Gov't GSA Office goes MySQL

comforteagle writes "MySQL has won a five year contract with the US General Services Administration office putting it in yet another government office on top of NASA, the Dept. of Def., Los Alamos National Labs & the Census Bureau. This additional win allows around 70 Government customers to purchase and deploy MySQL."

Comments

Negotiating a GSA price/dealer is NOT "deploying"

[ScentCone]

This is certainly useful, in that it makes the product available to Federal users at a known (and, since it's on a GSA schedule, typically better-than-average) price. But when a reseller negotiates to be the GSA dealer for an item, that's all they've accomplished. That's NOT the same as actually talking an agency into using the product. We also want to be careful not to draw the wrong conclusions. When they say that NASA is using it, that means it's one more tool in NASA's toolbox. Some people might get the impression that they're using in lieu of other DB engines, rather than along side of such.

Re:Paying to deploy OSS?

[diersing]

I realize you may have just wanted to brag about how infrequently *you* need to ask anyone for help and kudos to you on that, but support and licensing is more important then the functionality/reliability/usefullness of the application being purchased(see Microsoft).

The fact of the matter is, in this post-SOX world business and governments needs to hedge their bets EVERYWHERE they can, and ensuring ongoing support services, upgrade protection, etc etc is how you can DOCUMENT steps taken to remediate the risks to integrity, availability and confidentiality. I like OSS, the people that support and write these application build into them wonderful security measures, precautions and a framework to utilize so many more security tools - but without a support agreement the application will never make it in the door. When that mission critical server crashes Google ain't gettin on a plane to come help you out.

This is an opportunity

[core plexus]

Flamers aside, this is yet another example of an emerging opportunity, much like this story I just read about doing business with Intelligence Agencies.

"The federal government will spend in excess of $400 billion with contractors this year and over $100 billion is expected to be spent with small businesses. Now business people from all over the U.S. can learn first hand from the experts how to capitalize on these business opportunities with federal government agencies without leaving their own offices"

Sounds good to me.

Re:Paying to deploy OSS?

[Jamesday]

So, someone wants to tightly link a GPL core to a proprietary tool and redistribute without releasing all of the source code. Who's supposed to be upset at this, other than the person releasing the proprietary product?

Want to argue that binary compatibility is OK - go have fun on the Linux kernel mailing list and argue that a device driver doesn't need to be GPL.

If someone is sure that a library tightly bound to a binary interface isn't a derivative work, they are perfectly free to act on that belief.

MySQL seems committed to the free software objective of making more software free. The company licensing and views support that objective.

Other projects have a different view and accept commercial use with no payback the community or developers. Their call. MySQL's is that if you're using MySQL, you should either also be releasing free software or you should be contributing to the development of the server the free community and everyone else is using.

It appears that MySQL believes that's the practice which produces a strong open source database company. With more than a million downloads in just the first three weeks after MySQL 5 was released a few months ago, as well as several hundred employees, it's getting pretty hard to argue with the success of that view.

Re:Is MySQL really the right choice?

[Jamesday]

How does a site handling 6,000 page views per second, around a billion queries per day on five database servers and in the top 40 sites in the world according to Alexa.com sound?

Or how does Google's main revenue source or Travelocity's booking system or big chunks of Yahoo or... do I really need to continue with more examples of massive web traffic using MySQL?

Site design can be screwed up. It can also be done right. People regularly do it both ways. The database server usually isn't the reason. The people using it are.

Standards, schstandards

[leandrod]

So even the US government does not really care anymore for its own standards. I guess Oracle will feel relieved with their 'ISO SQL 92 minus datatypes and a few other essentials' product. It kind of makes the efforts of PostgreSQL and others toward ISO SQL:2003 (hint: each ISO SQL standard cancels the former one) futile.

MySQL makes it easier

[Flying pig]

In fact, the simple security model, sensible and clear install options and user-friendly design tools make it more likely that a MySQL install will be done properly than, say, an application connecting to MS SQL Server or SQL Server Express. The steepness of the MS SQL learning curve and the counter-intuitivity of many of the Transact-SQL statements and default install options cause a lot of trouble for small scale users. I guess the result is a lot of small database applications stick with "Access" because the users cannot get budget for migration. Whereas with MySQL, there is a chance they will get something that works properly going quite quickly, and be able to deploy the results to Java clients, Crystal, OOo, Excel, FileMaker etc. without major pain.

Ever since the MySQL installer required a root password and disabled root connections outside localhost by default, while telling you that in clear language during the install process, it has been more credible as a simple installable RDBMS than some of the competition. FileMaker is another example of a database (of a sort, though) which makes sensible install defaults and then allows progressive expansion of capability without overwhelming the user with poorly documented options, but it is not as install-friendly.

I know it is fashionable for "real" computer scientists and DBAs to sneer at MySQL. But that's actually a sign of insecurity. Real mechanics don't sneer at zinc plated steel bolts because 316 is available: they just don't use zinc plate under salt spray conditions.

Re:Just goes to show how xenophobic the US govt. i

[Johnno74]

Geez. Tough crowd. I thought it was the funniest comment I've seen on /. all week.

I guess you must be a MySQL user, and/or an American, right? ;)

Re:You've gotta hand it to 'em

[duffer_01]

Man, would everyone stop saying it is free. Just because you don't have to pay for the software doesn't mean that you won't pay for support or for the commercial license if you need to hide your source code.