MySQL's Creator On Why the Future Belongs To MariaDB 208
angry tapir writes "When Oracle purchased Sun, many in the open source community were bleak about the future of MySQL. According to MySQL co-creator Michael "Monty" Widenius, these fears have been proven by Oracle's attitude to MySQL and its community. In the wake of the Sun takeover, Monty forked MySQL to create MariaDB, which has picked up momentum (being included by default in Fedora, Open SUSE and, most recently, Slackware). I recently interviewed Monty about what he learned from the MySQL experience and the current state of MariaDB."
stirring the pot (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think the future belongs to Postgres. :)
Re:Because it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
It gives you two slightly different wheels to choose from, that's a good thing. Apparently some people feel like working on different wheels.
And if monocultures aren't a problem than what's with all this Windows malware?
Re:10.0.1 Alpha (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the Future Belongs To MariaDB? Because he will sell it to another company and will become rich again? That's about his future I guess.
Re:Because it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, then MySQL should go away since PostgreSQL was here first and did it right from the start.
If you look at the development of MySQL over the years its been a long waiting game of features that should be prevalent in any proper DBMS system but the lead developers openly admit they were not database guys when they started out so it's not really any wonder that the product was lacking from the very beginning and still shows its weakness today.
So the benefit is that you have a good product that you can rely on and it happens to be free. For MySQL you have a mediocre product with broad deployment because it relied so heavily on programmers to do in the application what normal databases handle for the programmer. This usually makes programmers happy as they think they know data management. So with MySQL a programmer must also know how best to handle data management, with PostgreSQL you have proper data management built right in. The database server does work rather than just being a storage repository with the MySQL approach.
Re:Me, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the fault of the users of MySQL for sticking with a non-compliant SQL implementation even when other compliant ones emerged. It's MySQL's fault for not becoming compliant in a manner that encouraged people to take them up on the standards. It's not PostgreSQL's fault that people built to a non-standard.
And don't even bother making the claim that PostgreSQL should have adopted MySQL's quirks. They had bigger fish to match/fry: SQL Server, Oracle, etc etc. They've actively been working to fix their problems in a standard manner, rather than breaking themselves to match one broken database that very few people actually use outside of simple websites, where it's relatively easy to port to a standard one.
Re:Did Oracle even know what they were buying? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that never ceases to amaze me about Slashdot is that you can say the most uncontroversial thing and there will always be somewhere there to tell you you are wrong. You can say the world isn't flat and there will be someone here to tell you it is.
You are that guy, the guy telling me the world is flat.
Really, if you think MySQL is comparable to MSSQL in terms of stability then you really just shouldn't be working with databases at all. MSSQL and MySQL aren't even in the same class.
Re:Me, too! (Score:1, Insightful)
all clear: you are ignorant about mysql *and* about carrying out a rational, substantiated argument. (implying your ignorance about postgreSQL, while not proved, is still very likely indeed).
mysql easily outperforms postgreSQL for small databases. plus, it has tons of native binding libs and allows for bizarre strategies postgresql doesn't, nor does care about. they are two very different approaches to a db engine. if you don't see the differene it's because your use for db engines must be very specific and limited (troll: or because you have no clue altogether).
Re:Me, too! (Score:2, Insightful)
Performance is secondary to your data being there. Also I want to see some evidence of that, I have trouble believing it in 2013.
I actually admin a fairly large set of Postgres DBs, just so you know smartass.