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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."
I wonder why this is an issue. If someone wants to port its own software on a new platform, who should argue against it?
Why can't
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
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
Supping? As in to take food and especially liquid food into the mouth a little at a time - Websters
Okay...
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
MySQL only became popular because it's faster than postgresql for less complex database work. Postgresql is a better database. 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)
Also, mySQL has a totally wrong view of the GPL: see this discussion on debian-legal.
-- Get free domain names
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051011
you would have found out that SCO paid mySQL.
Money taken from SCO is less money for their FUD machine.
It also gives people stuck on SCO a chance to migrate their stuff slowly to other platforms.
So how is that a bad thing again?
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
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
They make it sound like porting mysql to openserver will require a very significant effort. Why would anyone pay for a supposedly unix-ish system that's so much unlike any other that most popular software can't be built on it without significant planning and reworking? I doubt that porting is really such a big deal as that, but still they deemed it worthy of press releases announcing their efforts and partnership.
MySQL made a simple business decision... right or wrong is completely subjective here. Eventually they will pay by losing some customers, but appart from that I see no reason why they should be defending their decision.
In other words, I don't think that my enemy's friends are my enemies.
On top of that, has the author considered that our priorities may be completely irrelevant to someone else? It's not like we can all take care of everything... like destroying Sco, and saving the world, and curing cancer, and feeding the poor, etc, etc, etc. At some point we have to start ignoring some of these priorities.
diegoT
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.
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"
SCO: I hear that you're looking at migrating to another vendor, who is it? Microsoft, Red Hat...?
SCO Customer: You're not gonna pull that "AutoZone" crap on me, are you?
SCO: No, no, not at all. Hey, aren't you using MySQL for your applications?
SCO Customer: Yes, but it's the GPL'ed version, not the one you licences from them.
SCO: I think that's something for the courts to decide, after the loooong and expensive discovery process.
SCO Customer: WHAT THE...?!?!
MySQL: Hey! Why are you harrassing my end-users?
SCO: Don't you mean our customers ?
MySQL: Huh? Oh yeah, never mind.
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.
your posts parent was referring to webbased blogs. In those circumstances, sqlite performs VERY good. I fail to see why GRANT and REVOKE are necessary for those lightweight web-applications
I recently build a webshop. I used MySQL for the main article databases and sqlite for the shopping carts and ordering information. This works very well and very fast, even on our slightly underpowered webserver.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
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.
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.