Oracle Acquires Innobase

A short time ago, Oracle announced its acquisition of Innobase, the Finnish company that makes the GPL'd InnoDB table storage engine. Among MySQL users, the separately-written InnoDB is almost as popular as the native MyISAM engine, and is considered to be more advanced for most purposes. Slashdot has, except for search, run entirely on InnoDB for the past year or two so we're as concerned about this as anybody. Brian Aker, former Slashdot coder and current Director of Architecture for MySQL AB, comments: "InnoDB is GPL, so once again the beauty of the open source market is at play: there is no lock in, and we can continue to develop Innodb as we see fit. The code is out there and we plan on continuing to support it. The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."

Comments

Consern?

[Gnpatton]

I guess the consern would be that InnoDB isn't going to get as much support as it should be. But as the original story puts it, the MySQL team intends to continue support with InnoDB. As a heavy MySQL user I can see where the worry would come from but I'm not worried because I believe the MySQL team will hold true to their word.

Re:/. concerned?

[kwerle]

Why? InnoDB is GPL'ed.

But the minds behind it are not. If Oracle snaps up key talent behind innodb, it could mean a big slowdown for that aspect of MySQL.

Oracle isn't stupid. They didn't want the InnoDB buildings. They didn't even really want InnoDB itself - that's in the wild. They probably DID want the brains behind it, or the tech they were about to release.

Somebody set us up the Innobase.

[Mulletproof]

All your Innobase are belong to us. Or them. One of the two.
(Ok, yeah, you can shoot me now.)

Time for PostgreSQL

[splante]

Time for /. to convert to PostgreSQL!

Re:Time for PostgreSQL

[Dom2]

To say this shows a lack of real world database experience. Whilst it's simple to change the connection to point at a different database using DBI, once you're actually connected the SQL that you have to use varies in many subtle and incompatible ways.

Probably the first one that everybody comes across is the difference in the integer primary key. In MySQL, it's auto_increment, in PostgreSQL it's a serial datatype with a backing sequence. If you want to know the primary key value after creating a new row, it's accessed in different ways. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Thankfully, because they're all based on a common standard language (SQL), it's possible. It's just still a lot of very hard work. But it's not impossible.

If it was easy, you'd see many, many more open source projects supporting something other than MySQL (which bugs me as PostgreSQL user :-)

-Dom

Re:/. concerned?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Why? InnoDB is GPL'ed.

Just off the top of my head I'd say that they are worried about the possibility that future development and bug fixes will go to a closed source branch, that development might grind to a halt as the original developers are reassigned, that the nature of development might change and move in directions not beneficial to Slashdot as a user, or that something else will result from this change.

It is wise to be concerned when you technology provider undergoes a drastic change. The GPL helps, since the project will likely continue as a active, GPL project in any case, but losing most of the experienced developers could really slow things down. That is not to say that it will. In fact, development might speed up and get better. It is just understandable to be concerned.

Confirmation?

[jlowery]

"The code is out there and we plan on continuing to support it. The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."

I would think that it was the users of InnoDB that confirmed that the market for open source databases exist.

Also, what about IBM and their open-sourcing of Cloudscape? Don't they count?

DBMS market going open source?

[martenmickos]

Is this yet another sign that the DBMS vendors are going open source? This reaffirms our thinking of where open source is going. Great to see Oracle legitimise the open source database space as they did with Linux.
 
Marten Mickos, MySQL AB

Re:DBMS market going open source?

[3770]

Great to see Oracle legitimise the open source database space as they did with Linux

There is one key difference. Oracle isn't in direct competition with Linux.

There is a chance that Oracle has some plan for InnoDB that will help Oracle's bottom line without actually harming MySQL. But if I had to guess, I would guess that the strategy in some way involves Oracle helping Oracle by harming MySQL. Or rather by slowing MySQL's progress. Because I don't believe that this isn't something that MySQL can't deal with.

While that is a great flattery, I can't help but think that brave words such as "Great to see Oracle legitimise the open source database space as they did with Linux" feels just a little bit like putting up a brave face. Because it would almost certainly have been better for MySQL if Oracle hadn't bought InnoDB.

oy vey

[SuperBanana]

Brian Aker, former Slashdot coder

Uh, no offense guys- but that's something I wouldn't put on my resume. Slashcode has seen near zero feature additions, is widely known to have some of the worst perl code ever written, is grossly underdocumented...

and current Director of Architecture for MySQL AB, comments: "InnoDB is GPL, so once again the beauty of the open source market is at play: there is no lock in, and we can continue to develop Innodb as we see fit.

You can, sure. But who has been putting the majority of development time into InnoDB? MySQL, or Innobase? If it's Innobase, and Oracle says to Innobase, "walk away from this", you're screwed. "Open Source" doesn't mean "if the primary supporter walks away, the project keeps going."

The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."

Um...no, they didn't. They thought buying Innobase made business sense, so they did it. Inferring "OMG Oracle thinks we're cool!" is, well, quite the stretch. For all we know, Oracle could be handing out pinkslips as we speak, or folding Innobase talent into Oracle...who knows.

Re:oy vey

[blackmonday]

Slashcode is as good as it needs to be, and no better. It serves millions of web pages each month (day?). I'd be glad to put a site of this popularity on my resume.

Come to think of it, if other apps were "as good to be, and no better", there would be a lot of companies saving good money right now.

Re:oy vey

[pudge]

Slashcode has seen near zero feature additions

Huh. Just in the last month alone, we've seen the addition of support for CSS and Atom, and the beginnings of a brand-new replacement for formkeys (called reskeys). And that's just September. So, um ... no.

is widely known to have some of the worst perl code ever written

Only among people who don't know perl, or Slash.

is grossly underdocumented...

True enough.

But the last thing being true does not remedy the fatal flaws in the other two assertions, which prove you to be quite ignorant about the subject.

Interesting questions come up

[MemoryDragon]

The MySQL business model works following way. They enforce the GPL and if you want to get out of the GPL you have to pay, just like qt, but MySQL has a problem there. Qt has its own codebase, MySQL does not, they rely on Berkley DB and on InnoDB, obviously there must be some relicensing contract between them so that people can relicense the InnoDB code non GPL, so what if Oracle refuses this relicensing in the future. MySQL might have a problem bigger than it seems on their hand. BDB is not the best repo (ask the SVN guys) and InnoDB is now in the hands of Oracle. Not that I would be sad to see MySQL going the way of the dodo, but this issue is bigger than it seems.

Re:/. concerned?

[jamie]

Because continuing InnoDB development is critical to upcoming versions of MySQL, and development of a database engine requires more than simply GPL'd code. In the past, Heikki Tuuri's company Innobase has been eager to develop InnoDB specifically for MySQL's needs, because MySQL was in a sense the only "platform" it ran on. But that's not likely to be true in the near future, or at the very least, not necessarily true.

I do know there are at least several developers at MySQL AB who are intimately familiar with the InnoDB code, but I don't know if there are enough to fork the code and continue its development in the same vein as before. Frankly I will be surprised if this doesn't slow down 5.x development at least a little, while MySQL AB shuffles people around to get them up to speed.

Re:/. concerned?

[MemoryDragon]

Well they wanted to be the IKEA of db development, the users now have to fix InnoDB themselves ... sounds IKEAish :-)

InnoDB and MySQL relationship

[dvanatta]

"InnoDB's contractual relationship with MySQL comes up for renewal next year. Oracle fully expects to negotiate an extension of that relationship."

Hmmm... I think InnoDB will cost MySQL a little bit more next year.

More mergers than you can shake a stick at...

[Cutting_Crew]

Oracle pulls this off..
Autodesk acquires Alias(maya)
Cingular buys out At&t wireless
NewsCorp purchases IGN
Yahoo purchases Konfabulator
IBM buys Gluecode
Verison acquires MCI
EA buys Digital Illusions
Google Acquires Keyhole Corp
Adobe buys Macromedia
GameStop buys EB
Yahoo buys Flickr
Yahoo buys MusicMatch
Warner Bros buys Monolith Productions

Mergers Left: 1. Sony buys Nintendo
2. Microsoft buys Yahoo
3. Google buys Sun
4. EA buys Hollywood
5. Walmart buys K-mart
6. Google buys Sony
7. Microsoft buys EA (very geographically convenient)
8. Walmart goes Bankrupt.
Google vs Microsoft vs RIAA Judge Judy presiding.

Sure

[The Bungi]

... except that Oracle might pull a 'MySQL' on MySQL themselves and kindly inform them that if they intend to use InnoDB for commercial purposes they'll have to pay up. IOW, Oracle might require licensing for every commercial (no-GPL) version of MySQL sold.

The biggest database vendor just confirmed that you can be too clever for your own good when you design your licensing schemes.

Ikea of Databases?

[Unknown Relic]

Could this be one of the reasons behind recent comments regarding MySQL wanting to be the Ikea of databases and not wanting to compete with Oracle?

Re:haha!

[Z00L00K]

The difference between InnoDB and MyISAM is not that InnoDB is better, they are both good, but have different strategies. MyISAm isn't a fully transactional solution, which may be bad, but the advantage is that MyISAM is very fast, which is the key issue in some cases.

MySQL is also supporting several other databases as backend, all with different advantages and disadvantages.

Re:Largest DB Vendor in the world

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Terabyte Oracle Database
Terabyte SQL Server Database
Terabyte DB2 Database

Everybody sing!
One of these things is not like the others!
One of these things just doesn't belong!
One of these things is not like the others!

Re:Purchase good for InnoDB

[Thundersnatch]

I have not ever heard of Oracle purchasing technology to squash it, either.

Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards don't count?

More subtle then we think

[jvs]

Could this be more subtle then we all realise? Maybe the big O is just turning the screws on SAP. Think about it. SAP is "in bed" with MySQL AB via the transfer of MaxDB. Now if SAP were thinking of pushing MySQL as the db of choice to seperate themselves from Oracle, what better way to scupper them - buy the transaction engine technology (of choice) in MySQL.

Remember SAP is the only competition left for Oracle in the Apps space.

But then again, maybe I'm just paranoid!

Re:A warning to the KDE project?

[adtifyj]

The KDE project and Trolltech have carefully protected the future of all software developed on top of the Free QT license.

In the event of a buyout, QT will be re-licensed under a BSD license.

This agreement was negotiated very soon after Trolltech was formed.

Re:aha, but here's a solution

[briansmith]

Why would somebody use MySQL with PostgreSQL underneath when they could just use PostreSQL in the first place?