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The Ups and Downs of MySQL AB
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.""
I'm confused. Even if SCO acquires a component, isn't the final F/OSS release of that component still F/OSS per the GPL or whatever license it was released with?
Take said component and keep refining it.
If this is a future worry, adapt the license so that other OSS components remain OSS if future versions are commercialized.
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."
Next on Forbes: How much negativity can we pack into one sentence? Find out!
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200510112 11450706
_ 948.html
* no money went to SCO from MySQL, so MySQL is not supporting SCO financially
* it was SCO seeking out the partnership, not the other way around
* MySQL had stopped supporting SCO in 2004
* MySQL did not put out the press release about the partnership. Mickos did provide a quotation for the press release however. Here's the press release in question, taken from MySQL's web site. http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article
Gosh, SCO have not run out of money yet? I thought the Web site implied they have: http://www.linuxstolescocode.com/ (hint: see error page).
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
Oracle acquired Innobase, maker of InnoDB.
Time to fork Innobase right? Programmers, are you listening?
1) Sell out to SCO, ...
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!
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Although InnoDB is quite a niece piece of work, I wouldn't call it a key piece of the MySQL server 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 ...
...
And btw, people who need transactions and advanced features tend to use postgresql instead of mysql+innodb
Open source programmers know *SQUAT* about database storage engines.
MySQL AB has all the licenses to MySQL.
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.
Postgres, baby.
I don't give a damn about his points, they are irrelevant.
.. How do we know they will not try to pull a stunt of saying MySQL stole ideas or misappropriated their money to incorporate new features into MySQL?
.. so is the Linux suit .. and once they lose that they need another scam to pump up their stock. Sorry they had to sign a deal with the devil. This company SCO has declared in the past that they don't think the GPL is a legally valid document. To me it's simply not worth it to deal with the hassle. Honestly as much as I hate their companies I rather use Oracle *puke* or Microsoft SQL Server *vomit* than MySQL at this point, because i dont have to worry about being sued.
Since SCO paid money to MySQL and offered development assistance to MySQL
This is my biggest concern. I no longer feel safe using MySQL. There is now a risk of getting sued by SCO down the line. Anyone who thinks this is not far fetched
Fortunately we don't have to choose commercial because we have great alternative open source databases we can use. Sorry MySQL it's time for us to say goodbye.
SCO is losing business and not gaining any more business. Why would Marten take the chance of alienating his user base for the sake of a few more bucks from SCO, risking his entire business? It's not like the database field isn't competitive.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I honestly don't know anyone who could actually say that with a straight face.
Forbes, unsurprisingly, doesn't get that traditonal software code was all open source--Richard Stallman created the GPL and the foundations of the open source movement as a response to companies like Microsoft that were locking their software behind restrictions he found unethical, immoral and against the shared community development model that charactericized early software development.
http://redcone.net
I s'pose that us "fans of Linux and other open source software" have a get out clause in that we could take MySQL's existing codebase under the GPL and develop it the way we want, free from SCO influence.
Of course it'll probably turn out that SCO wrote MySQL at some point and we'll all have to start using postgres instead.
BTW: I think the "important bit of software" made by Innobase in the article is the InnoDB table storage engine (cf. this slashdot article).
charlie harvey's website
He made up his mind a long time ago. Do a search on google for "daniel lyons" fud.
You can pretty much dismiss claims made by him, Laura Didio and Rob Enderle.
"It was classic Groklaw, ripe with paranoia and nonsensical conspiracy theories, and replete with loads of self-righteous huffing and puffing about morality."
Hello Pot? This is Kettle.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
If the community decides MySQL is now the work of the devil, it's not like there aren't other solutions out there, among them just using current MySQL versions. The project will just branch off from the last open source release before the switch to Evil Commercialization (TM). The license does support this, doesn't it? I must confess, I'm not exactly sure what license MySQL uses for it's releases.
There are also plenty of other SQL options out there. Postgres is one I use for various things, and I've found it to be more powerful and more effecient than MySQL. The only drawback is that alot of apps out of the box don't support it.
Of course, that would change if everyone stopped using MySQL.
That's one thing I love about open source: The power of choice
The article's author is just spouting more of his standard nonsense. Lyons doesn't get free software and he's pissed at those of us who do get it. Clicking on a link to a Lyons article never seems to justify the effort spent on the click.
Don't like Microsoft? Well wait till Larry Ellison starts playing hardball. This man is ruthless and there aren't many people who disagree with that statement. His goal is to be the richest man in the world. Gates is still just a nerd at heart. MySQL only indirectly competes with Microsoft. But MySQL is directly competing with Oracle. Sooner or later they will probably find themselves in the gun-sites of Larry and it won't be pretty.
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.
wake up with fleas as the old saying goes. If MySCOql didn't want to get labeled as a sco whore, they shouldn't be sleeping with them. They knew what the deal would mean to them.
Incidentally, I've switched my Sun servers to postgres. I don't want *ANYTHING* to do with sco, mysql, or any of the dirty bastards that associate with them.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Jones and others' talk of "hypocrisy" and "treachery" is childish and ignorant. If they think that their facile SCO-hating and witch hunting as the clown Darl McBride inexplicably attempts to bash his company's brains out against the wall of IBM is somehow doing more for FLOSS than Marten Mickos has, they are completely deluded.
Yes, MySQL has some unknown kind of business relationship with SCO so now they pwn our souls and we will have to pay for all your open source software and our families will have to start working 12-hour days at Microsoft for no pay. I hate those MySQL traitors, they've spoiled everything! Farewell, cruel world!! *bang*
> Although InnoDB is quite a niece piece of work, I wouldn't call it a key piece of the MySQL server ...
...
> 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.
If SCO want to throw some money at MySQL for commercial support, then so what?. It might hasten SCO's demise, and the money can be used for bug fixing instead of lining some lawyer's pockets.
Dear MySQL,
Ever since you and joined forces, my PostgreSQL hosting and consulting business has gone up. On top of that, several existing customers have begun asking how they can migrate their applications from MySQL to PostgreSQL. While I am happy to hear that you finally got yourself some stored procedures and other advanced features... it saddens me that you're doing business with a company (SCO) that thinks that one of your business models is unconstitutional. You are tainted now. However, I really just wanted to say thanks for the extra work that have you provided me. It's no secret that being a professional PostgreSQL consultant is going to be a highly valuable skill in the coming few years...there is already a shortage. Thanks for sending people to the world's most advanced open source database server!
Former MySQL fan,
Me
Robby Russell
PLANET ARGON
Robby on Rails
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
This guy has given you a fast, stable database, that you can run and use for free as you please. And now because he has committed himself to making a version for SCO, you feel entitled to giving him crap? Okay... the Linux d00ds of today really need to try working for a living sometime.
> Time to fork Innobase right? Programmers, are you listening?
Not likely this isn't simple code, this would take a long time to get up to speed on and really understand. Let alone enhance. Mysql wasn't able to write a transaction engine on their own - they had to licese one. Don't you think they would have written their own if they could?
But here's a great solution: mysql could use postgresql for its transaction layer. Imagine the benefits:
- no licensing costs to pass on to mysql customers
- improved query optimization
- eliminates many of the annoying silent errors (truncations, conversions, etc)
- should eliminate the postgresql-vs-mysql arguments
- mysql could leverage from open-source momentum in postgresql
- might improve mysql portability
- might even allow users to easily port back & forth between postgresql & mysql
- postgresql can't be purchased away
I'm pretty sure this would be the easiest plug-in replacement for innodb. 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?
ken
MySQL has always been a joke. PostgreSQL is a full featured database system with stored procedures and a robust locking model that supports ACID transactions. Get a real open source database. Get PostgreSQL.
Forgive me, but is SCO even a player in the server market?
I have used dozens of POSIX OSes including SCO and although SCO had a good market share at one time have they not lost it? Does anyone actually run SCO in a production environment any more? Why would they not switch to Solaris (x86/AMD64), OpenBSD, FreeBSD or one of many Linux distributions?
SCO lost it as they priced it too high, poorly maintened it and it was intrinically a slow pig. When they got UNIXWare they botched this too as it's development too is stagnent. They spend too much on business hype and lawyers and not enough on product devlopment.
So for those new to the SCO story, run like hell from it.
A fork is possible. But what really needs to happen is the MySQL community needs to get it's act together and be independent of MySQL AB. There's a lot of community-building that needs to happen, because right now the whole development process is too dependent on MySQL AB.
This is not a fast process that a few good programmers can solve overnight. You need a few good programmers, a few good organizers, a few good decision makers, users involved on mailing lists, and a lot of time to figure out who does what and when they do it.
The project also needs direction. Will it be the same direction as when MySQL AB was calling the shots? If it changes direction, will the database cater to the same users?
Here's a potential problem I already see: You get all of the above requirements. Some of the decision makers think it's better to move in the direction of standards-compliance, strict error checking, consistency, and data integrity. The problem here is that they will always be chasing PostgreSQL, and their users will go elsewhere.
MySQL is kind of in a precarious position. If it gets "too good", it will compete with the likes of PostgreSQL and Oracle. They need to stay where they are, yet incrementally improve. It seems like any direction MySQL moves, the logical conclusion works against them.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
MySQL AB (the company behind MySQL) will just modify some code to add SCO Unix support. I mean, MySQL has windows support, Apache has Windows support, and Windows is "teh evil", so?
/. crowd remains silent about this. So, they're not scandalized about this dual licensing issue and the touchy circumstances , and what "linking" means regarding this (any legal info would be appreciated). But oh, MySQL modifies some code to add SCO Unix support, and the world as we know it is disappearing suddenly?.
A much more important matter is Oracle buying InnoBase. (hint: InnoBase != MySQL AB). But then again, InnoDB is GPL. So, as long as they're GPL, we can still use them for GPL products.
Now the REALLY scary thing is this dual licensing stuff and MySQL requiring you to buy a license for MySQL if your product is not GPL. I'm still confused regarding the legal interpretation of it, this is a very scary issue, and the
I don't give a **** of what MySQL AB does with SCO (the GPL won't change, will it?). What worries me is the future of InnoDB and if i'll be able to use a MySQL client in my non-gpl'ed, for-profit (i.e. to earn a living) C++ or Python software without having to fear lawsuits from MySQL AB...
In fact, I think there should be an article on this subject (not that I've STFW'ed, but links would be appreciated).
Do they still need InnoDB? I thought that was the point of integrating the SAP DB engine - so they get transactions, relational integrity plus stored procs (coming real soon now)?
Burn me once - shame on you, burn me twice - shame on me. I wonder why it takes so many people getting burned to realize that some companies just do not play fair AND YOU SHOULD NOT GET IN BED WITH THEM!
I mean seriously, SCO... couldn't you guy's (MySQL) find someone more worthy of the partnership? This sounds like something M$ would do.
I expressed a very calm concern to MySQL that partnering with SCO in any fashion gives them an illusion of legitimacy that SCO does not deserve. How does that make me a "noisy fanatic"?
Or does anyone expressing disapproval of the SCO deal qualify for that label? Isn't that being a little Republican? Along the same vein as accusing anyone not supporting the war in Iraq as being unpatriotic?
Like any other business, if MySQL is in any kind of trouble, they're most likely there because of their own bad decisions or bad luck. In this case it seems more like a combination of bad judgment and bad luck. MySQL was doing quite well for a while.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Whenever I come across a Forbes article, I first check to make to sure it wasn't written by Daniel Lyons. Lyons is just an idiot whose articles are *always* a waste of time.
I just wonder if Oracle were doing to get Innodb staff to write the interface code so MySQL could be the front end for an Oracle (or Oracle RAC) based backend. Or maybe it's just a smart move when MySQL have started selling their MySQL Cluster product (albeit memory based) for circa $4000 per node.
Be interesting to see how this plays out.
Ian W.
I think SCO sucks as much as the next guy,
I suppose this "next guy" would be me, as I'm the first guy to reply to your post. Right?
You have some nerve, saying that SCO and I suck equally.
--
Waging war against fundamentalism is as likely to make the fundamentalists give up as 9/11 was likely to make the United States give up.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Postgresql is BSD and hence SCO is allowed to bundle/resell/etc it with their OS w/o any input or agreement from anybody from the Postgresql project. As far as I know, SCO has not paid a single cent to the Postgresql people for this right.
They're the ones giving SCO money, and yet if SCO offers MySQL AB money to make MySQL better perform on SCO's platform, MySQL gets the heat?
Be consistent at least:
all pay SCO license fees. That's all I could Google, but they must have more.
I read Groklaw a lot, and I happen to like PJ's style. Sure, she's a bit "Over the Top", but I still think she's funny. I don't take her rants too seriously, but she is good at research. You have to admit that, no matter how much PJ may or may not "spin" the stories, she always puts up the original source material, so it's ultimately up to you to form your own opinions. She also tries to enforce some level of civility in the posts. Some people call that censorship. Others call it keeping out the obvious Trolls. One thing it does have is that the signal-to-noise ratio is several orders of magnitude better than on a lot of other popular Blog sites.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
How many app developers look at the DBMS source on a regular basis anyway? If it works, they'd never need to.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can't speak for others, but when I read that MySQL got cozy with SCO, I added ripping out MySQL and replacing it with Postgres to every server I manage and to never install MySQL again to my to do list.
I'm sorry MySQL, but you should have known that there would be many people that would not take this well. If not, you've been living in a hole.
Too bad as I liked your product. But since in my case it isn't irreplacable, so long and thanks for all the queries.
Many of us in the FOSS community didn't really care about this "partnership" between MySQL AB and SCO until Mickos tried to defend it as a moral thing to do in the name of dialog (see Groklaw for an interview to this effect, and a prior article on a speech he made to that regard).
It is one thing for EnterpriseDB to enter into such a partnership and say "this is about helping our customers. Don't read more into it than that" and MySQL entering into a partnership and saying that this is about dialog and helping SCO warm up to FOSS. Hello? SCO used to be a FOSS company before the lawsuits (anyone remember Caldera Linux)...
Indeed until Mickos started to try to justify the partnership in moral terms, I didn't think anytong of it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
But the Apache Foundation, Mozilla Foundation/Corporation, OpenOffice.org, etc., are not signing business deals with Microsoft. That's the difference.
It's not the fact that MySQL runs on UnixWare and OpenServer that people are worried about. It is the fact that the company behind MySQL is partaking in business dealings with SCO, a company who has invoked lawsuits against past partners.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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.
See, this is why they are vulnerable. There is no reason why the Innobase takeover would threaten a GPL-only application. But what really threatens MySQL is that they may be barred from *charging license fees* for InnoDB. Oracle could simply state, "No. We don't want you distributing this anymore" and MySQL would be SOL. This would, in effect, immediately destroy their ability to sell commercial licenses.
There are a couple of options. The first is to start trying merge the SQL-Max code with MySQL as fast as possible and get that all working so that they can use that for transactions, etc. From what I understand the code may still be a bit of a mess and may pose some manpower issues. The second is to try to go with BDB as a transactional store. IIRC, they didn't get too far with this last time.
Finally, they could redesign their licensing scheme so that, perhaps, their core engine is LGPL'd and the client libs are GPL'd/commerical licensed. It *might* be possible to give Oracle the hard end of the deal here but it would drastically complicate the commercial licensing. I.e. I don't see why client libs would arguably be derivative of InnoDB....
This is why it is risky to rely on a dual-licensed program. You never know when someone will pull the commercial license on a part that is fundamental. If MySQL only released it under the GPL, there would be no problem. However, the commercial application is what is vulnerable to third party licensing constraints.
Unlike MySQL, PostgreSQL doesn't have to worry about this. Of course, these announcements cast a long shadow over the upcoming 5.0 release.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Basically Lyons has a tendency of misrepresenting conversations. The only time I didn't think he did was over the bitkeeper debacle and basically McVoy's comments to me seemed to indicate he had represented McVoy accurately (which does not speak well for McVoy).
If you go and read the Groklaw discussions on these matters, there were a few individuals who felt that any dealing with SCO was cause for a boycott. There were also plenty of defenders for MySQL there too, which Lyons fails to mention. However, most of the informative posts on Groklaw were critiquing the way that MySQL reacted to the criticism. SCO has been out fishing for partnerships lately, and most of the companies which have entered into such partnerships have done so solely in the name of helping customers. My saying first that MySQL has no position on SCO's strategy and lawsuits, but entered into the partnership as a way of engaging them in a dialog on these issues (see the Groklaw interview), MySQL came across as incompetent at best and dishonest at worst.
This being said, the InnoDB thing is a serious threat to MySQL as Lyons correctly points out. The reason simply is that although InnoDB is released under the GPL, these are not sufficient grounds for MySQL to charge licensing fees to its customers. Most people fully expect Oracle to ask for quite a bit more money in exchange for the license to sublicense the code at very least.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
How many app developers look at the DBMS source on a regular basis anyway? If it works, they'd never need to.
I was referring to the difficulty of MySQL using SAP DB as a replacement storage engine. For that, MySQL developers would certainly need to look at the source.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
What was this I recently read on Slashdot about Mickos saying that MySQL doesn't want to attract the attention of Oracle? This was said right before the announced takeover. Quite ominously foreshadowing what came next....
Especially when MySQL AB is silent on the issue. We can only assume they have nothing reassuring to say.
MySQL clearly has serious problems ahead. They have shut up which makes this seem even worse....
This is one area where Oracle has managed to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt about MySQL's viability, not by saying anything about MySQL's products, but by taking steps that put them in a position where they can largely dictate the terms under which MySQL can continue doing business.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Hello Coward! You're just a troll, or you would have presented some actual data with that load of dung. Just like the next message...
If you have the misfortune to work for such a person, (other than updating your resume and sending it to your favorite headhunters) do a fast google on SCO's track record with respect to:
Ask if your company really needs the kind of legal exposure use of any product from a company that voluntarily associates with SCO will provide given the above problems.
There are alternative database products like postgres or for that matter, Oracle, that are technically superior and don't have those kinds of problem.
Offhand, if one is using mySQL. . . time to check into anything else.
Tech Public Policy stuff
man, I have 25 yrs working behind my back, I use linux since '93, the 0.9x versions FYI, and I use linux on my desktop computer since '94. when I was standing before the choice, mysql or pgsql, I was quite familiar the environment I'm going to use them on, I was just not familiar with these sql servers.
and no, I didn't changed distros randomly, slack was used by former admin, I have _reinstalled_ to debian woody, and new iron was reinstalled to sarge. and I know pretty well how to compile kernel, some of my patched were accepted in the past and even I'm not active in kernel development about 5 years now, I still know what processor/mainboard change means.
as of db admin.. I regulary take care about 2.5 mil record database (small), but thats one of biggest databases in my small, ~5mil central european country.
and I am pretty sure about what I writte above, so I don't have to post anonymously.
have a nice day.
Ah. I thought you meant chucking it away and replacing it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Have you ever written a basic interpreter that fits in 4K?
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
I haven't tried ibFirebird yet, and for most things it's not really up to PostgreSQL's level, but I have a peer who uses it with great success. It's one of several databases (all mentioned here are included) with features and syntax explicitly designed to make conversion from Oracle easy.
Besides, "not up to PostgreSQL's level" is massive overkill for most projects.
In Real Life(tm), even SQLite is overkill for most projects: SQLite is quite capable, where a SQL interface to flat files and perhaps some rudimentary indexing would be more than enough for 90% of what's out there.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing