Oracle Responds To MySQL Purchase Concerns 156
Luke has no name writes "Yesterday we discussed MySQL founder Monty Widenius's objections to the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Today, Oracle released a statement to address some of these issues. Among their commitments, Oracle says they intend to continue releasing MySQL under the GPL, allow vendors to produce 'any-license' third-party engines, maintain the Reference Manual, invest millions into the product, and create a 'customer advisory board.' The pledges are still not enough for some, however."
Monty and Florian want MySQL to be BSD licensed (Score:4, Interesting)
The original founders of MySQL are using the merger talks in the EU along with SAP and Microsoft to harm competition. The founders goal is to have the code licensed under the BSD so they can take the code they develop private. Monty and Florian have NEVER been friends of the GPL. Don't believe a word they say.
Monty's ethical problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Monty has been paid somewhere north of 100 Million dollars in the MySQL purchase by Sun. Now, having been paid, Monty wants MySQL back for his business - without returning the money. And Monty has no problem with FUD-ing the GPL to get what he wants, even if the GPL provided half of the business method (dual-licensing) that made him rich.
Now, having been paid, I would think that an ethical position for Monty would be to allow MySQL's new owners to have what they paid for.
We can all use MySQL with no problem whatsoever under the GPL. With proprietary clients and Free clients, with no problem. An application across the network interface from the server, speaking a published and standard protocol, is not a derivative work. The GPL wouldn't apply to such an application. There is a GPL-ed client library that has to be replaced with a non-GPL version, but that version has existed for a decade.
Monty is free to do his business with the GPL version if he wishes. But it seems he wants to have his cake and eat it.
Bruce
Pledges not enough for some... (Score:3, Interesting)
no kidding. If you are unreasonable enough or you have absolutely no trust in Oracle, nothing will get rid of your concerns.
The source code being under the GPL currently so you could fork it if needed (what the GPL was intended for in the first place) isn't enough for some people.
Re:Fork? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone can fork at anytime. The problem for Monty is that his fork would have to stay in the GPL. He isn't concerned that Oracle will stop maintaining MySQL or stop releasing it under the GPL. It's not Oracle that wants to close the source on MySQL, that's what Monty wants to do for himself. The problem is, he already sold the copyright and now only has access to the GPLed version.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really seeing it... I mean, they already have (fairly) low-end versions of Oracle already out there (starting with "Express"), which are basically stripped versions of the high-end products.
What would they gain from replacing those with a product based on a fairly incompatible and radically different codebase? You're supposed to up-sell customers, which MySQL likely won't do very well.
Why Not Reserve Judgment? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't really about MySQL (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/ibu_index.php?storyid=832 [moneycontrol.com]
Look at Berkeley DB (on which OpenLDAP uttely depends.) It's now "Oracle Berkeley DB". I don't see any monkey business with that arrangement (although the OpenLDAP people are probably working on ditching BDB just as due diligence.)
Eben Moglen's Blog Post (Score:3, Interesting)
The SFLC's Eben Moglen is okay with Oracle taking on MySQL:
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/blog/cases/oracle-sun/ec-hearing-and-after.html?seemore=y [columbia.edu]
Among other interesting analysis:
"In fact, I think they're wrong. I don't think the GPL is a bad economic fit for MySQL. I believe that Oracle sees clearly the nature of its business interests. It knows that MySQL is much, much more valuable to it alive than dead. In fact, Oracle has almost as much reason to improve MySQL as it has to improve its flagship product. For a small firm, like MySQL AB, dual-licensing revenue was the only efficient revenue source with which to develop the product. But for Oracle, service revenue is much more significant than dual-licensing royalties. As all parties who have spoken about the merger agree, regardless of which side they are on, enterprises that use Oracle are very likely to use MySQL also, because MySQL is the world leader in number of installs. Which means that companies that pay Oracle to service Oracle are very likely to pay Oracle to service MySQL as well, if Oracle is not only servicing MySQL but acting as primary funder and participant in a flourishing MySQL ecology. Even if Oracle were only willing to invest in MySQL the extent of its ability to increase the MySQL service business, Oracle would be the best thing that ever ichappened to MySQL. In fact, Oracle has an immense incentive to invest far more in MySQL than the extent of its increased winnings in the MySQL service market. MySQL driven technologically and economically by Oracle will be a price-zero full-GPL missile aimed at Microsoft SQL Server. "
Re:Why bother with MySQL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
And as for the founder's (and the founder's buddy referenced in the article) concerns about the future of the product then he shouldn't have sold the damn thing. So sorry, you sold your rights to it. Fork it and start over if you really care that much.
This is an interesting point. It IS open source and can be forked. How much work in improving the DB occurs within Sun (and soon Oracle) presently? Aside from ignoring new features which are introduced to the open source version, how much damage will ignoring the code base really cause?
I would assume (possibly dangerous) that most MySQL users are savvy enough to use a different flavor of the MySQL code base if the one they're currently on gets stale. I don't see Oracle introducing iterative improvements for MySQL and certainly little or nothing which will be under an open license. I CAN see them layering other features on top which don't become a part of the code base. Not sure why they would pursue such a path unless they want to poke at SQL Server some...
Re:Why bother with MySQL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Monty's ethical problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, but it's not just an ethical position, but a pragmatic one also, if he expects to sell much software in the future or have any influence on MySQL's current direction.
It seems he is refusing to take responsibility for his own actions.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fork? (Score:3, Interesting)
You may or may not trust Larry and Co. and that of course is your right.
But I gotta say, I don't see ANYTHING in MySQL worth folding into the Oracle Database.
When it comes to pure DB power I have yet to see anything that even comes close to Oracle.
Yes Oracle is not cheap but let me give you a little story on that.
I hade a particularly nasty problem a couple of years back and the client I was working was fully licensed and thus had support, so I picked up the phone and opened an incident and was on with an engineer within about 5 minutes.
As we were working the problem she let me know it was time for her to go home and that she would be taking a few moments to brief the next engineer before handing me off. Now this was around 7pm Pacific time and she was in Colorado. She handed me off to another tech in Hawaii or someplace like that and we continued working the problem. As we worked the problem I was curious and asked how long they would stay on the line? This tech said, well as long as you are willing to be on site we will just keep transferring you as the time zones and shifts change around the world.
When you have a mission critical DB that is the kind of support you want, you don't want to post to a forum, you don't want to send an e-mail, you want someone on the phone, now, that knows what the hell they are doing. So yes Oracle costs a few bucks, but when you really look at the price you pay -v- the service you get and the incredibly stable and incredibly powerful DB you get, it is really not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that Oracle is at least twenty years ahead of all of their competitors in database technology. Oracle 7, ca 1991, has a better overall implementation than the latest and greatest from IBM, Microsoft, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and so on. I mean MySQL is barely out of the 'toy' stage (special purpose applications excluded). In the intervening two decades Oracle has widened the gap. That means for a certain classes of OLTP applications, people tend to think you are suicidal if you recommend anything else.
The only way to minimize this problem is to bring (open source) databases closer to parity, even with where Oracle was twenty years ago. PostgreSQL is the only one that comes close in the open source world. MySQL started out with so many bizarre design decisions and gratuitous incompatibilities, that I wonder if it will *ever* come close, at least not without losing backward compatibility in a big way.
Do you know, I'm nearly sure I read something very similar only a couple of days ago [slashdot.org].
Except it wasn't you saying it.
This leaves to my mind a few possibilities:
Do you mind if I ask which it is?
Re:Monty and Florian want MySQL to be BSD licensed (Score:4, Interesting)
That is nothing new. The problem is that Monty now found himself on the other side of fence and he is faced with the same choice as MySQL AB customers were in past: get a free GPLed MySQL fork or buy a license for a commercial MySQL variant.
GPL played the evil trick that you can't link commercial applications against libmysql*. IOW, to develop proprietary closed-source MySQL based product, you have to buy a license for the commercial fork of MySQL. And that is to my understanding the matter of his objection. And it is a rather valid objection, since Oracle now has a way to kill completely (not only Monty but) whole commercial infrastructure surrounding MySQL .
On one side I'm sadistically happy that Monty himself got the taste of it. On another side I also recognize that building something like MySQL completely open source might have been impossible and some revenue stream is much required. (Even much touted PostgreSQL, thanks to BSD license, has quite a number of proprietary applications around it.)
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Under the GPL, whats the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Oracle bought Sun for Java [slashdot.org], and that everything else was bonus material.
Oracle uses Java, their customers use Java, it's all over the place ... a chance to keep it out of competitors' hands is a bonus, but the real reason would be to be able to exercise more control over the direction the language takes.
Re:well (Score:3, Interesting)
I am the author of the original comment, and haven't the slightest idea why the poster here pretended that he was, and posted it again. That's just weird.