Oracle and MySQL -- Good Move or Bad Bet?

sendai-X writes "With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source. This is key as open source enters the mainstream in business and in light of the success IBM has had with the Eclipse project, and Sun recently looking at purchasing PostgresSQL. What do Slashdot users think about this merger? Is it beneficial to the market and database users by having the largest database vendor openly support MySQL and provide an upgrade path to Oracle? Or is it just another cog in the Oracle machine in their attempt to dominate the enterprise IT market? Will this change the database market landscape? Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?"

Comments

It's beautiful QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Larry Ellison. How can anyone doubt his true and pure intentions for Open Source? Has there ever been a more generous and loving man? Clearly this is a man who saw the potential to give back to humanity by reward the creators of innoDB, while simultaneously being able to give the resources to it that it richly deserves.

Clearly his ultimate goal is to put Oracle technology into MySQL so that he can give it away for free. Now, you may say I'm a dreamer... but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join Larry and me. And world shall live as one.

Re:As far as I know

[mackertm]

Please stop being reasonable. This is Slashdot, we'd rather see some wild speculation.

Thank you.

Re:Purchase PostgreSQL?

[jadavis]

The Innobase purchase/ MySQL debacle is really an indictment of their business and development model.

MySQL AB is at the epicenter of development of MySQL DB, and requires copyright transfers for any outside changes. Paid developers at one small company largely create and support the entire database. Some users get a sense of security that there is "one person to go to", and a single focused business behind it. In some ways this business model worked well... their marketing was very successful, and the database might be described as more "unified" than, for example, PostgreSQL, where things like FTS and replication are independently developed (which is actually good, but can confuse users who think that "it's not good enough to be included").

However, the PostgreSQL development model has been working very effectively, not dependent on any one company. A short list of contributors includes the likes of Fujitsu, Sun, Affilias (manages all .org and .info), Software Research Associates (SRA), Red Hat, Aglio DB, EnterpriseDB (won LinuxWorld "Best Database Solution" last year, beating Oracle), Command Prompt (I probably left a lot out).

When Great Bridge hired a bunch of the PostgreSQL developers, then got scared and pulled funding, the developers went back to the community. The community was the core to begin with, and development continued as always. Other companies came in to support it, and development has never been stronger. More importantly, the community has never been stronger.

The reason MySQL DB users are concerned, even though the source is GPL, is because MySQL DB is heavily dependent on MySQL AB. If MySQL is forced out by Oracle, what's left aside from some source code? There are a lot of users who would rally and try to build a community. But building a community to support an RDBMS takes more than just a few good programmers. It takes years to build the kind of community that works like the PostgreSQL Global Development Group (PGDG). It takes programmers, organizers, advocates, managers, advocates, support channels, channels for accepting new developers (for instance, if a company wants to pay for a feature), decision makers, and arbitrators (to prevent too much forking). And it takes a lot of time to figure out who does what, and when they do it, and how to reconcile conflicts or scheduling difficulties, how to work as a team so that work is integrated properly and time is not wasted.

If someone has a proposal for a feature, who do they ask so that it's heard? Will a reliable decision be made about whether/when to progress? Who should step up and program? Who will open the channels of communication between the programmer and any other programmers working in similar code areas? Who will enforce project "standards"? Who will devise the standards? Does it go in this release or wait 'til the next? When is feature freeze? Who determines what quality level constitutes a release? Should the patch be backported? If it breaks any compatibility, who will devise a proper release timeline to avoid hurting existing users too much?

It really takes a long time to build those conventions and organize people into a functional development group. MySQL DB users can only hope that MySQL AB is still around for a while. If MySQL AB goes the way of Great Bridge, MySQL DB may be left in chaos. In the meantime, start forming a community that can operate outside of MySQL AB. The monolithic development/business model seems to be in question right now.