy database. It's not even in the same target application space as MySql.

MySql is a full fledged client/server database and *should* support referential integrity properly. Of course its biggest problem is licensing - you can only use mysql with 100% GPL applications (unless you're prepared to pay $200/user for the client licenses, or stick to the 3.23 client which is the last free to use version), which limits it somewhat.. TBH given that restriction I'm really surprised web hosts still ship it, as they're opening themselves up to all sorts of liability issues if one of their customers uses/builds a non-gpl app using it.

Postgresql is basically mysql without all the silly politics.

Re:

[Poromenos1]

Close sourcing is never good news for anyone...

Re:This is great news....

[Anonymous Coward]

Close sourcing is never good news for anyone...

Tell that to the Chinese. We lost our manufacturing base to them. They source all of our close we wear nowadays.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

Q. What's the difference between a Scotsman with an extended family that are very fond of making lame wordplay jokes and Baldrick from Blackadder?

A. One has a punning clan...

wait a minute....

[AmaDaden]

I know it's all over the story on Slashdot's end but the article it self does not say anything will be closed. GPLed code can be open but cost money. Am I missing some other article? Because to me it sounds like they plan on doing things the Red Hat way. Public free version and Enterprise pay version.

Re:wait a minute....

[mabhatter654]

but it's backwards of the Red Hat way. With Fedora, Red Hat lets the community run the roost and run whatever crazy things are cool on the tubes. They reserve RHEL for the cleaned up professional version that has what paying customers NEED and they support it. The community gets the warty version with all the lumps in return for it being free.

Sun wants to treat MySQL like a product. They want to give away the "free" version as a stripped down marketing tool. They want to put new code in Enterprise first, where fewer people will see it. The current model is that Enterprise is MORE stable and less agressive. The value of the GPL version is that lots of people put up with warts because it's free... paying customers won't do that by a long shot. The first time a nasty data killing bug shows up for the top paying customers they'll all jump ship for Sun not testing better.

I've run into this with Oracle

[btarval]

"Sun wants to treat MySQL like a product. They want to give away the "free" version as a stripped down marketing tool.

Yes, this is what Oracle does with Berkeley DB. On one project, we started out with using Berkeley DB. It wasn't meeting the needs, so we started looking at other options. Oracle had us hooked, and started reeling us in. Up until we got to the price tag. They wouldn't offer the support that we needed for their commercial version of Berkely DB, and instead wanted to push us towards their full Oracle DB. It sounded fine until we got to the price. They wanted, get this, 5% of the gross revenues of the product we were designing!!! Not a per-license fee, not a large finite sum for the product, but a full 5% of the revenues.

Needless to say, we told them to take a hike.

This is different than from a few years ago. Then they were willing to do a per license fee. But, of course, at an astronomical amount. Plus, this amount would literally change each time we talked to a different salesperson. There was a lot of confusion at the time. Now they've eliminated the confusion, but their greed knows no bounds.

Sun is welcome in this space, IMHO. More competition is good, because frankly, all of the vendors have serious drawbacks in one way or another.

The moral of the story is be real careful about the database you select, and your design. If you choose foolishly, you'll end up spending lots of money, when a better design could have saved you from this pain.

Re:Very insightful

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is frequently, though not always, true for RedHat. Some of their clustering systems are closed source, and available on RHEL and not Fedora. But it's generally true.

There are companies that use the 'closed first, GPL later' approach: Xensource did with Xen virtualization softwre, and Citrix is allegedly doing the same now that they bought Xen. AFPL does this with Ghostscript, and at last look Zmanda was doing this with Amanda.

Re:This is great news....

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And for Firebird (http://www.firebirdsql.org [firebirdsql.org]) as well. :) I am going to celebrate! (Or maybe it is that Sun bought MySQL just to sweep in under the carpet so that it will not spoil their PostgreSQL interests? Probably not, but it's a funny idea nevertheless. ;-))

Re:This is great news....

[MadnessASAP]

Even nicer PostreSQL has an animal mascot, I can see the jokes now: A Penguin, Indian and Elephant walk into a bar...

We even still get a pronounceable acronym LAPP. It looks like the future is still rosy for the rest of us.

Re:This is great news....

[Sancho]

Eh, Linux is ok on the desktop, but for servers, I really prefer FreeBSD.

Sometimes I get tired of that, and use NetBSD for a while. A short stint with NetBSD, Apache, Postgresql, and PHP usually refreshes me long enough so that I can FreeBSD, Apache, Postgresql, and PHP again.

Re:This is great news....

[Sancho]

That would be the joke, but I was going for a touch more subtlety.

Re:This is great news....

[Registered Coward v2]

For PostgreSQL :) http://www.postgresql.org/ [postgresql.org]

Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun?

From the pSQL web page:

Best of all, PostgreSQL's source code is available under the most liberal open source license: the BSD license. This license gives you the freedom to use, modify and distribute PostgreSQL in any form you like, open or closed source. Any modifications, enhancements, or changes you make are yours to do with as you please. As such, PostgreSQL is not only a powerful database system capable of running the enterprise, it is a development platform upon which to develop in-house, web, or commercial software products that require a capable RDBMS.

That seems to be the same thing Sun is saying - we're going to add some closed source features to MySQL; the same as pSQL's license allows.

Re:

[EvilIdler]

The current maintainers of Postgres still release new source to the public. Sun intends to hold back some.
I don't mind some proprietary software, but open source software which suddenly turns proprietary is
downright uncool. No MySQL on my dinky little servers; PG all the way.

Re:

[Orion Blastar]

Yeah I've always seen PostgreSQL as an open source version of Oracle because both of them support PL/SQL. PostgreSQL may not be as good as Oracle is, but it is good enough for most projects that it doesn't have to be. Much better than MySQL anyway.

I sort of seen MySQL as only being partly finished and more like an open source version of SyBase but without stored procedures and triggers, etc, unless they recently added them and I didn't know it. MySQL was usually good enough for most small projects and web s

Re:This is great news....

[SL Baur]

Yes, it's sensationalistic. They will be close sourcing portions of the source, but not the database core itself. The only piece mentioned in TFA is the online backup utility.

I've never understood the reluctance towards PostgreSQL. It's been quite good for quite a long time now.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[_KiTA_]

simply put, it's harder for a person new to databases to jump into. MySQL kinda holds your hand with phpmyadmin and it's other admin tools. PG has pgadmin (but not as featureful) and by default installs where you can't access the DB until you su as the postres user and give out permissions. Are they *trying* to make things hard??

So... if they're both open source, why not just port phpmyadmin to PG? Would it really be that hard?

Re:This is great news....

[penix1]

Just one line for you...

http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Works much better than MS's famous "the default sa password is empty string".

Re:

[CastrTroy]

It was the only version of SQL server available until 2005 came out, only 3 year ago. And even then, many companies are still using SQL server 2000.

Re:

[jedidiah]

No, it's not "sensationalistic". It's one of those things that helps
confirms the fact that mySQL isn't some place to keep your data if
you are serious about protecting it. Backing your database without
causing a total outtage is not a "minor or peripheral" feature.
Neither is the ability to recover all transactions that have occured
between your last backup and the point of your "disaster".

Sun is intentionally hamstringing the libre version of mySQL with this
sort of shenanigan.

It's time to fork.

harsh judgement

[irtza]

didn't sun buy star office and give us the OPEN SOURCE - openoffice.org?

given the size and nature of this move, I don't begrudge sun anything in its commitment to open source.

Re:harsh judgement

[Anonymous Coward]

quiet! stop ruining my argument with facts

Re:harsh judgement

[nurb432]

And don't forget Netbeans.. Oh, and SPARC..

Re:harsh judgement

[Alpha830RulZ]

Java is pretty neat, too.

I do like NetBeans.

Re:harsh judgement

[An dochasac]

java not full open source

Where have you been? Java source code has been available for a long time but after years of people complaining that it wasn't "free enough", Sun fully released Java under a GPL [slashdot.org] 2 years ago.

OpenOffice not really GPL

O.K. so it's LGPL [openoffice.org] So what, so is Gtk, most of GNOME and probably 80% of what you and joe-sixpack considers to be "opensource" in "Linux". GPL is just one license. GPL was never fully tested in court and doesn't provide patent indemnity as CDDL does. I'd be happier if Java, OpenOffice and MySQL were CDDL but there would be too much gnashing of teeth from the Linux creationists.

OpenSolaris i dont know enough about

OpenSolaris is licensed under CDDL. Look here [opensolaris.org] for an FAQ which explains in simple terms why CDDL is superior to GPL.

Re:harsh judgement

[Nazlfrag]

I'd like you to try to name another company off the top of your head that has contributed to OSS like Sun has. They not only open source this stuff but actively develop and maintain it and understand that being the first stop for support and services they provide (like online backup features in their Enterprise tools) is the reward they receive for this generous GPLing of their codebase. GP is right, article is a troll.

Last part a Joke?

[gQuigs]

OpenOffice.org - no mention eh. :P
Java - I am running the IcedTea free software version right now
OpenSolaris - might not be GPL, but it still qualifies as free software... right?

Of course I'm hoping the first part is a joke too.

Re:

[davecb]

No, Anonymous just has an axe to grind. MySQL is releasing some stuff in the for-pay codebase first. And I note a commentator below says the backup is in the GPL codebase after all...

--dave

Re:Last part a Joke?

[junglee_iitk]

That when RMS himself says that Sun is the biggest single corporate contributor to open source.

Slashdot's credibility is drowning.

Re:

[skeeto]

That when RMS himself says that Sun is the biggest single corporate contributor to open source.

I don't remember him wording it quite that way, though. :-P

Comment

[Rinisari]

Marten replied already:

Marten Mickos Says:
April 16th, 2008 at 17:28:26

Thanks for all your comments on our business model. I wanted to present here the quick facts around this to avoid misunderstandings:

In 6.0 there will be native backup functionality in the server available for anyone and all (Community, Enterprise) under GPL.

Additionally we will develop high-end add-ons (such as encryption, native storage engine-specific drivers) that we will deliver to customers in the MySQL Enterprise product only. We have not yet decided under what licence we will release those add-ons (GPL, some other FOSS licence, and/or commercial).

Because the main backup functionality goes into the main server under GPL, anyone can of course use the api and build their own add-ons or other modifications.

Marten

-1, Flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything.

That's rubbish. The article claiming OpenSolaris isn't really open source bases it on the lack of community and ideology. I'm sorry, but if you want ideology, then it's Free Software you're after, not open source.

OpenSolaris is definitely open source, and Sun don't have a poor history of open sourcing things. Anybody who says otherwise has an axe to grind.

Re:-1, Flamebait NOT: Prod Solaris is NOT opensour

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

THere's an appropriate saying about getting free donuts and complaining about the holes...

What the hell?

[joe_bruin]

Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything

Yes, let's forget about Java, that was recently GPL'd. Or Open Solaris, including ZFS. Or Open Office. Or OpenSPARC (you can download and implement their latest processors). Or Netbeans (and Forte before that, though it was lousy). Or being a patron of the FSF [fsf.org].

Those guys are such dicks, they never give the community anything.

Re:What the hell?

[shutdown -p now]

And Java is massively popular and hasn't been eclipsed by anything. .NET isn't anywhere close.

Careful there, lest you delude yourself. Yes, Java is still ahead by a sizable margin, but have you seen the trends? .NET is catching up quickly, with Microsoft playing its "one vendor offering integrated solutions for everything" card.

But hey, it's always good to have some real competition there. At least that way Sun is forced to actually add major new features to Java at a reasonable pace.

Sun to Begin Close Sourcing MySQL

[brianc]

Oh, no they don't. They can't do that to MySQL.

They can do it to TheirSQL, but not MySQL...

Re:

[Orange Crush]

No. That's the key difference between the GPL and permissive licenses like BSD and MIT. You cannot take GPL code, modify it, and re-release it as a closed source product. The terms of the license explicitly state that you must provide source code with any modified or derived version you distribute.

*UNLESS* you are the sole copyright holder to the GPLed work and any outside contributors have assigned copyright to you, in which case you can re-release it under whatever license you please (of course, the

Comments from MySQL

[martenmickos]

Thanks for all the comments on this. We are listening attentively. Let me clarify some facts:

* The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO) prior to the acquisition by Sun, so this has nothing to do with Sun. On the contrary, Sun is more likely to influence this decision the other way.

* It is not a quesiton of close sourcing any existing code, nor anything in the core server. Everything we have released under GPL continues to be under GPL, and the core server will always be under GPL (or some other FOSS licence).

* We will introduce backup functionality for all users (Community and Enterprise) under GPL in version 6.0.

* Additionally we will develop high-end add-ons (such as encryption, native storage engine-specific drivers) that we will deliver to customers in the MySQL Enterprise product only. We have not yet decided under what licence we will release those add-ons (GPL, some other FOSS licence, and/or commercial).

* At all times, because the main backup functionality goes into the core server under GPL, anyone can of course use the api and build their own add-ons or other modifications.

Those are the facts on this. The interesting topic is of course the one of the business model and what the best business model for FOSS software is. I hope to cover that in a separate posting.

In all of this, you have our undivided continued commitment to providing a fantastic and complete MySQL server under GPL for anyone to download and use. If we for whatever reason would not do that, we would risk losing users to other open source databases or risk seeing a fork of our own product. This is the power of open source.

Make sense?

Marten
previously CEO of MySQL, now SVP at Sun

Re:

[Chandon Seldon]

Thanks for posting and clarifying.

That seems to be basically what the article says too. I wonder if Slashdot editors actually read stories before posting them with flamebait summaries?

Re:Comments from MySQL

[pembo13]

If this is true, could the editors please alter the article title accordingly? Or at least point directly to the above comment? These articles get indexed.

Re:Comments from MySQL

[cynicsreport]

Thanks for all the comments on this. We are listening attentively. Let me clarify some facts:
.....
Marten previously CEO of MySQL, now SVP at Sun

I didn't actually read any of the points - the mere fact that he posted a comment on slashdot proves that Sun is committed to open source.
When was last time Bill Gates posted a reply on slashdot?

Re:Comments from MySQL

[scribblej]

He posts here all the time! You just have to browse at -1...

Re:

[pallmall1]

Thanks for your post, Marten.

MySQL has made controversial decisions in the past (such as the SCO deal), but you have always been very straightforward with the open source community about the rationale behind the decisions, and taken the time to address their concerns. Most important, you have always kept your word regarding your commitment to the open source community.

There are many situations where special extensions are needed by a small or select subset of the general user base (a niche, per se),

Re:Comments from MySQL

[martenmickos]

Thx. We have considered Red Hat's model carefully, and it may indeed be one that we and others could also adopt to 100%. If we reach that conclusion, we will align our model with theirs.

But we are not absolutely certain that this is the case, and so we are experimenting with other models. We believe that a DBMS behaves somewhat differently in the market compared to an operating system. We believe that Red Hat's competitive situation is different from ours. And we are not fully convinced that Red Hat gets a fair compensation in the market for their enormous (and great) investments and contributions.

So for these reasons we continue to test out new models.

Marten

Re:

[martenmickos]

Thx. Some more comments on the differences I referred to earlier:

I believe that customers using operating systems will mostly want the latest updates and patches, so on-going support (or subscription) is vital to the the well-being of the installation. But with databases, customers typically want to avoid updates unless they absolutely need them. For this reason I believe that selling a support program (only) to database customers may not be as good a business as doing it to operating system customers.

Anoth

MySQL & FOSS

[martenmickos]

All,

I tried to clarify the facts in another posting a moment ago: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=525246&cid=23098626

Here I will discuss the business model considerations, MySQL's commitment to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and why we made the decision we made.

First and foremost: we at MySQL firmly believe that open source is a superior way of producing software. You get better quality faster, and you often get better innovation too.

So it is not lightly that we have decided a few times to produce non-open software, such as the MySQL Monitor introduced some years ago. So why do we do that?

The reason is that we have an ambition not only to produce FOSS code, but also to be a profitable business that can exist for a long time. Each time we make more money, we hire more developers to develop GPL code.

If the world were perfect, we would only produce GPL code and we would have a great business that cna fund the software development. But we have found that the world is not perfect. We have been experimenting with a variety of business models around FOSS (dual licensing, support only, simple subscriptions, different binaries for community and enterprise, non-open source features) to find the best one. And we will continue to experiment until we are satisfied. We need to find a model that allows us to produce a ton of great code under GPL while having the financial strength to do all this.

To get to this goal of ours, we believe we have to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. Call it a necessary evil if you like. Having production add-ons that we provide only to paying customers currently seems to use to be a useful model. Our partners and customers think it is great. Many users think it is great. But not all do (as evident from this thread on /.). I would hope we could please all, but I am afraid we cannot.

In all of this - i.e. as we experiment with open source business models (as there aren't really any role models bigger than ourselves that we could learn from) - we remain fully committed to producing the core database server always under the GPL (or some other approved FOSS licence).

In this work, we feel we have been able to produce enormous benefits to the world in the form of GPL software. The MySQL server could not have evolved as much as it did (not that I am saying it has evolved perfectly) if we hadn't had a revenue stream to fund the hiring of developers and others. We have open sourced MySQL Cluster which was an advanced closed-source database engine at Ericsson. We open sourced the Falcon storage engine.

I can appreciate that many of you are upset with our decisions. It has happened before that the community has been upset with us. But I hope that you can see that

* we are trying to be fully open and transparent with our decision-making in these areas

* we have a full commitment to produce the core MySQL server under GPL

* we are actively listening to your input

We can probably not please all, but you should know that we are trying to serve our community. We are immensely thankful for all the support and contributions that we have received in our 13-year history. We are hoping that we are good stewards of the MySQL phenomenon, and we hope that you can come to terms with the fact that we find revenue generation a vital part of our mission.

We may not have come up with the perfect business model yet (and perhaps the decision that is here being debated was utterly stupid), but we are determined to continue to seek the perfect business model for open source software so that we can continue to exist and be strong, and so that other software entrepreneurs can learn from our successes and mistakes.

Finally, please note that this entire decision and reasoning is something we developed on our own at MySQL AB several months ago, before being acquired by Sun. Sun has not asked us to do this or that. Or in fact, Sun has asked us the opposite - i.e. whether we should not

Re:MySQL & FOSS

[Orion Blastar]

Of course open source licenses allow for some code and features to be released from the open source license by paying off the developers who developed the code and having them sign a contract. In that way their open source developments pay off and they can finally earn an income for their hard work.

What the community doesn't seem to get is that this is basically creating two versions of the same product. One open sourced and one closed source. It is basically forking off a closed source version and paying off developers to release it so they are finally paid for their hard work and years dedicated to writing code. Just that the open source version now doesn't have the same code and features as the new closed source version has. But that wouldn't stop open source developers from writing new code to put features back in the open source version. As long as it doesn't use source code from the closed source fork of it. For example this was done to WINE to create Crossover Office, WINEX/Cediga, et all. Also Red Hat Enterprise is different from Red Hat Fedora. Just that one version went commercial and the other went open source.

As an open source developer you actually want this to happen, so that all of your hard work is paid off finally. You want a company to buy out your work and pay you for it eventually. That doesn't make you selfish and it doesn't make you greedy either. I mean you spend years supporting the open source community for free and writing a lot of code without even being paid for it. So they really can't say you haven't given anything to the open source community. While people jokingly call open source developers as communists or hippies, in reality they are capitalists at heart. In the end they want equal pay for equal work. Open source projects are a good way to market their skills and show off their coding abilities and ability to work in a team. Plus it gives back to the community in free software. But the time will come eventually when some company decides the project is good enough to license and use in a commercial project so they sell their rights to it for money. Most of the time that doesn't happen and it continues to be unsupported and open source developers have friends and family members wondering if they are insane, doing all of that hard work for free and it looks like they are throwing away money or flushing it down the toilet.

There will still be an open source version of MySQL, just that parts of it got spun off into a closed source commercial version. I did a lot of research into open source business plans myself in college. You try to earn money via charging for tech support or donations, failing that you try to get some company like Sun to buy your code and pay off your developers to release the code from open source. But some open source companies sell t-shirts and stuffed animals and other stuff. Any way you look at it, it is still capitalism and still a company trying to earn a profit. You still have stock holders who want a return on their investments. You still have employees that expect a paycheck. It may be free software, but people aren't really writing it for free, they expect a payoff sooner or later.

Is anyone actually reading TFA?

[FliesLikeABrick]

Looking at the actual link, this is talking about select _new_ features. The /. summary clearly is trying to scare us all into thinking that existing parts of MySQL would somehow be turned into a closed-source product.

Talk about someone trying to be misleading...

mrghemp

[MrGHemp]

The title of this article is a bit dramatic and incorrect. There is nothing in the story about the core MySQL engine being moved from open source to a closed source mentioned in the story. Rather a fancy new backup add-on is being released to Enterprise edition, and possibly added to the community version later.

MySQL is one of the most popular open source products out there, but they get lambasted if they create an add-on and want to actually get paid for it. Too many ppl react as if they are defecating on a holy shrine in the land of FOSS.

The title of this article and some of the reactions here strikes me a chicken little "the sky is falling" BS. I love open source software and the general movement, but I hate it when people jump to conclusions like this... and jumping to conclusions like this seems to happen all to often by ppl on /. and the open source community in general. I'd like to see more people showing respect for a company that has done so much for open source and respect the fact that they deserve to actually make a little money along the way.

I can't help but wonder how many of the people, who treat this story like the evil Sun is going ruin MySQL, run MySQL but haven't open sourced the programs that they've written that access the database... I'd bet a hell of a lot of closed source programs use MySQL as their database... should we scream at them for being evil too?

Who Needs MySQL?

[Anarchysoft]

When there are so many good alternatives! [hxfu.org] Check it out.

The summary is bad...

[steelfood]

...the editors can't even be bothered to read the link and verify the information.

I went to firehose to vote this story down with the reason "not the best". I suggest we all start doing this for all such examples of yellow journalism. Maybe if we do it enough, the editors will start to get a clue.

Let's kill MySQL so PostgreSQL can take over!

[rossz]

MySQL has a few advantages over PostgreSQL. Primarily, it's supported by just about every damn open source package in the world. If MySQL is closed up, OSS developers may choose to drop support for it. Personally, I think PostgreSQL is a better package than MySQL, but I mostly use MySQL because of its compatibility with everything. I won't, though, hesitate to switch if I am not happy with the direction of MySQL.

MySQL has been drifting towards closed source for

[PinchDuck]

awhile. I was hoping that Sun would reverse that trend. It sounds like they are keeping the base package free (for now), but that high end add ons will be closed/commercial. That is fine, but it is also enough of a closed-source move for me to start looking at alternatives. I wish them the best of luck, but I will make sure I do what is best for me and my clients. Maybe I'll use MySQL, maybe I won't, it will depend on license, price, functionality, and community support.

Geez Louise

[yomegaman]

For a userbase that is always congratulating itself on how smart it is, there sure are a lot of gullible people reading Slashdot...

don't rush to conclusions

[bonefry]

SUN is not closing parts of MySQL, instead it is introducing new features in MySQL Enterprise, a product which always had extra features.

Not to mention that SUN is not the only one doing interesting things with MySQL ... for example at the conference I saw a presentation on Maria, a MyIsam-based storage engine that supports transactions.

Also, the features in MySQL Enterprise can (at least currently) be enjoyed by most developers using alternatives ...

1) the hot backup of myisam tables will be available in the open-source version
2) the smart load balancer is a MySQL Proxy configured with filtering scripts that you can write yourself in Lua
3) profiling can be done efficiently with Sun's DTrace

Disclaimer: I am currently attending the MySQL conference, but I am not affiliated with Sun in any way.

Bad summary

[headLITE]

The /. summary is misleading. It isn't MySQL that is going to be closed-sourced, it's just that Sun will develop additional products that MySQL customers will be able to buy and use with their GPL MySQL server if they so choose. This isn't really news, MySQL AB has done so before, for example with the most excellent MySQL Enterprise Monitor.

Suns contribution to open source

[Marcus Green]

"Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything"

Get back in your hole Troll. According to the EU Sun is the No 1 contributor of code towards open source by a very, very wide margin.

Re:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck

[andersbergh]

That's not what the linked blog post says, basically what they're doing is developing new features to be put in MySQL 6.0 enterprise, and these _new_ features won't show up in community.

Re:

[jimicus]

well, yes but, we wanna have all that new features OPEN too.. imagine RedHat tomorrow saying, "yo guys, RH engineers gonna add new advanced features closed source.."

this is not good, not good at al...

EVERY commercial Linux distribution has parts which may or may not be open source, but if they are open they're certainly open to the extent that the GPL is.

Ubuntu has Landscape, a tool for managing a number of Ubuntu desktops. Only available if you're paying Canonical for support.

SuSE plugs into ZenWorks - most certainly not F/OSS.

RHEL has Fedora Directory Server (albeit rebranded as Red Hat). That one's open source but such an absolute dog to set up that you'd need your head examined if you tried doin

Re:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck

[Anthony Boyd]

We do get to keep what we made. If it's under the GPL, we can always fork it into a new Open Source product called OurSQL. It's just that we won't be able to integrate any of their proprietary new features that are NOT under the GPL. But, hey, who needs 'em for that? If Open Source could get it this far, odds are good Open Source can do even more.

Re:

[jocknerd]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think MySQL ever had an open source developer community. It was developed by a company and released as an open source product. Unlike PostgreSQL, which really is developed by a community of developers.

Re:

[BluBrick]

Hmm, I think you have the adults/kids analogy all bass-ackwards.

This is more like the adult teaching a kid about sharing by playing with a toy with the child. Eventually, the kid's gonna snatch it off the adult, clutch it to his chest possessively and and yell "MINE!"

I solved that with my 3 YO daughter by taking the batteries out of her toy and telling her that the toy is hers, but the batteries were mine. When she realised that the toy didn't work without the batteries, she understood the meaning of

Re:You can't effectively close-source anything GPL

[andersbergh]

How could you fork code that hasn't been released in the first place?

Can you say...

[TheSHAD0W]

...YourSQL?

Re:You can't effectively close-source anything GPL

[SL Baur]

The GCC/EGCS fork worked because most of the developers went with the EGCS.

That fork worked because the GCC mainline was dead *and* the people doing all the real work were the ones who created EGCS. Indeed, what is now called "GCC" is the offspring of EGCS, the orignal GCC was killed.

No comment regarding XFree86/Xorg.

No comment regarding the Emacs/XEmacs fork, except to point out that there was an earlier fork called Epoch made in the version 18 days and that didn't go anywhere. I used it for a time in 1990 and preferred it to straight Emacs 18.

The only other major fork I can think of would be the *BSD forks, Open, Net and Free.

Successful forking is very rare and requires a truly dedicated developer community or large corporate backing to pull it off. Out of the few examples listed one of them was not a fork at all, but a coup and resulted in the death of the parent.

Beryl

[Gazzonyx]

What about the Compiz, Beryl, Fusion fiasco? That was a fork, merge, (branch?)... I've got svn repos with less confusing trees, for craps sake! Granted, it only lasted, what a couple of months or so, and I'm glad that every was able to humble themselves and work it all out... but it still was a fiasco!

Re:

[tgatliff]

As much as these "old" companies claim they understand where the industry is headed, they really have no clue....

The only thing that Sun will achieve in this change is a fork... Maybe that was the plan all along... The founders of MySQL AB get their big checks, and then create a new company with a forked version of MYSQL.. Brilliant!!! :)

They are forking the code

[spun]

Sun will only develop and release certain features in the Enterprise version, specifically relating to online backup, management, and other advanced features. What's in the current version stays in the current version, but they will phase out those features in the community branch. Someone can still port them from the old version, but even then, we won't get the benefit of Sun's new developments.

Re:

[spun]

It's not that they're phasing them out of the GPL'd branch; these are new features that were never GPL'd in the first place.

Ah, well that's not so bad then. Their money, their choice. Plenty of companies do that and we don't generally come down on them.

Re:

[MrGHemp]

I agree... it seems the headlines and articles have been getting things wrong more often lately... it seemed like the reviewer who posted the story would at least add to the post if they thought part of it was incorrect or misleading... but that doesn't seem to happen as often anymore... I hope /. editors start correcting this, because if the stories become more and more inaccurate... we won't be able to trust /. as a reliable source of tech news. And once ppl don't trust the source, well it's game over.