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MySQL CEO Interview 119

Posted by Hemos
someonewhois writes "MySQL's CEO, Marten Mickos, says 'Open source & MySQL will rise, legal foes will fall', in a bold prediction that legal issues will continue to be ignored as a threat towards open source, and that software patents will harm the industry (well, duh)."
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MySQL CEO Interview More

MySQL CEO Interview

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  • A little too bold.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:03AM (#11385221)
    He'd better watch it before Bill Gates makes him an offer he can't refuse, and he wakes up with a penguin head in his bed.

  • 2 relevant sententces out of 38 (Score:5, Informative)

    by kpharmer ( 452893 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:03AM (#11385223)
    Not much here:

    What do you think was the top story in the Linux and open source arena in 2004?

    Marten Mickos:None of the legal attacks on open source or Linux have been successful. None of that stuff has gone anywhere. That's the biggest story.

    On that subject, MySQL has come to the conclusion that software patents will ultimately be demonstrated to be harmful to the industry. So, we are sponsoring a campaign in the European Union today to educate politicians and decision makers on the negative impact of software patents.

    • None of the legal attacks on open source or Linux have been successful. None of that stuff has gone anywhere. That's the biggest story.

      well, if you consider that the biggest threat to oss this last year was sco, it's not very surprising that the success rate for legal attacks has been low.

      but sco, really, is a bit player run by lunatics. if ibm or sun or any of the actually big-and-sane players decide to do a 180 on their oss commitment... well, that's a whole differnet, and scarier, kettle of fish.

      mi

  • Software patents (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:04AM (#11385230) Journal
    Will harm *him*, but they'll help, for instance, Oracle.

    Both are in "the industry". So to make blanket statements like harm "the industry" fall on deaf ears.

    If you want to bitch about patents in a meaningful way, at least show how they do harm, by preventing competition by giving one company an unfair advantage.

    Also, it's in my opinion that it's only the frivolous patents that harm the industry. It's not the patent system itself that's wrong, it's the abuses of it. "Security holes" that need patching.

    • Re:Software patents (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kpharmer ( 452893 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:11AM (#11385286)
      MySQL certainly has a lot to fear from software patents: it's a commercial company that could be easily sued.

      And it's just now implementing functionality that other vendors put into their products 10-20 years ago. Many of these vendors have patents that cover some of the better approaches.

      Any idea which dbms patents mysql is stepping on most blatently? Does oracle have multi-version-consistency patented?
      • No idea, my only point was, to John Q Businessguy, and I. P. Lawyer, as long as someone's making money off them, patents are nothing but a good thing for the economy.
        • That is a rather limited view. Seen that research indicates that softwarepatents actually hinder innovation, one could as well say that it is, at the end, NOT a good things for the economy *as a whole*.

          When you have less innovation, ultimately your products and your businesses get behind, which will lead to a far bigger economical deficit then some IP lawyer could ever make the economy 'recuperate'.

          On an individual level and short-time period, level, you will have people benefitting and people losing out
          • Do you have any references to good reading material on how software patents hinder innovation? I don't know much about it and would like to read up on some of the arguments.. Specifically how do they hinder innovation?
            • It's always nice to see ppl wanting to learn more.

              Anyway, there have been numerous posts in the past to it, but I don't know the links at heart. I do seem to remember the FFII has a page with links to sw-research, as does nosoftwarepatents.com, I think.

              Happy reading!

              • I did a quick google and read a couple of articles which glossed over the topic but nothing indepth. I'll check them out, tnx.

        • Let's not mince words, anything that has the potential for creating lawsuits will have the backing of lawyers. And businesses like nothing more than wrapping up a market. But that doesn't address the point that software patents stifle creativitity and competition, and are a bad idea in general.

          Our current system of copyright is more than adequate to protect software implementations. There is no need for "process patents" (which is what software patents are, generally) which do not describe an invention in

    • The patent system is way to outdated for a couple of patches. This baby needs a good rewrite :)

    • Re:Software patents (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:26AM (#11385396) Homepage Journal
      I think you're missing the point: he's saying (and I agree) that software patents harm the industry as a whole. Anything that benefits a few monolithic closed-source software providers like Oracle over many open-source providers like MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. -- and please no "my DB can beat up your DB" flames, okay? -- is bad for the industry in general, no matter how many MiGs they enable Larry Ellison to buy.
      • >he's saying (and I agree) that software patents harm the industry as a whole.

        Does he really care about the industry? He cares about it because he cares about his company first. If his company became the entire industry (was a monopoly) do you think that he would care about the other companies who used to make up of the industry? Do you think that he would avoid sales or profits (short or long term) so other companies in the industry can benefit?

        Why do you care about the industry? Because it provid
        • "Does he really care about the industry?"

          Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn't, but that's not the actual point. Even if he would turn out to be a greedy bastard who wanted to monopolise the entire industry (as MS does), the question remains if sw patents are a good idea or not.

          Good isn't good for this or that corporation in the short term, but for society in the long term. After all, a patent is a monopoly given by the state, and the state is (supposed to do) what's good for their citizens. Ultimately, in

      • Re:Software patents (Score:2, Interesting)

        by stratjakt ( 596332 )
        I know what he's saying.

        That's not the way most people see it. If someone's making money off it, it's a good thing.

        They don't think about the harm to competition or chill effects or anything so abstract.

        What I'm saying, is you have to show, with actual numbers, who's losing money because of software patents, or how end-users are getting screwed.

        Eolas v MSFT would be a really good example of frivolous patents hurting the industry, arguably one of the best. Of course slashdotters cant see past their anti
        • Well when some bastard is manufacturing landmines and strewing them about, and lobbying for stronger landmines, and lobbying for other countries to let them strew landmines over there too, they generally don't get a lot of sympathy when they step on a landmine themselves. In fact a lot of people HOPE the bastard will keep stepping on landmines and ether get killed or at least wise up and quit lobbying in support of them.

          -
    • There's a fine line that needs to be walked when it comes to software patents. Either extreme will stunt growth.

      On the one extreme, if software patents run rampant and out of control, more monopolies will form, and new technologies will be slow to come forth, because almost regardless of the direction you go, you'll be stepping on someone's toes.

      On the other extreme, if you eliminate them altogether, there will be so much competition that there will be little to no profit from spending the time and mon

      • Software patents and the Fine Line (Score:4, Interesting)

        by N3wsByt3 ( 758224 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:32PM (#11386025) Journal
        "There's a fine line that needs to be walked when it comes to software patents. Either extreme will stunt growth."

        Indeed, and that fine line is: allowing them.

        "On the one extreme[...]"

        sw patents are hopelessly borked. You can not patch the process up to be sure you only have high quality true software-innovations, and the whole idea of it is flawed in the first place, because software is akin to writing recipes, and it should be governed by copyright, not patents. and thirdly, patents are monopolies given by the state, because it is supposed to stimulate further innovation: all neutral research thusfar has indicated that it doesn't do that, on the contrary.

        "On the other extreme[...]"

        No, it won't. You seem to ignore the fact that, when software started with it's boom, there WERE NO sw patents. In fact, it can be reasonably argumented that it was just because they didn't existed at the time, that software knew such a high flight. Time and money isn't spend to produce new sw technologies; it is increasingly diverted to the legal departement of the companies. Companies that are flexible and can adapt will survive just fine without sw patents, rest assured.

    • Will harm *him*, but they'll help, for instance, Oracle.

      I would say any help to Oracle, Microsoft, et al, would be very short lived.

      The benefit would only last until the point that somebody else had a patent on something they wanted to release. Then, their options are 1) Pay, 2) Fight patent, or 3) Abandon their costly research and make a different product.

      I don't know about you, but that seems like a prerrt big harm... to me, anyway.
    • I'm not sure Oracle is big enough to benefit from software patents. In the medium time, it will benefit only three groups:

      a) a small number of very big companies (IBM, Microsoft), who will have cross-license agreements with each other, thus basically making themselves imune to the damage they do the rest of the industry.

      b) a larger number of small companies, who have no products of their own (and thus is invulnerable themselves), but make a living of selling patent rights to others.

      c) "ip" lawyers.

      In t

  • Legal Woes (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Locdonan ( 804414 )
    But if open source advocates and creators spend all of their time in litigation, doesn't Open source suffer as a result?

    Their creativeness is put on hold, and the money for litigation has to come from somewhere. They usually are not in it for the money, so where does it come from?

    Corps with their deep pockets have an advantage; they can sit in a court room all day long, every day for years, dragging out the process and basically smothering out the open source comeptition.

    On the plus side, I gues

  • Ignore legal issues? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:13AM (#11385302) Homepage Journal
    Thats fine, when you are on the 'right' side of the suit..

    Let him get hit with being the defendant on a few IP suits, and i bet he sings a different tune.. One of caution..
    • Depends somewhat on whether those suits would have been avoided by caution. After getting hit with IP lawsuits that you couldn't have avoided, one is more likely to decide to ignore legal issues, particularly in the case of patents, where being cautious may triple your legal liability without reducing your risk substantially.

  • Geographic Information Systems (Score:4, Informative)

    by SsShane ( 754647 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:15AM (#11385312)
    As a GIS geek that wants a solution that costs less than $10,000,000.23, I'm hoping that MySQL improves their spatial extensions. Right now I play with PostgreSQL w/PostGIS until MySQL can implement more robust projections (how geography is "laid flat" on a map for those who don't know). From what I gather, and I admit being new to open-source GIS solutions, PostgreSQL w/PostGIS extensions stomps all over MySQL at the moment, but I think it would be in their interest to improve as they have a nice business model and GIS is taking off.

    • Re:Geographic Information Systems (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kpharmer ( 452893 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:21AM (#11385356)
      get in line...

      MySQL is still implementing functionality common twenty years ago. And many of their enhancements of the last few years have left major gaps (innodb/replication awkwardness, etc).

      Additionally, they still haven't addressed their problem with silent exceptions (quietly truncating strings that don't fit, quietly converting numbers that don't fit, allowing invalid dates, etc, etc).

      So, yeah, it would be nice for them to pick up some OORDBMS functionality that postgesql has like spatial awareness, ip functions, etc - but I hope that they clean the product up first instead.
      • Nice reply, thanks. I have no idea why you are marked as Troll though; I found it informative. Mods?
        • Moderations are stored in a MySQL database, which detects and silently converts moderations that are positive to ones that are negative, when they are attached to a message critical of MySQL.

      • Additionally, they still haven't addressed their problem with silent exceptions (quietly truncating strings that don't fit, quietly converting numbers that don't fit, allowing invalid dates, etc, etc).

        Have you tried doing bounds-checking in whatever scripting language your frontend application is written in, before passing it to MySQL? MySQL just assumes you're smart enough to deal with stuff like that your own way if you don't like the way it's going to. Fortunately you do get to see exactly how MySQL

        • > Have you tried doing bounds-checking in whatever scripting language your frontend application is written in, before passing it to MySQL?

          You know, that's the same argument that Mac zealots were using about memory protection before it landed in OSX. "Applications should be smart enough to not access memory that isn't theirs".

          The whole point of a database is to secure the data integrity, and not worry about some random application screwing it up. MySQL is nothing but a storage engine if it can't handl
          • The whole point of a database is to secure the data integrity, and not worry about some random application screwing it up. MySQL is nothing but a storage engine if it can't handle that.
            This is like the thing with the electronic engineer and the mechanical engineer arguing over the watch with no moving parts. If you want all the checks and balances done in the backend, don't use MySQL.
        • > Have you tried doing bounds-checking in whatever scripting language your frontend application is
          > written in, before passing it to MySQL?

          yes, we used to exclusively rely on the application to manage data quality back in the 70s and early 80s (when using hierarchical databases, flat files, and ISAM). Of course, then we discovered that the procedural application code did a *horrible* job of consistently performing these checks, for various reasons like:
          1. checks changed over time, but the applicati
        • "Have you tried doing bounds-checking in whatever scripting language your frontend application is written in, before passing it to MySQL?"

          ummm. I guess that OS's shouldn't have to worry about bounds checking since applications should never do anything stupid????

          If an Application can crash an RDMBS or put corrupt data in to a table that is a flaw. Do other RDBMS do the same? If not then they handle exceptions better than MySQL. Trying to make this a plus is just dumb.
        • What if you have 5 applications accessing the same database? Or 50?

          Well, if one of those has a bug, and one will, it may insert some inconsistent data. Then, another application will rely on the data following certain rules to function, and create another problem. This could actually cascade into new data inconsistencies.

          Now, here's the tough part: find the bug and correct the data integrity problems.

          I have had maybe 5-10 applications accessing the same database. I was very happy when I got one of those
    • You've piqued my interest! I'd like to know more about your project, what's the name of it, website, etc? Thanks jk

    • How many people really need GIS support in MySQL? There's you, of course, and ...?

      Since, it appears someone already stepped up with something in PostgreSQL for GIS, is there something about PostgreSQL that is unsatisfactory that requires MySQL, instead? Or is GIS just a feature check-box that people can troll about?

      • I don't NEED it. But they put some sort of "spatial" extensions in there, almost like an afterthought so I was amazed when I realized how limited it was. It also pushed me towards PostgreSQL which I was not aware of (I told you I was new; I come from planet ESRI) and I love it. Variety is the spice of life though, ask any Windows user...oh wait.

  • Wait, wait, you're joking... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rhaas ( 804642 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:15AM (#11385318) Homepage

    Here we have the CEO of a company saying, basically, that his company is going to do well this year.

    And just for making that unremarkable statement, he makes the Slashdot homepage?

    News flash! It's the CEO's job to promote the company. They all do that. Even Darl.

    • Too True...

      I watched "Pirates of Silicon Valley" this weekend, an old made for TV special about the 80s rise of Apple and Microsoft. As impressed as I have been with Apple since Jobs took the reigns back in 1996, I am still keenly aware that Apple is equally as guiltly of trying to make me solely dependent on them as Microsoft.

      Just because your company works develops and distributes under the GPL doesn't mean that you aren't going to be tempted by the vast riches that come from having a monopoly in y

  • uh, Hemos.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by froggero1 ( 848930 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:20AM (#11385345)
    from the dept.

    what department would that be exaclly?

    • from the dept.

      From the (department name got lost because of lack of MySQL database consistancy) department, of course. Maybe Slashdot should switch to PostgreSQL, it is open source too. And then parts of the article title header would be safe from corruption, but our ideals would stay safe too. :)

      Happy Martin Luther King Day everyone! Google, why no special logo for today?! :(

  • Given what I saw on last years 21C3 [www.ccc.de] MySQL 4 will fall flat on its face if someone starts to test the security of this version of the product.

    The sas thing is: I am not kidding. Don't use too long usernames on the SQL client-side which could be (by coincidence) the same location where your SAP-System is installed.
  • Don't get complacent, Mr. Mickos. Don't you dare get complacent. Complacency is the state people get into just before some legal challenge arises out of nowhere and kicks them in the head. The only proper mindset to have with respect to legal issues is paranoia. You have to strategize for every possibility and then some.

  • Phew (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bluetick ( 516014 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:38AM (#11385512)
    And here I was expecting him to say "Hey, sell your shares, this company and this open source stuff is fucked." Well this is a relief.
  • Their dual license model is great, but I think they cloud a little the GPL licensing and commercial licensing:

    If you distribute MySQL Software within your organization, you should purchase a commercial license.

    GPL is not at all restrictive!! They mention this as being restrictive, basically they represent GPL as a less viable option for many companies than it really is.

    Anyway, kudos for being a corporattion willing to tag itself GPL (even if otherwise it would have meant marketshare death) :-)
    • Well, as long as your internal distribution is subject to the conditions for which the GPL grants permission to distribute software, then you are fine. The "grey area" is internal distribution of modified software in binary form only {or are you doing no such thing, just keeping the sources in salt for the rest of the department?} That could even be construed as fair dealing, permissible under copyright law; the GPL cannot block it and remain compatible with your statutory rights. At any rate it would o
  • (reads again...)

    Oh, never mind....
  • MySQL is so popular, that there are so many host that use it and don't offer PostgreSQL. They both are free, but PostgreSQL is better. Transactions, builtin programming language, GIS functions, extensibile types, etc.

    LAMP might be a cool acronym, but Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP isn't the best. On an aside, embedding Perl in web pages might be better than the web page specific PHP.

    Here is to a new acronym: LAMP = Linux + Apache + Mod_perl + PostgreSQL.

    Happy Martin Luther King Day!
    • [warning: blatant propoganda follows]

      Actually, it goes like this:

      "Build a brighter LAMP: Linux, Apache, Middleware, PostgreSQL"
      -- stolen (and probably butchered) from someone more clever than I.
    • I don't see how the content of your post is an argument to "MySQL causing harm to *web hosting*". In fact, shared web hosting simply cannot use mod_perl due to the inability of mod_perl to prevent normal users from messing up Apache within their .htaccess files.
      • Try to find a web host the offers PostgreSQL. Most do not. Most do offer MySQL if they are UNIX based.

        If it weren't for MySQL, many of the MySQL only web hosts would use PostgreSQL.

        Hence the harm.

        Something which is seen as "good enough" forces out something that would be better.
  • I'm wondering how does someone who is 'ceo' of something that is totally free make money. Service contracts? My host provides free service/consulting for MySQL (icdsoft.com). And besides, it ain't rocket science.
    • Service contracts is a major way. You sited a web host I'm sure icdsoft.com has a service contract with someone to fix problems(unless they are a reseller of hosting). Mid-Large Businesses and governement agencies all need service contracts for help or they won't use a software package for the most part. Plus if you look at mysql.com [mysql.com] you'll notice they also over consulting and training.
      • Hiya, I guess this makes sense. The problem, however, is that when you have a free-as-in-beer product and it is OSS, you do not have an exclusivity on training or service contracts.

        In fact, you may be at a disadvantage in that other companies can focus solely on support or training, while you have the added burden of development. While true that you might be the company that knows the software best, like I said before - it isn't rocket science.

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