Sun Announces New MySQL, Michael Widenius Forks 306
viktor.91 writes "Sun Microsystems announced three new MySQL products: MySQL 5.4, MySQL Cluster 7.0 and MySQL Enterprise Partner Program for 'Remote DBA' service providers."
which showed up in the firehose today next to Glyn Moody's submission where he writes "Michael Widenius, founder and original developer of MySQL, says that most of the leading coders for that project have either left Sun or will be leaving in the wake of Oracle's takeover. To ensure MySQL's survival, he wants to fork from the official version — using his company Monty Program Ab to create what he calls a MySQL "Fedora" project. This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?"
It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on the license of the software. Always.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, with FOSS it doesn't. It depends on whether the maintainers require copyright assignment.
In any case, the authors own the code (unless they reassign the copyright) and everyone else can do whatever they want with it provided they comply with the license.
The question in the summary is a bit stupid IMHO.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, even if the maintainers have the copyrights, that only means future versions can be closed source. They can't terminate the already-outstanding licenses without a breach of terms. They also own the trademarks to the MySQL also.
IMO, Sun lost the hearts and minds of the developers which is where the real value was. The trademarks and copyrights are worthless if the community views MySQL's direction is wrong and moves entirely to a fork.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
On the flip side, the forking company can't use the same business model as MySQL AB. Since MySQL owned the copyrights, they could see non-GPLed versions of the software under terms that were more palatable to corporations. To a certain degree, it served their purposes to fuel GPL fears.
Now that the forking company is 100% bound by the GPL, they must attempt to undo any misplaced fears about the GPL and seek to convince companies that what they really want is a support licene, additional tools, or trained consultants.
Re:It depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Most companies don't need a more "palatable" license for an RDBMS. They typically
use it as a product, not something to build a product from. This is the key area
where the GPL can be a problem for a corporate entity. Most of Oracle's database
(or apps) customers don't have any reason to be concerned about their RDBMS having
a copyleft license.
They want assurance that their data will be protected and their operations won't suffer outtages.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It depends (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think most companies do with an RDBMS if they are not building software on top of it?
Most people don't build software on top of an rdbms, they build software that uses and rdbms as a backend data store.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Interesting)
And here is the crux of the argument and why MySQL is doomed...
You see if you have a product that binds to MySQL you will have to GPL your product. Why? Simple...
1) All (most?) drivers are GPL'd.
2) The MySQL notation uses a specific parameter delimintator that is specific to MySQL. And a 4 year old court decision said that there is no binding between application and RDMS if the same code can be used on other databases. With the special notation, it is not possible and hence constitutes a GPL binding.
Personally I see MySQL falling off to the way side...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"a 4 year old court decision said that there is no binding between application and RDMS if the same code can be used on other databases. With the special notation, it is not possible and hence constitutes a GPL binding"
If your wording of the court case is accurate and complete (enough) - no it's doesn't mean that. If the court case has ruled on a situation where there is 'no binding', then that court case will only apply to other cases where there is similarly 'no binding'. Reversing a condition doesn't nec
Re:It depends (Score:4, Informative)
The case related to a company who used ODBC and whether or not they binded to MySQL. It was not the NuSphere case, but one that used ODBC and MySQL.
The question was if your application used ODBC and MySQL was it binding in the GPL sense?
The answer was in the fact whether or not the application could function with another database. At the time the result was that MySQL lost the case since the application could function with another database.
It was around that time MySQL GPL'd all drivers, and changed their syntax so that it would only work on their servers. That way it is a GPL binding as per the court case.
Re:It depends (Score:4, Insightful)
Or even better yet. Don't use MySQL.
Appliances and isolated networks (Score:3, Informative)
Problem easy to solve. Don't distribute the MySQL JDBC drivers in the case of a Java app, for example.
If the application is going to be distributed as part of an appliance like Google-in-a-box [google.com], then it just wouldn't work.
Better yet, use the application online and provide it as a service.
Not practical for an otherwise Internet-disconnected network. And in many areas, this isn't even possible without an extra $720 per year or more to the cell phone company for a tetherable data plan, as dial-up just isn't good enough anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What's the difference?
When you build on top of something, you are dependent on that as your foundation. When you use it on the backend, it is an external piece of the application that can be replaced with relative ease.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
you completelly ignore how a client talks to a RDBMS. here's how it works:
it works just like a web server (*). no, really.
a client connects to a tcp/ip port, sends a bunch of SQL satements and reads the answer.
if you know the protocol, you can interface with oracle, mySQL, sybase, whatever without touching oracle's code, which means oracle's license is irrelevant if all you want is to build a client app.
* this is a gross oversimplification, i know. sorry. but it was better than use a car metaphor, right ?
Re:It depends (Score:4, Insightful)
if you know the protocol, you can interface with oracle, mySQL, sybase, whatever without touching oracle's code, which means oracle's license is irrelevant if all you want is to build a client app.
Until you want to sell the client app.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you do it based on a clean-room reimplementation of the database's communication protocol rather than, e.g., relying on the vendor's client libraries
Who wants to do THAT.
as GP's post ("as long as you know the protocol...") suggest,
No. His comment was trying say that the client app is separate from the server app. That you communicate with the server, but that your client app ultimately stands separate. So you can sell your client app without worrying about the license on the server. Which is true. In pre
Re:It depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like you haven't been following MySQL AB very closely. Their interpretation of the license was that any time you paired a MySQL database with an application, you needed a MySQL commercial license. Only if the application supported but was independent of MySQL would you not need to follow the terms of the license.
MySQL even tried to reinforce the idea by purchasing all the third party drivers and changing the licenses to GPL instead of LGPL or otherwise.
While MySQL's licensing info has changed over the years (interestingly not archived by the WayBack Machine...) even their current page on licensing [mysql.com] is designed to steer users toward purchasing a commercial license:
For quite a few legal departments I've worked with, "the GPL does not apply" is magic words to their ears. They will instruct the business to grab the commercial license to get around the restrictions. In addition, there is the MySQL libraries issue I referred to above:
The MySQL forking company is going to have to undo all of the anti-GPL ideas they've been riding, and convince companies that they don't need a commercial license. (Since it's not in the forking company's power to provide one.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From GP's comment, it sounded to me like MySQL AB has argued that any application that absolutely needs MySQL to function is a derivative work of MySQL, and thus, cannot be distributed without license from MySQL AB; and that therefore, to distribute such an application, one must either license it under the GPL, or obtain a commercial lice
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. See x.org for how quickly a community can switch to a fork.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It depends (Score:4, Informative)
And also consider that Oracle also has the Sleepycat Berkeley DB engine, which you really have to know where to find to get.
And they also have the old Digital database engine.
Their method is to acquire competitors and then slowly decrease development and avoid promoting the products. Then the products can silently die.
But I wonder if they haven't bitten into something a bit too hard to bite into this time...
Re:It depends (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, sorry to reply yet again. Yes, I can name a number of project forks in which the original fell by the wayside as a fork took off. Not all the originals are dead, mind you, but the forks are much more popular. A few of these are situations in which the original is still viable (Debian, for example), but in which the fork has a huge number advantage or a lot of momentum.
GCC -> EGCS -> GCC
Mosaic -> Netscape
Netscape -> Mozilla
Mozilla (Seamonkey) -> Mozilla Firefox
KHTML -> WebKit
Debian -> Ubuntu
XFree -> X.org
StarOffice -> OpenOffice
SSH -> OpenSSH
Hack -> NetHack
osCommerce -> ZenCart
AT&T Unix -> BSD
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Debian -> Ubuntu
I don't think this counts as a fork at all. Ubuntu is still very much reliant on upstream changes, whereas a true fork wouldn't be.
Re: (Score:2)
You must be new here.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think anyone questions that MySQL AB sold the copyrights to Sun, or that they can't again be transferred to Oracle.
The copyright holder, also, in theory, reserves the right to revoke any licenses that were given out.
No, not in theory. Have you actually read the GPL? In GPLv3, read sections 8 and 10. In GPLv2, read section 4.
You obviously aren't aware of OSS projects where community contributions are only accepted with copyright assignment to the software maintainer.
You're correct t
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am going to have to see a citation for that. Unless that is written into the original license, that is completely wrong. In the case of the GPL, that is most certainly *not* the case. I am calling FUD.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That is not the case for the GPL family and BSD. The original author can't revoke at will any code licensed under those licenses.
Also, being irrevocable is a prerequisite for both OSI and FSS accepting a license, except when that revogation comes as a consequence of one act you practice, and is limited to the person practicing it.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Funny)
It depends on the license of the software. Always.
It also depends on where you live. In Soviet Russia, software owns you.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As for the trademark: it lies with Sun
Who Owns Open Source Applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?
No one. Or, perhaps, everyone. That's kind of the point, isn't it? It isn't locked into anyone's individual grip.
Cases Like OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Insightful)
This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?
No one. Or, perhaps, everyone. That's kind of the point, isn't it? It isn't locked into anyone's individual grip.
"Open source" is just too broad a term to address this way. You would have to look at individual licenses. On top of that, you have things like Open Office, which is "open source" but clearly controlled by Sun (or Oracle now I guess) [slashdot.org].
While you claim you can always fork an open source project, it's not always that simple. Especially in massive open source efforts (like Linux) where they have contacts and knowledge that are vital to the project. It isn't possession or control or fiscal ownership but instead a name you've made for yourself as the Father of some project that gives you "ownership" or "rights." And usually the market share of your user base reflects that.
You'd be surprised how many of your open source solutions are actually controlled and operated by a single entity. And this is great for those products because the entity is usually donating a lot of time and money to it. Should the entity ever drop out, that's when someone can pick up the cross and take it a new direction with everyone helping.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No one. Or, perhaps, everyone. That's kind of the point, isn't it? It isn't locked into anyone's individual grip.
In case of mysql I think they made a living on selling versions without the gpl license. That business model will not work for a gpl fork.
It's GPL. (Score:5, Funny)
So the answer is yes.
Repercusions for FOSS licenses (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not the first time. I've seen supposedly open source die a cruel death at the hands of its creators. Anyone remember the Free Internet Chess Servers? The FICS code is still on dark corners of the net, but you'll have a fight on your hands if you want to try to use it, and I believe the guy who claims to own it because he contributed to it used it as the base of the current incarnation of FICS which is actually a paid service. You can't get the source to the server from there anymore.
So if Oracle are ab
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So if Oracle are able to somehow prevent the use of this code, either due to terms of employment of the pricinple devs or by claiming ownership of the code and rescinding the free license, it'll make all these licenses worthless. Oracle has deep pockets. Individual developers don't.
Unless those principle devs are still working at Oracle they can't do the former, and the latter is only possible on future versions of MySQL so one can fork the last free version of the software and Oracle can't do a damn thing about it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unless those principle devs are still working at Oracle they can't do the former, and the latter is only possible on future versions of MySQL so one can fork the last free version of the software and Oracle can't do a damn thing about it.
But what would the business model be? Any MySQL fork no longer has the ability to dual license the software since the copyrights have been sold. That's how MySQL AB made money.
Developers, and their families, can't eat freedom and self righteousness.
Re:Repercusions for FOSS licenses (Score:4, Insightful)
But what license was the FICS code under? Was it really "open source"?
There are plenty of licenses that provide for distribution of source but are so restrictive that no one considers them to be "open source".
Re:Repercusions for FOSS licenses (Score:4, Informative)
FICS has been replaced by chessd: http://chessd.sourceforge.net/index-en.html [sourceforge.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Free internet chess server - source GPL'd
"http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=86389"
You didn't look very hard ...?
Once it's GPL it's free forever you cannot close source it ... you can only close source newer versions...
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't believe Non Compete agreements are valid in California.
Re: (Score:2)
What surprises me is that Sun didn't ask the main devs to sign a non-compete contract as part of the original deal.
Yes, I too am surprised that Sun didn't ask the main devs to sign an illegal non-compete agreement.
http://lawzilla.com/content/noncompete.shtml [lawzilla.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Eh no. This raises no larger question (Score:2)
.. about "who really owns a commercial open software application".
The copyright holders owns a commercial open software application. If all the copyright has been assigned to a corporation, then the corporation owns the copyright. This is fact.
Obviously, if the corporation has licensed other people to use and distribute it (i.e. with the GPL) then non-copyright holders may have some rights too.
This leads us to the only part of the GPL that I think is in any way legally questionable (IANAL). I'm not sure it
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This leads us to the only part of the GPL that I think is in any way legally questionable (IANAL). I'm not sure it is entirely legally clear if the copyright holder is allowed to revoke the GPL licensing terms or not, no matter what is said in the license.
No, they can't. The FSF has already stated that if the public has had the right to use the program under the GPL that it can't be revoked.
Can the developer of a program who distributed it under the GPL later license it to another party for exclusive use?
No, because the public already has the right to use the program under the GPL, and this right cannot be withdrawn.
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanDeveloperThirdParty [fsf.org]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I don't think it is particularly likely that anyone could successfully revoke the gpl on code that they had distributed, but you can't look to the FSF for that determination (only for their opinion).
It's entirely unlikely because the license itself explicitly forbids it.
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
Once the rights have been granted to copy, distribute and modify the program any attempt to revoke those rights is imposing further restrictions, which as the quoted section says is forbidden.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
People have tried it, there have been a couple of cases, though I can't remember the names of the software off the top of my head. Generally goes like this:
write program,
releasing a few versions under GPL,
corporate interest/money arrive
I'm revoking the GPL, you all have to delete any copies of MY stuff you have
Now, I know that if a single entity holds the copyrights to the whole thing then they can release it under another license any time they like, and stop producing GPL'd versions, but I don't think they
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They could argue that, but even if that were to be found to be the case, for any program with significant distribution, I'd think the doctrine of "detrimental reliance" would apply.
Re: (Score:2)
IANAL either but I suspect as they are the copyright holder they can change the licence whenever they want to whatever they want. In fact I believe this happened with the X Server and is one of the things that spawned the X Org that we now use.
What I don't think that can though is change the licence retrospectively so you would just have to fork from the nightly before the licence change. If you could have retrospective licence changes how would you ever know if the software you were running was valid?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
they way MySQL and stuff from the GNU/FSF is set up, they require contributors to sign the work over to them. Then the body in charge has ALL the rights and can do what they will. Like when the FSF moved everything to GPL 3, they could do that unilaterally because they had assignment.
Mozilla also has assignment and releases just what you say under a tri-license, the same code base published 3 times. Two are open source (MIT & LGPL) but the main Firefox branded binary is actually NOT open source. Anybo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is taken care of by section 6 of the GPL v2 (though it appears as section 7 in the MySQL documentation for version 5.0 at least.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not really answering my post. The GPL is clear enough on this matter, but it isn't entirely legally clear if the GPL is to be considered a binding contract or not. Thus, my argument can't really be answered by referring to the GPL. The FSF has their opinion on the matter, but the FSF does not make laws.
This is not a problem at all in the opposite case where a recipient of the code breaks the license, because without the license, the recipient has no rights to the code.
However, without the license, th
We'll Find Out For Sure... (Score:2)
Licenses (Score:3, Insightful)
To ensure MySQL's survival, he wants to fork from the official version -- using his company Monty Program Ab to create what he calls a MySQL "Fedora" project. This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?"
That's what all the lawyering over the license text is all about. This question is one of the more settled questions in the industry.
Get it here (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not too certain of that. I use the replication built into MySQL (with minimal glue) and I've found it to be extremely easy to setup with a few stock Ubuntu server images. Just doing a brief google search reveals a lot of postgres replication products (Slony/PGCluster/DBBalancer), but they did not seem to have any active development on them in a while. I am not knocking PostGres by any means as I find the different language options for Procedures/Functions and the admin tools to be a huge boon.
Re:Get it here (Score:4, Interesting)
Skype is one, if not the biggest users of PostgreSQL and has released some tools that they use to manage their PostgreSQL cluster [skype.com] that are probably worth looking into.
With postgresql, you also have the option of scaling vertically instead of just horizontally. It seems that Postgresql scales better than MySQL across multiple cpus/cores [tweakers.net] and handles heavy load better.
Another interesting benchmark shows that both Postgresql and MySQL handle load better on Solaris instead of Linux [tweakers.net].
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Sometimes, a fixed width is more effective than full width.
Sometimes, a fixed width is cleaner than full width.
Sometimes, a fixed width is more graceful than full width.
There are very few hard-and-fast rules in web design. Always designing to full width is not one of them.
Shame you couldn't spell out "In my opinion." Abbreviations = lazy typing = unimpressive.
Re: (Score:2)
Fills the full width of my browser, but then I actually know a bit about typography and set my browser width to a comfortable maximum line length for variable-width sites, rather than letting lines become very long and making them difficult to read.
That said, it doesn't reflow nicely if I reduce the width of the window to something that a typical mobile device might support. It fails, but for the opposite of the reason you suggest.
I think it's time to switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to PostgreSQL. Seriously, I already use it for GpsDrive. Now I just need to convince the Cacti devs to switch over.
I'm so going to get flamed... (Score:5, Interesting)
As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product. It's not that the model can't work it just that if it becomes successful you are pretty much guaranteed to lose control of it at some point.
If we look at MySQL for example: here's a company that produces half way decent database engine that that make open source. They play the open source game "properly" producing code that a mortal can compile to get a working database. While the company is giving the community what they want everything is hunky dory and there is peace.
Enter Sun who buy MySQL and suddenly the community isn't happy and it's fork fork fork. Only one of those forks needs to be any good and all of a sudden Suns not bought very much at all. If a company plays nice with the open source community forks are fairly easy but rare. The problem is they hang like a knife (or maybe that should be fork) over the company and if they are unfortunate enough to annoy the community they could eaisly lose control of their product.
That said I think there are situations where companies can participate in open source. The Linux kernel and Plone being a couple of good examples. Both of those projects are structured very differently to the MySQL situation though as no one company is trying to make a living off the code.
Re:I'm so going to get flamed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations! With your very example you actually managed to disprove your original assertion. See, your original claim was this:
"As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product."
But, the very first paragraph in that quoted text demonstrates that isn't actually the case. The community was very happy with and supportive of MySQL corporate.
The problem, as you pointed out, was the purchase by Sun. In that case, the customers didn't feel Sun would necessarily have their interests at heart, and so there was dissatisfaction. This is only increased by the fact that Sun has now been purchased by Oracle, a company that actually markets a product in the same general space (I would argue they aren't actually in the same market, and so MySQL has little to fear, but... people aren't exactly rational).
So the key to running a company on an open codebase seems simple: keep your customers happy, and don't give them the impression that their interested are being threatened. But, of course, that's a good general rule to follow regardless of the license your code falls under. The only real difference between open and closed source, in this case, is that if the source is closed, you may have achieved vendor lock-in, which gives you more freedom to buttfuck your customers, as they won't have a clear avenue for recourse... but if that's your strategy, well, frankly, fuck you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You miss the point -- most small software companies are hoping to be purchased at some point so the owners can cash out and retire. This clearly shows that a company with an open source product is a risky purchase, which means you won't get as much money for it.
Agreed, there is an increased risk, there. But that just means the purchasing company needs to be careful to reassure the community that they are going to continue to support and develop the product.
I mean, most people don't *want* to fork. They'll
Re: (Score:2)
It's not that the model can't work it just that if it becomes successful you are pretty much guaranteed to lose control of it at some point.
The mistake you make is you keep trying to think of the model as "owning the software" rather than "employing smart people that make your product worth buying, and keeping those smart people happy". If you don't do both of those things, you fail.
The problem is they hang like a knife (or maybe that should be fork) over the company and if they are unfortunate enough to a
Re: (Score:2)
But with the knife hanging over you, wouldn't you have more incentive to keep the imagination/heart of the community alive? It may be more difficult than simply answering to a board of directors/stockholders, but in the end you end up with a better quality product.
Sun/Oracle/MySQL did not lose control of their product by any means, as they still own the name and brand. Most corporate customers most likely will stay with the main branch of the code and the supporting company rather than go with the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Linux kernel and Plone being a couple of good examples. Both of those projects are structured very differently to the MySQL situation though as no one company is trying to make a living off the code.
RedHat and SUSE might disagree with you on that one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is they hang like a knife (or maybe that should be fork) over the company and if they are unfortunate enough to annoy the community they could eaisly lose control of their product.
And that is one of the major reasons why professional software engineers love commercial Open Source software. The company is on no uncertain terms with the customer: Keep us happy and we keep giving you money for support contracts. Turn into a dick and we walk. It is a vastly healthier relationship for mission critica
Re: (Score:3)
If we look at MySQL for example
MySQL would be a bad example with which to try to assert your point. MySQL AB did not lose control of MySQL because they open sourced their main product. They were a very profitable company that grew large enough to be sought after for acquisition by major international corporations because they open sourced their main product.
They lost control of it because they sold control to Sun. Sun is losing control not because people are unhappy that Sun owns MySQL now, but because Sun
Let me make it easy (Score:5, Informative)
If MySQL had a BSD license it would be owned by the community.
If MySQL had a "non-free" commecial license it would be owned by Oracle.
The mess MySQL, and you, find yourselves in is because of MySQL's stupid dual-level license bullshit. Nobody seems to be able to figure it out or agree on it and it has caused more column inches of claptrap on Slashdot than the MySQL/PostgreSQL threads themselves. MySQL's originator's wanted to have it both ways: Lots-O-corporate money AND GPL poster child. Well they got their money alright, but to get it they had to pray for a really wealthy, poorly managed corporation to come along and vet their convoluted business plan. That would be Sun.
Now, with a billion dollars spent to "buy" MySQL but a bunch of forks still out there, no company in their right mind is going to invest anything in MySQL because they'll be worried Widenius will just steal the improvements and fork it again. MySQL is pariah, it's poisoned.
If you're running any kind of data volume worth talking about you're better off with PostgreSQL. Not only is it faster with *real* queries and more robust, but now it's safer going forward.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except MySQL didn't want their code "owned by the community". That's why they dual licensed it to begin with.
If they wanted it to be "free and open like BSD" they could have simply made the relevant parts LGPL.
This notion of yours that FSF licenses are incompatable with business is just a fantasy.
Who is Spartacus? (Score:2)
Who controls? (Score:2)
If the code's GPL-licensed, the answer's simple: the user community. As long as the corporate owner continues to serve the users' needs, the users will stick with the "official" version. If the corporate owner (or any other fork maintainer for that matter) starts to send the code in directions that don't serve the users' needs, those users will tend to switch to a fork that does better serve their needs. If there isn't one now, there will be once some enterprising soul realizes there's money to be made givi
Secret to Success (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Sell company for $1 billion.
3. Profit
4. Fork it
5. ???
6. Profit again
Oracle wants more people writing SQL (Score:3, Interesting)
So they improved InnoDB to make MySql more attractive to the small folks. If they become as big as eBay and PayPal, they probably will switch to Oracle (;-))
--dave
Proved me right! (Score:2)
I told my team mate this would happen as soon as I heard the news about Oracle buying Sun on Monday. I had NO idea it would happen this fast.
Monty should call the new project OurSQL =D
-Viz
It's obvious who owns it... (Score:3, Interesting)
The people who own an open source application are the people who are at any point in time putting in the effort of maintaining it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would the fork have to stop supporting InnoDB?
Re:Right (Score:4, Informative)
Did anyone else notice that his little toy database is practically useless without InnoDB, which was written by a third party and is owned by Oracle?
If you mean for transactions.
If you want a really fast free database that supports fulltext indexing, and you don't need transactions, MyISAM in the engine to use.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not necessarily true that MyISAM is faster actually.
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2007/01/08/innodb-vs-myisam-vs-falcon-benchmarks-part-1/ [mysqlperformanceblog.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, you're right. Foreign keys, who needs 'em?
Seriously though, this could be good news for PostgreSQL. Fingers Crossed.
Re:Right (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously though, this could be good news for PostgreSQL. Fingers Crossed.
AFAIK more and more people are using PostgreSQL. More and more providers are supporting it. Five years from now, it could be a whole different landscape...
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, you're right. Foreign keys, who needs 'em
They should even get rid of SQL support altogether and just call it My. Who needs all that complicated elitist crap anyway?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah right, if postgres was popular you'd be pimping mysql, just to be a trouble maker. In any case postgres is dangerously small and uns
Awww.. Look he tried to make a funny. See.. he was going to write unstable, but he stopped in the middle because his postgresql backed keyboard locked up.
What a darling to try and be clever.
People like Postgresql not because it's not popular like mysql. People like it because it's not crippled like mysql.
My experience, in general, has been that people moving from big commercial databases like postgresql. Those that that are new to rdbms's like mysql.
Re:Right (Score:5, Funny)
Operations like Skype [skype.com]
Re:Right (Score:4, Informative)
Or you can use SQLite, get more speed, and still have transactions. (Although fulltext indexing does require a loadable extension.)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
As long as you don't need concurrent users. As soon as someone tries to update anything in the database, SQLite will lock the entire database until that update is completed.
I always consider SQLite to be a replacement for ad-hoc file formats, client-side storage, or anywhere else where you've got some data and something like SQL would be handy to manipulate it. Not so great as a replacement for database servers, unless everything's read-only.
Re:Right (Score:5, Informative)
SQlite has supported per-table locking for a while, and I believe it supports per-row locking in some situations. It is not designed for concurrent writes, but it can be great for anything read-heavy workloads. It's certainly not suited for situations where you have a lot of concurrent writes, but for a CMS it can be a very good fit.
If you want full-text indexing, transactions, and lots of concurrent users, PostgreSQL is generally a better bet. MySQL is being squeezed at the bottom by SQLite and at the top by PostgreSQL, and both have less restrictive licenses (public domain and BSD, respectively). I'm amazed that it's survived this long.
Re:Right (Score:4, Interesting)
I started with MySQL because it had replication. Yeah, I know Postgres has slony or whatever it's called, but I cringe at the though of maintaining disparate pieces of software (that sometimes don't get along) on something as critical as a database. Maybe it's changed, maybe it hasn't, but that's how it was when I chose to use MySQL.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Right (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Right (Score:4, Informative)
The point of MySQL isn't a "lightning fast data indexing/accessing machine". The point of MySQL is the modular backends which enable it to serve as a common gateway to tables that each use the storage engine most appropriate to the way the table is used. (some of which may require a lightning fast data indexing/acessing engine and accept some risks to get it, some tables may not.)
The point of InnoDB (and, presumably, Falcon) is to support the kind of usage scenarios for which traditional RDBMS are designed, while the point of certain other MySQL table drivers is to support other types of loads.
Re:Should Read: Sun announces last MySQL products (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to disagree, I think that would be immensely stupid of them. I think they'll just use it to try to funnel users butting up against its limits towards full Oracle. If they kill it they lose that potential sales channel.
Re: (Score:2)
I have to disagree, I think that would be immensely stupid of them. I think they'll just use it to try to funnel users butting up against its limits towards full Oracle. If they kill it they lose that potential sales channel.
But that would give them an incentive to stop improving MySQL, as closing the gap with Oracle would make no business sense.
Re:Should Read: Sun announces last MySQL products (Score:4, Insightful)
Who said anything about closing the gap? Continuing to develop and support MySQL doesn't mean turning it into a powerhouse database like Oracle.
The simple fact is, MySQL and Oracle do not, and have never, played in the same league, and I believe it would be a mistake to try and turn MySQL into a shitty Oracle. MySQL has a niche... keep it there.
Re:Should Read: Sun announces last MySQL products (Score:5, Interesting)
The gap between MySQL and Oracle is huge and not likely to be closed anytime soon.
Technology leaders in big companies aren't as into all the open source gossip as the slashdot crowd are and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't even know there were MySQL forks or what that meant.
They would rather go with a MySQL that is named MySQL and has a big company like Sun or Oracle, the leading db vendor that also owns the only sane database engine for MySQL, than some noname fork. Even if it was started by the MySQL founders and all the developers went to it. If all the MySQL developers go to a fork, well then Oracle developers will take over.
What's more concerning is IBMs partnership with EnterpriseDB [cnet.com], which is based on PostgreSQL.
If you want an open source database that closes the gap with Oracle, use PostgreSQL.
Sun should have never bought MySQL. Instead they should have put more effort into PostgreSQL. Sun has had some big wins with Solaris and Postgresql [arnnet.com.au] in the past and offer support for it on Solaris.
Must be tough since Oracle is an important part of Sun's business but Oracle has done things that could be considered as stabbing Sun in the back too.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PostgreSQL is the open source database that can comepete with Oracle in terms of features and reliability. EnterpriseDB aims to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a PostgreSQL backend. The partnership is going to create a path for EnterpriseDB to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a DB2 backend.
It creates a migration path from Oracle that IBM can take advantage of.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most people I know that plan to start with a OSS database and move to Oracle start with PostgreSQL, since PostgreSQL mirrors the capabilities and features of Oracle pretty close, just it's not quite as fast. (But the PostgreSQL folks have been making progress).
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle will surely kill (or at least castrate) MySQL.
Well it would be stupid. MySQL has Open Source competitors, they can easily replace it. they would destroy their asset value and nothing else.
Re:I Forked a Couple Nights Ago (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with forking is all the child processes, though.