MySQL Quietly Drops Support For Debian Linux [UPDATED]

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"

Oh well

[0racle]

Is it really a problem? If you worried about support wouldn't you be using a distro that also offers support contracts?

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

Canonical, Ltd. offers support contracts for Ubuntu, but MySQL won't support anything but Red Hat or SuSE.

Re:Oh well

[mr_mischief]

Maybe Canonical should step up and offer MySQL support on Ubuntu.

Re:Oh well

[ultranova]

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 ?-)

Re:

[Jamesday]

There have been occasional issues; I'm actually a keeper of an internal list of bug fixes for corruption issues in MyISAM. It's getting really tough to find and reproduce them these days, as the bugs have largely been beaten back to seldom-used combinations of situations over the years. Still, we do occasionally get new reports (generally of obscure ways to corrupt an index) to track down. I don't recall anything resembling what was described. InnoDB checksums the data pages and hence works well as a dodgy

Re:QUIETLY?

[uglyduckling]

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!)

Re:

[Sexy Commando]

Probablly a victim of an injection attack
; DROP SUPPORT debian

Re:

[Nutria]

You bought servers that would only allow you to boot signed disc? That was dumb!

No, in some facilities it's smart. Why? It prevents unauthorized personnel from booting with a live CD they bring from home.

Those mother...

[Unoti]

Clearly we need to get some tough mother forkin programmers on this...

Re:

[sbrown123]

Nah, just use PostgreSQL .... or sell your own MySQL Debian support :)

Bit misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL (the database) still works with Debian, but MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.

Re:Bit misleading

[McDutchie]

MySQL (the database) still works with Debian, but MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.

For medium and large companies (which are the only entities that would buy support to begin with), that difference is purely academic. If it isn't supported, it isn't worth running.

Re:

[epiphani]

Well, I'm pissed off by this. We were looking at buying top-end mysql support shortly. Now we cant, because we run a home-brew version of Linux.

We're technically competent people, but we don't know MySQL inside and out. We wanted support so we could go to mysqlab and present them, the MySQL experts, with some of the problems we have and we could work WITH them to fix them. Now, instead of being able to go to the developers, and PAY them for their time, we're stuck on our own trying to figure things out.

Re:Bit misleading

[jellomizer]

Get one system with Red Hat. Put MySql on it get the suport. If the problem doesn't work on red hat and your own. Then call them up and tinker with the one RedHat box until it works and do the same on your box. Supporing every Linux Distro is disasterious for a company. To many of them all with their own quarks it make offering support near impossible. By sticking to a few Distros they can quickly figure out if it is an OS Problem or a MySQL problem.

Re:Bit misleading

[modir]

The article here on Slashdot is a little bit misleading. You still can get support from them. Them main part is this:
Will you support MySQL Binaries built by third-party vendors? No.
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/supportpolicies /policies-04.html#q04 [mysql.com]

The person who wrote this article wanted to take the binaries provided by Debian. And this doesn't work. But if you take the binaries from MySQL you should still get support.

Re:Bit misleading

[dsci]

Most of the places I've worked have used Red Hat, because it has an enterprise reputation.
Point of clarification: places have RH because they offer support to their enterprise product. Debian's reputation for stability and such is pretty strong, but that only carries so far in the business setting. It's not reputation that drives RH over Deb to the enterprise...it's "I can pay YOU to fix it when it's broke." JMO.

Re:

[AmigaBen]

If you need a support contract for Linux, it's because you have A) incompetent system administrators or B) insufficient sys admin staff.

If you make a statement like this, it's because you have A) no experience in a real company or B) you do but are still naive as to how your company actually works.

Re:Bit misleading

[Matey-O]

I tend to avoid Redhat as they gave me the impression that they were the Microsoft of Linux. I loved Suse, then they got bought by Novell. I moved to Debian as they allowed me to install a bare system in 300 mb with text only and install JUST the parts I needed. Now I get to look for something else? (actually, it doesn't look like it as I haven't needed paid support for MySQL yet.)

What does this say for OSS as a business model?

[dsci]

MySQL (the support company) no longer sells support for Debian.

It seems to me that this decision must be driven by sales or market research indicated there is no market for support contracts on Debian based systems. So, does this challenge the notion that OSS can work in a capitalist world when the real "product" is support?

Debian based distros are a significant chunck of the Linux market|mindshare. This decision essentially means the combination of Debian + MySQL is doomed in the business setting.

Re:

[stry_cat]

Except that Red Hat and Suse are not entirely open source.
What happens when MySQL depends on the closed part?

Huh? I didn't know this about RH (don't know anything about Suse). Is this really true? Wouldn't CENTOS [centos.org] have some serious problems in making a RHEL rebuild if there were some close source things in it?

Give us some examples please.

Re:

[Wudbaer]

Now you just have to show me the closed parts both in Suse and especially in RedHat.

Wow... this is the beginning of the end

[jarich]

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.

Re:

[Professor_UNIX]

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

Meh, I'd rather replace MySQL than my Debian distribution. If I was truly concerned about commercial support for my database then I'd buy a commercial database like Sybase or Oracle. People use MySQL because it's free, not necessarily because it's better, or even comparable, to commercial offerings.

Re:

[jarich]

Meh, I'd rather replace MySQL than my Debian distribution.

That's what I meant. Sorry for the ambiguity. I love Kubuntu and wouldn't ditch it.

If I was truly concerned about commercial support for my database then I'd buy a commercial database like Sybase or Oracle.

I'm not concerned about the support. I've never needed it... but I've found it makes C level execs (especially at startups) feel better about a tool if they know there's someone out there they can throw money at and "get help".

People use MyS

Re:

[Midnight Thunder]

We just need Debian enterprise or Kubuntu enterprise to have $$$ support. Then again given the amount of helpful people around not wanting a dime for the help they provide, the only people giving a damn are those people paying for an enterprise version of Linux.

Re:

[dsci]

Then again given the amount of helpful people around not wanting a dime for the help they provide, the only people giving a damn are those people paying for an enterprise version of Linux.

Community support is a great thing, and hopefully all of us that USE F/OSS software give back to that in some way. But the business world, and many individuals, operate on the principle of "you get what you pay for." Most of the time this is a good guideline, but F/OSS is an exception. There are QUALITY products out

The Business Case

[sterno]

It makes sense though when you think about it. How many companies are out there looking for a support contract for MySQL but aren't using RedHat, etc? Considering that supporting Debian could entail supporting several different specific flavors, it doesn't really seem like the revenue for it would be worth the complications.

Presumably if there's enough of a business for such support, somebody will come in and fill the gap. That's the beauty of open source, non? You can actually get support from somebody

Re:

[Locutus]

My first thought was how strange this was considering how Shuttleworth is trying to move Ubuntu(Debian based) to the server( Ubuntu 6.06 LTS-long term support ) amongst the other Debian distro's out there. I wonder why the had originally included Debian for MySQL Enterprise Support in the first place since the business case is still growing.

My second thought was to some old news that MySQL Inc was partnering with Microsoft and are they getting any 'incentives' to move away from anything but Novell Suse prod

Solution

[Shawn is an Asshole]

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:

[PatrickThomson]

for "support" read "liability when it all breaks". That's what linux support is really all about. Would you want to be a technician personally responsible for downtime and several million of lost sales? Your bosses won't let it happen, because obviously you can't pay it back.

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Indeed...

[Svartalf]

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.

Re:Solution

[virtual_mps]

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.

Re:Solution

[Thomas Charron]

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.

Re:Solution

[peragrin]

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?

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole]

So, how successful are you from getting money for downtime from Microsoft when a computer gets a virus? Or breaks due to an update?

Re:

[spiritraveller]

for "support" read "liability when it all breaks". That's what linux support is really all about. Would you want to be a technician personally responsible for downtime and several million of lost sales? Your bosses won't let it happen, because obviously you can't pay it back.

Any system has the potential to cause damage if it goes down. But this doesn't create "liability" for the company's support staff. Being the support provider does not automatically make you liable for any problem. But it does make yo

Re:

[saleenS281]

And that would buy you what? Neither of those solutions are offering enterprise support for Debian either...

Generic, huh?

[Just Some Guy]

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?

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:

[Just Some Guy]

Gotcha. Maybe I should have changed that to "for new development", as in starting-from-scratch projects where there are no database dependencies already in place. Is anyone still using MySQL in those situations?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "Every nickel and dime hosting company uses MySQL" did you not understand?

Re:

[Just Some Guy]

Add in that Bindings for MySQL are available for just about every language.

Caveat: those bindings link against GPLed libraries. It's not possible to use MySQL as a backend to proprietary applications without shelling out some cash. Whether that is good or bad is another issue. Note that even Oracle allows restribution of their client libraries [oracle.com] under those conditions; this restriction seems to be unique to MySQL.

Re:

[grahamm]

It is now catch 22. Everybody uses MySQL because everyone uses MySQL.
Everyone used WordPerfect, that is until almost overnight everyone was using Word.

Re:

[syphax]

Are people still using it for new deployments, and if so, why?

Inertia and familiarity. Fortunately, the barriers to switching aren't all that great, so it'll be easy enough to jump ship when/if needed. I'm one of the 80-90% of users that just needs some tables and industry-standard SQL; for almost all of my needs, I could use just about any DB backend. Yes, I know, YMMV.

Oh well

[xenocide2]

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:

[MECC]

Can you buy support from Progeny if you've got a Debian system? I looked at their site, and it looked as though they want to build a system for you, then support it.

And yet...

[merc]

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

[Paulitics]

MySQL only lets me spoon it.

But Postgre lets me fork it all night long.

Get Ready...

[eno2001]

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).

Re:Suse, Red Hat and ??

[mpapet]

Besides the obvious Suse and Red Hat who's the third "premium" linux? I'd say Debian is not it, but Ubuntu sure has the resources to be #3.

Who do you think will be the top 3?

Re:

[eno2001]

Huzzah! Let me rephrase the question: "Besides the obvious Microsoft, who is the second or third premium Windows vendor"? There is no law or rule that says there must be three or even two premium Linux vendors used by the IT industry. In the end, Novell Linux will likely get more help from MS to be the number one leader. RedHat might die off or just become so irrelevant that it won't matter. Whatever the case, the last thing Microsoft really wants to see is a strong and unified Linux community. The wa

Forking won't necessarily do anything

[iamjoltman]

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.

Re:

[Anonymous MadCoe]

You're right. Actually forking will lead to more fragmentation which is the problem in the first place. You can't expect a software vendor to support many different Distros (you could argue over it, but in general very few people see that commercially viable).

The problem would never have existed if things didn't get forked all the time and everyone would re-use what's out there. But then again, that would take the fun out of it ....

Re:

[Bastian]

Even then, forking isn't necessary to provide support. All that's needed is for a company to come in and offer third-party MySQL support for other distros.

However, I don't see that happening; most likely dropping support for everything but RH and SuSE has something to do with the fact that those two distros dominate the enterprise marketshare so much that there just isn't any money to be made in providing support for MySQL on Debian.

All of my servers run Debian

[maynard]

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:

[PHPfanboy]

> While I don't currently have or need a support contract from MySQL

I think this says it all for most Debian users. They are either in-house experts, testing the water for their app or don't have a culture of procurement (read: lower budget or just plain cheap). This is not a criticism, it's just a business reality.

MySQL is a business, unless we want them to go out of business and drop support for everything there's not much to complain about.

Re:All of my servers run Debian

[chundo]

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.

Why fork it?

[syphax]

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 mov

Re:

[dsci]

This is good advice overall, and I'll continue to take a middle ground approach to it. That is, I'll continue to support MySQL (on whatever distro) for my clients. I don't offer general MySQL support, but when I 'design' a system for my clients, I support whatever OSS stuff goes into that system. If MySQL is the best fit for their needs, that's what I recommend. If it needs support, they call ME.

So, I'm not out there selling MySQL support to anybody that wants it, but I do take care of MY clients. T

Sounds like a business plan waiting to happen

[xantho]

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

[Archangel Michael]

"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:

[Just Some Guy]

The differences are subtle but sometimes important. An example is where each distro puts startup scripts and how they are written. Some are even migrating towards Apple's launchd which is an entirely different animal from the customary SYSV or BSD scripts.

That's not a huge obstacle in and of itself, but multiply little issues like that by a few hundred and it's not so pretty. The Linux Standards Base was supposed to address a lot of that, but no one seems to be clamoring to support it.

Yes, and No

[camperdave]

There are some significant differences between distributions:

• Fedora (based on RedHat) uses /etc/rc.d/init.d/rc<runlevel> to store start and stop scripts. Ubuntu (based on Debian) puts these scripts in /etc/init.d, and doesn't have the /etc/rc.d structure.
• Fedora has a program called service to start and stop services: eg. service mysqld start. Ubuntu users have to type /etc/init.d/mysqld start.
• Ubuntu has hidden the root user. You never log in as root. You never become root. root effectively do

Why all the drama?

[derrickh]

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

Re:

[NorbrookC]

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'.

In other news: Oracle announces they'll only support Oracle on Oracle's Linux, Red Hat is selling support for Red Hat Linux, and SuSe announces that it's selling support for SuSe Linux. Canonical announces support for Ubuntu, but not CentOS. Slashdot readers erupt in fury.

This is a business decision. I would bet that they looked at who was actually purchas

Almost there

[glwtta]

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".

Of all the posts here

[SocietyoftheFist]

Who is actually running MySQL Enterprise?

If you need support...

[Sabalon]

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.

Opportunity for Postgres

[JoeCommodore]

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.

Re:

[Stumbles]

Wadya mean? Postgresql is pretty easy to compile from source and I've had zero problems installing it from RPMs, etc. As for it's documentation I have found it to be very useful. What do you mean by configure anyway? You got your conf files that normally live in /var/lib/pgsql and their annotations are pretty clear. So I think your just blowing smoke.

Re:

[tcopeland]

> This looks liike an opportunity for Postgres

Right on. And with the excellent performance of the newly-released PostgreSQL 8.2 [blogs.com], it's a good time to make the switch.

Did anyone catch the relationship?

[Bright Apollo]

SUSE and RedHat are also the only IBM supported distros. Is IBM going for MySQL, ala Oracle grabbing Innobase and Sleepycat?

-BA

Varying Levels of Support

[Dareth]

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!

[Builder]

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!

Demographic question

[LaminatorX]

Do many mid-size to large (read shopping for juicy support contracts) enterprises use Debian?

No Free alternatives....

[Chanc_Gorkon]

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 i

Who cares

[houseofmore]

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.

This just in...

[SQLz]

Debian has quietly lost all its users to Gentoo and Ubuntu.

Re:Let's fork it!

[eln]

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.

Re:Let's fork it!

[jmorris42]

> 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.

Profitability

[Colin Smith]

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.
 

Companies kill off profitable lines all the time

[brokeninside]

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.

Re:

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

The other explanation would be that Debian has done something to seriously piss the MySQL people off (my speculation).

I *know* that they went this way with the Seamonkey crew. Here is a reproduced Newsgroup response from a Seamonkey developer on the subject of Debian and Iceape (the previous thread entry is in italics and the developers response is bold:

The "SeaMonkey" trademark is held by MoFo, but AIUI, they allow the Council to grant people the right to use it.

Well, MoFo applied for the trademarks, but

Re:Let's fork it!

[ciggieposeur]

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.

Re:

[smellsofbikes]

>Companies don't normally kill off profitable products and services, not even evil/stupid corporations.

I'd have to disagree with that. I've watched three large companies for whom I've worked -- all Fortune 500 companies -- kill off profitable products and services that were not as profitable as they wanted. The company I'm working for right now sold off three business units because they didn't have a profit margin above 30%. We're only keeping the parts of the company that can beat 30%: if you don't,

Re:UBUNTU ! Why Hath Thou Foresaken Me ?

[nutznboltz2003]

Am I not a ...woman ?

Only in WoW...

Yes, I know, there goes my Karma.

Re:

[Orange Crush]

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.

. . . without the ability to buy support from MySQL for it, that is. Third parties, system integrators, etc. will continue to support whatever their customers pay them for. So while this is a blow for Debian in big enterprise, let's face it, how many big enterprise environments were running straight Debian in the first place? Red Hat'

Re:

[Nasarius]

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.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the MySQL coders are still doing good work

What do you mean by still? It makes you sound like you are trying to claim MySQL was not a fucking toy database for girlymen.

Re:

[Nasarius]

Funny and true. Great reply.

Re:

[Alchemar]

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.

Re:Let's fork it!

[Drasil]

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.

Re:

[Dan Farina]

Postgres is getting faster, too. With SQLite and Postgres, I find the obvious uses for MySQL to be shrinking and becoming more dubious.

Re:

[newt0311]

atleast it has decent support for transactions, key constraints, and procedural languages.

Re:Let's fork it!

[killjoe]

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.

Re:Let's fork it!

[suntac]

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.

Re:

[Infernal Device]

My response is: Use what works. When MySQL fails to work for whatever situation I'm in, then I'll consider switching to something else. Probably PostgresSQL, but maybe not.

Firebird is out, regardless. Configuration is difficult, and I'll never forgive them for their pissing and moaning over branding. It's not just the project devs that have long memories.

Re:

[Chacham]

The only difference between Oracle, SQL Server, DB/2 and MySQL is one of extent, not of kind.

You obviously have never really worked with them then.

I was mid-level DBA of Oracle for nearly a couple years, programmer for both SQL Server (Microsoft and Sybase), and currently use DB2 (LUW) (DB2, not DB2, unless you are referring to OS2's DB2, which was called DB2/2), and they are worlds apart. The only way to consistently understand the difference between them is to understand the mindset, otherwise they are ju

Re:

[TheAwfulTruth]

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 ho