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MySQL CEO Insists He's Not Supping With The Devil
jg21 writes "In the continuing saga of the decision by MySQL previously discussed here on Slashdot to make a deal with SCO Group, the company's CEO Marten Mickos has now granted an interview in which he addresses the inevitable criticism that the deal has provoked in the F/OSS community. His main defense seems to be that other companies have ported to SCO too. He admits money too played a part." From the article: "We believe that porting a GPL version of MySQL for the SCO OpenServer platform gives thousands of users more options when it comes to choosing a database -- which is a good thing. The deal produces revenue for us and this allows us to hire more open
source developers. We didn't make the decision lightly; we knew SCO was a sensitive subject with the free software and open source communities."
In the long-run I think Postgres will eat MySQL's lunch because now, there's a native Windows version *and* the whole dual licensing crap will make most small commercial software developers move away from MySQL (I know I won't be developing any applications (all non-PHP work) using MySQL)
I think MySQL would be wise to shut up about the whole MySQL / SCO thing and hope it goes away. I can't understand why they keep talking about it, this can only hurt them.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Nobody. But that hasn't stopped a zealot yet.
Game... blouses.
Yahoo handing in a demonstrator....
Google agreeing to censor....
And a massive amount of US companies doing extremely dodgy deals with disreputable regimes, you know like Dick Cheney meeting Saddam Hussein.
So MySql (a relatively poor database before SapDB came in) have agreed to work with SCO to get a bit of cash. Not the most moral decisions but certainly against what those who dealt with Saddam Hussein or the Chinese Goverment its pretty small fry.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Then came the debate as to whether mySQL was pure enough in Licensing. Once again, I didn't care, but thought "how can you criticize a man for giving you something for free?"
Now comes the flap about what else this company does to pay the rent. They still allow free use of mySQL, there's still other alternatives if you don't like his terms, I'm still using more industrial/ACID solutions, and others are still throwing rocks at the mySQL people.
The undisputably weird thing is that the good folks giving away mySQL are taking more abuse from the community than if they'd never given it away at all. How's that for incentive for everyone else???
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Oh, bullshit. SCO and the OpenServer platform are dieing. This was a quick cash grab and nothing more.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
They are neither assisting or hindering SCO's attack on Linux. They have made a business decision which will increase sales of their software, and may improve sales of SCO's software.
This has no bearing on SCO's lawsuit against IBM. Doesn't affect Linux. Just benefits SCO and users and increases sales of mySQL
Isn't "money grubbing" and "do anything for a buck" a pretty good description of all corporations?
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Gaim has been ported to Windows for some time now, yet I haven't seen one diatribe against the Gaim developers. Shameful!
Dolby Labs? They should have revoked Apple's right to use AAC the moment Fairplay came to exist. What a sham!
And Cygwin? We should all boycott Red Hat for that deal with the devil. How dare they!
Slashdot? They refuse to auto-detect Internet Explorer, and then serve up a blank page in those instances. How two-faced of them!
#DeleteChrome
SCO is not just competing with Linux. They have challenged the legal basis for the whole platform in court, and have threatened those who use the software with additional lawsuits. Microsoft/Apple is not a good analogy.
The value of the SCO platform can hardly increase to a point where it is a good idea to buy it. MySQL or not, they are dying. The only people that can benefit from the deal (beside MySQL making a buck on it) are SCO's actual customers who might need MySQL. Once SCO dies, they will have to migrate. Probably to Linux. Guess what they'll use there ?
So they got a contract and potential new users.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
They are neither assisting or hindering that country's attack on another country. By selling weapons and ammunition to them they are simply increasing sales, which may help them win the war, but they are not helping.
What?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Right. Not as if running Free/Open SOurce on Microsoft platforms is that uncommon these days....
This being said, I think that Mickos came across very well in this interview. He did exactly what the company should have done from the beginning which is to say indicate that this is just about bringing MySQl to more customers.
My prior concerns had more to do with other public comments than with with the SCO partnership per se.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The key fact some OSS zealots miss is that SCO users only USE products from SCO, they ARE NOT ACTUALLY SCO. Granted, SCO pays MySQL. They're still not who's going to profit from the deal the most. The actual users are going to be. They may be forced to use SCO software. Occam's razor dictates they are because using it voluntarily is, at this time, indefinitely harder to explain.
Please stop trying to keep those poor souls from switching to open source software.
Considering there seems to be good reason to suspect MS of bankrolling Calderas little suicide mission, and have certainly been guilty of more than their share of dirty pool throughout their history in any case, it's not such a bad analogy at all. OpenOffice, Apache, etc. are all ported to Windows, and no one makes a stink out of that. It's done to bring Free Software to the poor unfortunates still using that OS, not to make MS happy, but if MS were willing to pay for that development would that suddenly make it wrong? Of course not.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
How do we know SCO won't turn around and claim that the code in MySQL is tainted??? This is EXACTLY what they did to IBM.
0 37 [sco.com]
It's in the SCO press release that the money is to be used to produce a COMMERCIAL version of the database.
That's right looks like they duped the MySQL CEO who didnt read the contract before signing.
http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=172
From the SCO press release:
"The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of UNIX(R) software technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with MySQL AB to jointly deliver a certified, commercial version of the popular MySQL database"
Yeah! By the same token, it's a huge shame that the US doesn't support North Korea's ideas about freedom.
After all, I am strangely colored.
"So what? Remember the GPL that mySQL is licensed under? Nothing can stop anyone from giving SCO the middle finger and forking mySQL"
/precisely/ what SCO/Caldera has been doing to IBM for over two years now. They disclaim the GPL, and even called it unconstitutional. They requested everything and anything associated with AIX so they could somehow claim that IBM dumped Unix code into Linux. SCO/Caldera has stretched out discovery as much as they can. IBM has _given them everything_ and SCO to date has found _nothing_. But they keep going on this epic fishing expedition because....well....I don't know. Nobody knows why they're really going through this stupidity because it has killed the company and indeed they could have been where SuSE is now.
It doesn't make a bloody difference, because that's
This is also totally ignoring the Autozone stupidity.
Darl McBride said that contracts are what you use against customers.
SCO/Caldera is toxic as a company.
The rat bastards should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a clue by four.
It is unfortunate that MySQL signed a contract with SCO/Caldera. SCO/Caldera sues its partners and customers and that's a known fact. If anyone is the victim here, it's MySQL AB. They were conned.
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BMO
There is no "dual licencing crap" for companies that only use and do not intend to distribute proprietary versions of MySQL themselves.
Wrong. The client libraries are licensed such that any non-Free *client application* can only be run on MySQL if it is properly licensed aside from the GPL. I.e. if you only want to run Joomla, then you are OK, but if you run Jamroom, then you need the license.
This is because the client libs were changed from LGPL to GPL sometime ago. Perhaps you missed all the fuss under which PHP threatened to drop support for MySQL?
The whole "dual licencing crap" starts when a company chooses PostgreSQL for its licence only, because it intents to distribute it under another, proprietary licence, and give neither code nor money back to encourage its further free development. Its then another dead end and a code sink for Postgres' development.
You'd think that wouldn't you. And yet every company I can think of that has tried this has either: 1) died or 2) contributed back large parts (though not necessarily all) of their contributions back to the community. In at least one case, a large part of the work for the Win32 port was contributed by a company which provided a forked proprietary version on Windows.
Indeed PostgreSQL is progressing fast enough that I have doubts as to whether a proprietary version with non-trivial extensions could be effectively maintained without giving away all generally applicable aspects of one's code.
The main proprietary versions of PostgreSQL that exist at the moment are by the following companies:
1) Command Prompt. They include a replication technology (the only async replication to work on Windows to my knowledge), but have contributed back many other enhancements to the community.
2) EnterpriseDB. They include an Oracle compatibility layer but employ at least one PostgreSQL developer who works nearly full-time on contributions to the community. They are sponsors or co-sponsors for major enhancements such as two-phase commit, SQL-99 PSM support, etc.
3) Pervasive. They have made a number of major contributions to the community.
4) Fujitsu offers a customized version (at least in Australia) and they have made major contributions to the community as well.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
MySQL AB is forming a business jpartnership with a company that is dedicated to destroying F/OSS.
It is *not* just a simple porting - it is way beyond that.
MySQL AB proudly displays on their website the news release about scox and mysqlab will be working together ect.
"MySQL signed a full-scale deal with SCO (including a joint marketing deal )... it wasn't just "porting the software". MySQL jumped into bed with them and snuggled up."
Oh, bullshit. SCO and the OpenServer platform are dieing. This was a quick cash grab and nothing more.
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I'm sorry but I don't think you are not making sense. Even if it was just a quick cash grab, that does not invalidate the post you are responding to. Even if it was a one thing, that doesn't make MySQL AB any less hypocritical.
Besides, how do you know? OpenServer has been dying for over ten years, there is still lots of time for lots more business deals.
I just wonder why SCO went for a deal with MySQL instead of just taking the BSD-licensed Postgres. (I would use postgres myself if my webhost and CMS supported it)
You know OpenServer ships with PostgreSQL, right?
And EnterpriseDB has a similar partnership with SCO for their PostgreSQL derivative, right?
From SCO's perspective this is simple. They have lost partners left and right through the myriad of lawsuits. And they need partners to show some sence of legitimacy. So they are largely paying people for press releases, IMO. There are probably some other things like "we will pay you so we can say your software runs on our system" and "we will market your software, and you will market our software by anouncing this partnership" but it is mostly about SCO trying to show that they are still taken seriously.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"Only assuming they are still around after SCO v. IBM, ...."
I think it's a pretty good bet that they'll still be around. It's only a question as to what shape they'll be in. It's quite easy for a company which has little cash to hold a gun to its creditors' heads and force them to settle for pennies on the dollar, if they are going to get worse terms later in bankruptcy court. I've seen this happen myself.
It's also quite easy to get the MySQL deal (and other IP) transferred over to a new company. MySQL might not even have a say in the matter, depending on what the Bankruptcy Judge decides.
So the argument that SCO is going to suddenly disappear is naive at best. Sharks like these know how the game is played, and usually resurface later with a different scam.
One is best not doing business with guys like these, IMHO.
But the main point, IMO, is that MySQL is helping keep SCO alive. Dialog isn't going to make crooks come clean. Scammers are always looking for a new angle. Mark my words, this is going to come back and bite MySQL.
Personally, I could care less though. I've got better options.
If you sell beer to the guy who keeps pissing in the well, the townspeople are going to get mad.
You know, had it been GAIM that was approached to port their software to SCO, very few people would get upset. While I'm NOT a fan of SCO, quite the opposite, actually, it shouldn't be a problem for a company to get paid to port their software to SCO. Isn't that part of the foundation of OSS? It's not like they are selling to SCO, they are making a port of the same software TO SCO.
Until some of this rhetoric that the F/OSS community has goes away, it won't be taken seriously in many of the "larger" corperations.
Does anyone but me think that this is a total non-issue? So what if they port it SCO, to cause a big fuss over it seems very anti-OSS to me. After all, isn't part of the movement to be able to run software on as many different configurations as possible?
MySQL commercial licenses are already available for many platforms. Producing one certified for (tested on) SCO is simply more of the same. If you don't want to buy that from SCO, go right ahead and ask MySQL for a commercial (closed source) license instead. Your choice. As is the decision to need a commercial license instead of going with open source.