Novell to Ship MySQL With NetWare 6

An anonymous reader writes "Coming close on the heels of their announcement that they've ported PostgreSQL to NetWare, Novell announced today that they will begin shipping MySQL with NetWare 6. Owing to customer and partner doubts about the GPL, Novell has chosen the commercial version of MySQL, rather than the GPL'ed version."

Comments

Shipping both?

[mgkimsal2]

Were they going to ship both, or only ship mysql, and have postgres as a 'supported' but not 'shipped' system?

Novell needs better marketing

[Charlton Heston]

I dislike marketers as much as any programmer, or for that matter, anyone who's had their dinner interrupted by a phone call. But Novell needs better marketing in general. They've got really neat technology, but nobody knows about it. I think that if Novell discovered cold fusion they wouldn't tell anyone. The most they'd do is but a little paper sign on the door of the laboratory saying "cold fusion inside - don't tell anyone."

So, without the proper marketing, I doubt anyone will ever discover that Novell can be a web services platform, or that there's a built-in database that's ready to use.

Re:A question from the ignorant

[mmacdona86]

This is not really a big issue one way or the other for the GPL. MySQL is available with a GPL license, for use in GPL applications, or with a different license for non-GPL applications. Novell thought that some of their customers might want to build a non-GPL applications with MySQL and Netware, so they gave them that option by supplying the non-GPL license for MySQL. I mean, this makes sense; I would think that adding MySQL with the GPL license to Netware isn't much of a value add.

Re:What version? free software vs. commercial soft

[d3xt3r]

Here lies the differentiation between free software and commercial software. Free software isn't release or production quality until the software developers feel that it is 100% stable. Commercial software is production quanity when the big boss says it's time to make more money with another release.

For example, Win2K was released with 100,000 known bugs. Apache Software Foundation was running their website w/Apache 2.0 beta for over a year before the code went "gold". This is the fundamental difference. Just b/c Microsoft calls it SQL Server 2000 doesn't mean it's gold code.

This is because Oracle for Netware is gone?

[kirkb]

For years, Novell Netware included a copy of Oracle. Didn't Oracle recently announce that they aren't porting to Netware anymore? That's probably the only reason that Novell has moved to support MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Re:What version? free software vs. commercial soft

[ttfkam]

And if they're not 100% sure, why are they touting it? For the same reason that commercial companies release before it's time: mindshare.

Yes, we know that an open beta from Apache is as good or better than an initial release from a commercial developer. We know that the stable releases from Apache are akin to the third (or so) patch release for a commercial product.

What's the difference? Quality? Not necessarily. The difference is in semantics. Some open source entities produce bad code (have you looked around on Freshmeat lately?) and some commercial software houses produce good code.

How can we tell which is better? Cutting the crap and testing the products in question. If having the source available is important to you, obviously the open source software will win out every time. If only package functionality matters to you, waving a banner won't determine the best choice.

As far as "gold" code, you're wrong. "Gold" code simply means that it's going to be released. It designates that a particular snapshot of the codebase is being burned onto CDs and put into a shrinkwrapped package. "Gold" refers to a baseline, not the quality of the baseline. If you replaced "gold" with "good", I'd agree with you.