Why You Shouldn't Panic About Closed Source MySQL Extensions 171
jfruhlinger writes "Oracle has released proprietary extensions to the open source MySQL database, seeming to reinforce the worst fears of those in the open source community who opposed Oracle's acquisition of MySQL in the first place. But open source observer Brian Proffitt urges you not to panic: This dual source strategy really isn't unusual in the commercial open source world, Oracle has already released a bevy of open source improvements to the database, and anyway the EU extracted a commitment to keep MySQL open for another four years when it approved the Sun-Oracle merger."
Re:Just another 4 years... (Score:5, Informative)
Its already forked :)
http://mariadb.org/
because (Score:3, Informative)
because of postgresql?
Re:Migration Window (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"open for four years" (Score:5, Informative)
As if PostgreSQL didn't have it's own ecosystem of commercial-only extensions, too (EnterpriseDB, GreenPlum, just to name a few) ... the big difference here is that in the MySQL ecosystem Oracle is the only one that can do such dual-license stunts while in the PostgreSQL ecosystem anybody can ... (whether that's good or bad is a different story)
For "improvements"/"what's been added":
* lots of multi CPU scalability work (although part of it came from Google/Facebook and other sources where Sun/Oracle 'just' did the integration work)
* MySQL Cluster got a *lot* better in Sun/Oracle days
* the InnoDB plugin improved InnoDB affairs a lot (and this has been Oracles baby even in the Sun days)
* connectors, e.g. PHP/mysqlnd
* more interesting InnoDB improvements (e.g. fulltext indexes, finally) are in the queue, how these are going to be licensed remains to be seen though
It's not that everything is going into the optimal direction with MySQL under Oracle (i'm not working for them anymore for a reason), but saying there has been no development ever since the Sun acquisition is not fair, and i don't see any reason to believe that things will radically change on day 1462 either ...
Re:I just migrated... (Score:5, Informative)
Migrating from MySQL to PG may be easy, but migrating from MySQL to MariaDB is trivial.
Re:Just another 4 years... (Score:4, Informative)
Its already forked :)
http://mariadb.org/ [mariadb.org]
And to http://www.drizzle.org/ [drizzle.org]
Re:Migration Window (Score:4, Informative)
What features will be added to MySQL that MariaDB doesn't have?
Oh, maybe you meant "what killer features that have been already in MariaDB are still not in MySQL"? Yeaaarh, I'm sure you made a mistake. In this case...
Ever wonder why MySQL is still stuck with a single core taking 100% of your CPU, while other cores are idling doing nothing? MariaDB, and it's been more than a year it does, had multi-threading. If you didn't know, it's been written by one of the main authors of MySQL in the first place, that felt he shouldn't stay in this Oracle world. And he's doing very well, by himself... The good thing: MariaDB is ABI compatible. Yes, it's a pure replacement. Remove MySQL, install MariaDB instead, and there you go, you got a multi-threaded MySQL. That alone is enough to convince any decent admin.