The Ups and Downs of MySQL AB 210
Wannabe Code Monkey writes "Forbes has an article about a recent MySQL deal with SCO and the reaction from the open source community: "It's been a rough week for Marten Mickos, the chief executive of open source database maker MySQL AB. First his most dreaded rival, Oracle acquired a company that supplies a key piece of MySQL's software, a move that could make life difficult for Uppsala, Sweden-based MySQL, which has the most popular open source database. If that wasn't bad enough, Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community because last month he dared to make a deal with SCO Group, a company reviled by fans of Linux and other open source software.""
Bah! (Score:3, Insightful)
Next on Forbes: How much negativity can we pack into one sentence? Find out!
MySQL has some business strategy... (Score:1, Insightful)
2) Have Oracle buy the most feature-full database implementation we managed to get our hands on,
3) Piss off Open Source users,
4) Kill off PHP (since it's the only thing that still gets us going...)
5)
6) DEFICIT!
Re:What piece are we talking about? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Groklaw Interviews MySQL AB CEO Marten Mickos (Score:1, Insightful)
Thus they are to be despised and use of their product is to be discontinued.
Learn from the IBM case. (Score:5, Insightful)
They release it under a dual license.
Now they're accepting SCO money to "partner" with them to develop MySQL so it works better on SCO's server software.
Now, do a quick search for SCO & IBM & "Project Monterey". See the parallels? And SCO has sued THREE partners/customers over code use.
The question will come down to what contracts cover what money being spent in what ways to write what code and who owns what rights to what code.
Personally, I see this as just a way for SCO go try to get possession of the MySQL code base. Only an idiot would sign a developmental contract with SCO after everything that's been revealed from the court cases.
Oracle is MySQL's most dreaded rival? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Article is flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)
You can pretty much dismiss claims made by him, Laura Didio and Rob Enderle.
Typical Lyons Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Larry Ellison (Score:4, Insightful)
MySQL knows this and that's why they recently declared that they never intend to go after Oracle's customer base. Because they know if they even so much as think about it Larry will eat them for lunch.
yep (Score:5, Insightful)
> software. It is just one of the *many* storage backends supported by MySQL, and it's not by far
> the most used (99% of the MySQL installs i've seen only use the internally developped MyISAM
> storage engine which btw is the default one
I think that's primarily due to all the legacy 3.* mysql databases out there: not because people are running 4.01 and want to keep using myisam.
There are legitimate times to use myisam, but aside from read-only reporting (which mysql isn't very good at), or very high-volume read-mostly content management that's about it. Backends for tools like bugzilla, for wikis, etc should be on innodb:
- it's easier to develop the app (don't have to reinvent transactions)
- the application code is more portable
- you avoid data corruption problems problems with buggy do-it-yourself transaction code
- you get to rely on declarative referential integrity to help ensure that 100% of the data in the database complies with the rules of the model
> And btw, people who need transactions and advanced features tend to use postgresql instead of mysql+innodb
true - anyone who knows enough about databases to know why they should be using transactions also knows why they should be using views, stored procedures (occasionally), triggers (occasionally), and have an optimizer capable of joining 5 tables without a performance hit.
If mysql looses innodb they are in very deep trouble. Before they licensed innodb, MySQL AB insisted that:
- 99% of the programmers didn't need transactions
- that "real programmers" could easily write that code themselves in the app layer
- that all quality checks (pk/fk constraints) belonged in the app layer anyway
Once they licensed innodb they changed that tune completely
- declaring themselves an "Enterprise Database"
- the only database people needed
- bragged about their fast paced development (even tho it was purchasing not development)
- buried all their previous comments about transactions not being necessary
So, now that they've been admitting that transactions are vital - won't they look stupid loosing them? At that point, why put *any* database on mysql? Postgresql/Firebird/SQLite are all *freer* anyway. And it isn't like MySQL is going to suddenly come up with a replacement to Innodb - that's the code they couldn't write themselves before, it's the most complex code in mysql, and they apparently don't have people capable of writing it.
Re:Groklaw Interviews MySQL AB CEO Marten Mickos (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO, you remember, is a UNIX company--they don't write all their own software, which is why their OS is POSIX. They absolutely rely on cooperation with the community to make their product marketable.
Now, they're blacklisted. Companies and projects that use community-driven models (or even market to such organizations) are clearly and unequivocally forbidden to associate in any way with SCO. It's just not worth risking the sort of backlash that hit MySQL.
Re:Confused about licensing (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were a MySQL DB user, I would be planning for an outcome that did not require MySQL AB, because the company might not be in the same form a year from now. Possibly even choose something else that has a stronger community behind it, or at least a stronger company behind it.
MySQL has a big community, but it's organized not around itself, but around MySQL AB. That may have to change.
Agenda? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm, I'm sure this guy isn't working from an agenda, he is definitely not thinking from some squewed hair brained bias, then again....
Oh, so thats what it is to demand money from people so they can keep what is rightfully theirs. And here I thought the correct term for demanding money from people to leave them alone was extortion. And looking back through history it seems the hard working people of this planet usually get pretty steamed up over extortion and have taken down or defied criminal and governmental organizations who commited extortion crimes. And I do believe that extortion is still a crime so SCO is not "drumming up trouble" they are running an extortion racket.
burnin
Re:Learn from the IBM case. (Score:4, Insightful)
WRONG..it's called a Contingency case, they win they get paid, they lose they get nothing. This approach is very common in personal injury lawsuits.
The SCO case is a hybrid of this where Boise-Schiller took company stock as part of the fee, they win and the price goes up and they clean up, they lose SCO goes under they get only the cash part of the compensation.
Anyone getting involved that deeply with SCO must have a screw loose, SCO is just crazy enough to sue mySQL in hopes of keeping themselves alive a bit longer even after they lose to IBM (and appeal of course).
Re:rewrite innodb? here's a better solution (Score:3, Insightful)
An interesting point. One might wonder what it is that MySQL brings to the table if that happened though. Presumably, MySQL would bring nothing other than backwards compatibility with old applications. People would be jumping from MyGreSQL (or whatever this would be called) to the real PostgreSQL as fast as they could.
On the other hand...doesn't SQLite now support transactions & MVCC? And along these lines, could mysql pick up greater scalability by using db2 & oracle as storage layers as well?
MySQL has a commercial version to support. They can't charge someone a license fee and tell them to go elsewhere for a good storage engine. Anything in their GPL version needs to be in their commercial version. Therefore the only kind of code they can include is BSD-like, like PostgreSQL.
I guess they could have some kind of loosely-coupled interface that used another RDBMS as a backend, but again, what does MySQL provide? It would just be a SQL translator. It would be unable to optimize, plan, or execute queries, so that leaves what? Parsing? And then it's re-parsed by the other DB engine? That certainly won't impress anyone.
When a product gets to the point where it's ONLY possible value is backwards compatibility, people port the applications away quickly. [ insert MS Windows joke here * ]
* MS Windows doesn't really compare, since it's easy to replace a set of MySQL servers with a set of PostgreSQL servers, but not easy to replace a few hundred million installations of MS Windows.
Re:INDEMNITY? Will SCO sue us some day? (Score:3, Insightful)
From you:
Since SCO paid money to MySQL and offered development assistance to MySQL
did you READ the GP post?! Let me reiterate. no money went to SCO from MySQL .
Say it with me, you and all the other people who posted the exact same claim below:
no money went to SCO from MySQL
Also, NO CODE was shared. No development assistance is being shared. The ONLY thing the companies are sharing are marketing, training, and end user support. That's it.
Please stop spreading FUD against MySQL. the product and company have done a fantastic job of spreading FLOSS into areas where it was previously unknown, such as such as windows, solaris, and other "big iron unix" web servers. They should be applauded that they are, like a good company, continuing to support their end users, even the ones who run an unfortunate choice of OS.
Re:Learn from the IBM case. (Score:1, Insightful)
So, MySQL isn't accepting SCO money.
ehmmm... - typically accepting money from someone doesn't mean that you are supporting them financially. Only giving them money would imply supporting them financially.
Re:a key piece ?? (Score:2, Insightful)
There are indeed several (not many) storage engines with MySQL. However the two most used are InnoDB and MySQL. And InnoDB is usually used when MySQL is not appropriate - which is in write-heavy applications. I would agree that most installations use mySQL and not innodb, but as a secondary engine it's a VERY important part of MySQL.
What do they know
Re:Doesn't worry me much (Score:5, Insightful)
I could care less about "the community" - but I decided long ago that MySQL wasn't worth it. I've been using/promoting PostgreSQL for years, and have written some rather large projects (EG: 100+ tables, millions of records) with it very, very happily.
Advantages of Postgres:
1) Many, many MANY features in common with "enterprise" database products,
2) Open License lets you do pretty much anything you like, commercial or free.
3) Good documentation
4) Very solid - in 6 years of use, I've only had a problem ONCE with postgres on a machine with bad memory.
5) Helpful community support.
6) Comes pre-installed with most server-based distros. EG: RedHat
MySQL's advantages
1) Sounds good as part of "LAMP"
2) Uses "easier" administration, EG: "connect DBNAME" instead of the more terse "\c DBNAME". (but requires more typing)
3) Licensed under the GPL. (which restricts your use in any commercial product you distribute)
4) Fewer features means there's less to learn (???)
I switched to PG years ago, and I've never looked back.
Re:So, let me get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Dual License: Please read Myth #6:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/disp
2. MySQL, all the GUI and Connectors, hell even the Support software used (Eventum) is
available under GPL, aka open source.
3. MySQL Network is not free no, but see point 2.
4. Many developers should know what they are doing and think first before making something.
See point 1.
5. What?
6. See point 1.
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:3, Insightful)
OTOH, he has bought himself a dynamite PR firm that uses the image of him as a nerd. This doesn't, however, make it an honest or accurate image.
Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Larry Ellison (Score:2, Insightful)
And let me tell you right now... no database people would consider MySQL an Oracle rival any more than a NASCAR pit chief would be concerned about the new Honda Civic that may give his custom cars a run for their money. Again, this is something that people who know databases are aware of.
Re:yep (Score:3, Insightful)
> Oh, you mean free like in "free to deny everybody the right to redistribute it"?
Freer as in "not encumbered by complex dual-licensing with bizarre "linking" gpl definitions that require lawyers to determine whether or not your clients require licensing".
Freer as in "not owned by a for-profit company that has a history of changing its licensing to beging making money off its popularity"
Freer as in "doesn't rely on a product owned by Oracle & Larry Ellison for vital functionality"
I'd call that three good reasons why future costs of mysql are pretty unpredictable.