MySQL Ends Enterprise Server Source Tarballs

vboulytchev writes "The folks at MySQL has quietly announced that it will no longer be distributing the MySQL Enterprise Server source as a tarball. It's been about a year since the split between the paid and free versions of the database project. The Enterprise Server code is still under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and as a result MySQL appears to be making it harder for non-customers to access the source code. 'One of the things that many users worry about is whether they're getting an inferior version of MySQL by using the Community version. Urlocker says that MySQL "wants to make sure the Community version is rock solid," but admitted that the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities." Because of that, the company is revising its policies about when features go into the Community releases.'" Update: 08/10 04:56 GMT by CN :While it is slightly harder to get, the source isn't closed by any means, so I updated the title to reflect that.

In related news

[by Anonymous Coward]

MySQL announced plans for a new BitTorrent based distributed backend.

Re:In related news

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

Wow...

The same guys who lied about the suitability of their code for various purposes from day one

The same guys who maintained that ACID was unimportant until the very moment they had it

The same guys who have been setting this up for years with their Project Mayo/DivX Networks style licensing/contribution scheme

You mean they actually went ahead and tried to use shady shenanigans to force developers who have no need for anything from their organization whatsoever beyond a copy of the community developed codebase to pay for access to the codebase?

Wow. What a surprise.

I made a decision to give preference to PostgreSQL over MySQL in my developments... not because of the technical merits involved, but because of the repeatedly demonstrated lack of trustworthiness of the MySQL team.

I didn't expect to see my decision validated in such a rapid and undeniable fashion though.

Just goes to show... technical skill is no substitute for good character or lack thereof.

Re:Say what?

[Omnifarious (11933)]

The title does not accurately reflect the summary or the real state of affairs. It is sensationalist in the extreme.

Re:Say what?

[commodoresloat (172735)]

And it's a good thing we had such a measured and non-sensational response to that situation....

Re:Account Hacked !!

[everphilski (877346)]

this is the real utopianfiat. the prior utopianfiat, who hacked the last utopianfiat, has been sacked.

"MYND YOV MOOSE BITES KAN BE PRETTI NASTI"

Yay!

[Bluesman (104513)]

Can we all just switch to Postgres now?

Cheap web hosting, I'm looking at you...

Re:Yay!

[larry bagina (561269)]

FAPP: FreeBSD Apache, PostgreSQL, Perl.

Rock solid... Far from it unfortunately...

[by Anonymous Coward]

MySQL versions 5.0.38 to 5.0.45 have had such major bugs that they have rendered themselves useless for a huge range of applications. Applications that use dates, or ones that expect the database to *NOT* insert random NULL values in a group by query.

I mean, even the most basic test suite would have easily caught these.

Here are just a few of the major ones:
Bug #28336 [mysql.com]
Bug #28936 [mysql.com]

Re:Rock solid... Far from it unfortunately...

[linuxwrangler (582055)]

PostgreSQL 8.2.4. :)

Thank goodness I did my homework and selected PostgreSQL and not, as one consultant suggested, MySQL back when we selected the database for our application. I've never had it crash and on the few occasions where it was unceremoniously shutdown (accidental powerdown and such), it's always come right back up with no data loss. And it's just been getting better by leaps and bounds.

Official PostgreSQL fanboi thread here :-)

[adnonsense (826530)]

My take: while MySQL has improved technically in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, stuff like this (or having its transactional backends bought out from under it by Oracle) makes it increasingly difficult for me to recommend it as a business proposition to my clients. Meanwhile PostgreSQL continues to get the job done for the majority of my projects; I have a network of professionals who support it competently; and having followed the project since 2001 or so, I'm confident it's not going anywhere but forwards.

This is no big deal.

[bmo (77928)]

It's right in keeping with the GPL. The GPL doesn't say "you have to give the source to all and sundry." No, they just have to give the source code to those they gave the binaries to, i.e., their paying customers.

The work-around for the community is hinted at here:

"Though MySQL AB will not be distributing the source tarball, Urlocker says that MySQL isn't going to try to stop distribution of Enterprise Server source by others. "If somebody wants to, that's fine. People can distribute it.... "

Getting the source code as a tarball on a public server for everyone is an intellectual exercize for the reader.

I read this as a "We're not going to be hosting for leeches. You want a public server, set your own up"

--
BMO

Re:This is no big deal.

[bmo (77928)]

"This is because any party who receives the binary is entitled to the source even if they didn't get it directly from MySQL AB."

And you, Sir, are not entirely correct. I cannot bend over MySQL AB by giving people binaries of MySQL. If you get binaries from me, then *I* must offer the source code *not* MySQL. If MySQL AB no longer offers source to all comers, then it's *my* problem, not theirs.

From GPL V2 (which is what MySQL is using currently)

"b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,"

If I'm distributing version 2 GPLed MySQL, that clause is talking to _me_ and not MySQL AB. The "c" clause gives me an out if I'm noncommercial and I can point to SourceForge or a public server offering MySQL source.

--
BMO

I smell a fork coming soon.

[Lumpy (12016)]

Lots of OSS projects use Mysql. If they want to take their ball and go home, so bet it. we can take a tarball and create OurSQL.

Come on people this is what OSS is all about. forking and starting a new project because the current project leaders became poopwads.

Reconsidering my Enterprise Order

[MattW (97290)]

By discouraging people from getting and using the Enterprise version, I feel less and less safe deploying it myself. Less users = less chances to catch problems. Less code = less review = less security.

I'm about to deploy 4 MySQL servers for some serious volume and was strongly considering buying into an enterprise package, largely on the strength of their monitoring tool, but now I'm seriously thinking it's time to try Postgres.

It's all in the in the marketing

[icepick72 (834363)]

It's interesting to see how the community often openly promotes and vehemently defends an "open" piece of software but if the software starts to "close" then all the problems start coming out and suddenly it's a piece of @#$! The robustness of software doesn't change with a philosophy. It's all the in marketing. I mean if MySql were still open then we'd see posts comparing it against Microsoft's software. Now for "some reason" they're equivalent in the garbage bin. I will remember this indeed.

In addition, have you RTFA?

[WindBourne (631190)]

It says that the source will no longer be shipped as a tarball. You now have to take it out of bitkeeper. IOW, you still get the source.

Re:In addition, have you RTFA?

[larry bagina (561269)]

bitkeeper is not FREE software. I cannot use it in good conscience, and neither should you. For all intents and purposes, their source code is locked away.

Re:Cha-Ching

[larry bagina (561269)]

They are planning an IPO [slashdot.org].

Re:They need a name change

[by Anonymous Coward]

Since it's currently in a state after being MySQL, I propose we confuse everybody by calling it PostMySQL.

Re:Wait a second....

[Todd Knarr (15451)]

If they provide the source code along with the binaries, the GPL considers that to have satisfied their obligations. After that, they're not obliged to give the source code to anybody else. Not even customers.

Now, if they don't provide the source code with the binaries, if customers are obliged to get it separately from the binary package, then the obligation is to provide the source to anybody who asks for it, customer or not, and that obligation lasts for 3 years after the last binary was distributed. Note that if the binaries are available via download, offering the source for download at the same time and from the same page satisfies the GPL's requirement to provide source along with the binaries even if the customer doesn't actually download the source code at the time.

Re:Wait a second....

[by Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, those damn MySQL idiots are acting just like this crazy Emacs hippie back in the 80s... what was his name... Richard Stallman I think. Anyway, the greedy bugger only distributed the source to people who bought the software! Even though it was GPL'd! And the FSF did nothing!

Re:You've misread the terms

[Decibel (5099)]

MySQL requires code contributions to be re-assigned to MySQL AB, so AFAIK they actually own every last line of code. Which of course means that they are free to do anything they want, including close-source the whole thing.

Whatever THEY want

[El Lobo (994537)]

Whatever it is, they are in their perfect rights to do what they want with THEIR code.

This is actually the tendence that worries me. These days many people (thankfully not everybody) think they have the RIGHT to get everything for free. One bitches because product X is not Open Source (Ohh what a crime!!!). The other bitches because X (which VERY GENEROUSLY was giving many years of hard work to people who don't even write a line of code) is taking their hard work back for Y reasons (yes, making a buck for many years of hard work is not a bad thing , you know)

Another funny thing: I was talking to a man here at work. The man is a a rabious defender of OS. He wouldn't touch a non- OS program, he almost cried when MS made a deal with Novell, he screams how much he hates Photoshop and how great Gimp is (just because is OS)... And guess what? He develops a very good backup solution for databases and he takes good money for it. He was having some difficulties adding features. Knowing how good of an OS supporter he was I had the nerve to suggest to him to open the source of his program. ARE YOU FUCKING MAD?- he said. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I WORK FOR THIS SHIT? AND I WOULD GIVE IT TO THE DOGS?....

Moral of the story. If you work hard for your work and wnat to share , so be it. If you want to get your work back iand this is posible, just do it. You have the right. people will bitch, people will call you a shit, people will hate you... And yet, the majority of them won't share a shit either giving the oportunity.

Making money is not a crime folks....

not quite

[infonography (566403)]

The issue isn't that they are keeping what they made. They didn't make it all since they used stuff others had contributed under a certain condition. That being Open Source. The open source model is that you let others help you build the software. To close the source they would have to comb back through the contributions of other people over the years and take out all OS code that is what they didn't pay for in-house. Otherwise they would have to rewrite a whole new system from scratch and walk away from the MySQL code base as it stands.

It's like getting divorced and your ex gets only the second floor and the garage.

And let me be the first to say...

[Gordonjcp (186804)]

... meh. SQLite is better for "toy database" problems anyway. It's fast, it's free, it's Free, and it's very compact. For a lot of applications where people use MySQL, it will fit in with just a few little changes.

Sod MySQL, SQLite is the future.