Sun May Begin Close Sourcing MySQL Features 509
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.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun?
harsh judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
given the size and nature of this move, I don't begrudge sun anything in its commitment to open source.
Re:You can't effectively close-source anything GPL (Score:2, Insightful)
-1, Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
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:This is great news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Last part a Joke? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun?
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comments from MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Last part a Joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's credibility is drowning.
MySQL & FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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:harsh judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anyone actually reading TFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about someone trying to be misleading...
mrghemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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?
Re:This is great news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:-1, Flamebait NOT: Prod Solaris is NOT opensour (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The summary is bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck (Score:3, Insightful)
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 sharing.
Re:wait a minute.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Comments from MySQL (Score:5, Insightful)
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:They are forking the code (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is great news.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's kill MySQL so PostgreSQL can take over! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What the hell? (Score:2, Insightful)
MySQL has been drifting towards closed source for (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean, seriously, the CREATE TRIGGER statement is not rocket science.
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.
MySQL is far from perfect. But to criticize it for THIS?
Re:This is great news.... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is probably what makes it so damn attractive. Taking control of what people have come to rely on, even in tiny ways, makes them either beholden to you or new enemies.
Re:Comments from MySQL (Score:3, Insightful)
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), but would not really be of use to the rest. As long as things like bug-fixes and identical add-on capability (i.e. you can write your own equivalent add ons) remain in the community edition, maybe your business model will work. Perhaps the "secret" recipe for the open-source business model isn't really "secret" at all, and has been staring at everyone all the time -- just be open and honest with the community, and honor your commitments to the same.
Seems to me like that's what you're doing.
Re:harsh judgement (Score:5, Insightful)
I do like NetBeans.
Re:Last part a Joke? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't remember him wording it quite that way, though. :-P
Geez Louise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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:harsh judgement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is great news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Comments from MySQL (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks!
Re:This is great news.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Right now there's zero demand for postgresql, I've got thousands and thousands of mysql sites but only a handful of postgresql ones. The instant that starts to change I'll start including postgresql in the entry level packages because I know my competitors be will too.
Plus ... some part are misleading ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Really, is Java not under GPL ? What about OpenOffice ? What about Netbeans ? Glassfish ? OpenDS ?
Can anybody name a company (nor a
Please, correct/moderate this misleading part of the article too.
Re:Not that I begrudge them a right to make a buck (Score:3, Insightful)
this is not good, not good at al...
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 doing it any way other than "throw money at Red Hat".
End of the day, lots of F/OSS projects have "Free" and "Commercial" versions, where the commercial version costs money and comes with a few extra bells & whistles. Just off the top of my head, there's Smoothwall, KnowledgeTree, any number of Exchange alternatives (free but if you want full Exchange-like functionality complete with Outlook integration it costs money) and ZenOSS. It seems to work as a business model, I can well understand Sun adopting it.
Re:What the hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is great news.... (Score:4, Insightful)