MySQL Founders Reunite To Form SkySQL

mikejuk writes "The founders of the original MySQL, the open-source database, are getting back together in a merger between Monty Program and SkySQL. SkySQL was created by around two dozen former MySQL executives and investors after Oracle bought MySQL from Sun. Widenius started Monty Program AB and created the MariaDB database from some of MySQL's open source code. The merger will provide a stronger rival to MySQL, so reassuring users who are worried about Oracle's future plans for the database."

What a relief

[verifine]

Anything that takes Oracle out of the way of MySQL gets my vote!

Model for the new FLOSS business model

[c0d3g33k]

1. Create a popular but flawed FLOSS product (MySQL).
2. Build a business atop flawed FLOSS product (MySQL AB).
3. Ca$h out by selling your baby to formerly glorious tech company on the ropes (FGTCOTR, aka SUN).
4. Profit!
5. Leave FGTCOTR after a tasteful waiting period to start your own company DOING THE SAME THING YOU JUST SOLD because you can fork the OSS codebase you just sold.
6. Take public potshots at EVIL Corp (who very predictably acquired FGTCOTR) for mismanaging the baby you sold (because EVIL), while flogging your fork of the product you sold as a viable alternative (FLOSS, to cloak yourself in the veneer of legitimacy because you can live off of steps 3 and 4).
7. Reunite to form company that does the same thing the company you sold for big $$$ did, to compete with the product you willingly relinquished control over.
8. GOTO #1?

I can't decide whether to admire Monty for successfully gaming the system, or condemn him as an amoral manipulator who wasted no time screwing over the very people he sold out to at the earliest possible opportunity.

Grudgingly, I lean toward admiration. Nicely done, sir.

That said, I avoid MySQL as the half-baked relational DB pretender that it is and use PostgreSQL whenever possible. Better technology without the drama. I have never regretted PgSQL once, MySQL many times.

Re:What a relief

[cayenne8]

Why don't they all throw themselves in with PostgreSQL, which is more of a real robust relational database, and continue that as the true open source alternative to Oracle?

Soap Opera.

[csumpi]

This soap opera is getting way too confusing. Way too much money, way too many project names. In the end, whatever they come up with to circumvent Oracle, they will just sell to the next highest bidder for another billion, then rinse and repeat.

It seems the only way for us to circumvent all this BS is not to use anything affiliated with Oracle, MySQL, or its creators.

Re:I'm sick of the whining. Software development =

[shugah]

I think the FOSS community would probably have been fine if MySQL had remained with an independent (and profitable) Sun. But Oracle is not Sun. For me, personally, the Oracle v. Google lawsuit pretty much gave notice that Oracle would go scorched earth on anyone who used "their" open source properties in ways they didn't approve of.