Slashdot Mirror
MySQL Ends Enterprise Server Source Tarballs
vboulytchev writes "The folks at MySQL has quietly announced that it will
no longer be distributing the MySQL Enterprise Server source as a tarball. It's been about a year since the split between the paid and free versions of the database project. The Enterprise Server code is still under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and as a result MySQL appears to be making it harder for non-customers to access the source code. 'One of the things that many users worry about is whether they're getting an inferior version of MySQL by using the Community version. Urlocker says that MySQL "wants to make sure the Community version is rock solid," but admitted that the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities." Because of that, the company is revising its policies about when features go into the Community releases.'" Update: 08/10 04:56 GMT by CN :While it is slightly harder to get, the source isn't closed by any means, so I updated the title to reflect that.
MySQL announced plans for a new BitTorrent based distributed backend.
Can we all just switch to Postgres now?
Cheap web hosting, I'm looking at you...
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
http://mysql.bkbits.net/ is still there, and AFAIK it isn't going away anytime soon.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
MySQL versions 5.0.38 to 5.0.45 have had such major bugs that they have rendered themselves useless for a huge range of applications. Applications that use dates, or ones that expect the database to *NOT* insert random NULL values in a group by query.
I mean, even the most basic test suite would have easily caught these.
Here are just a few of the major ones:
Bug #28336
Bug #28936
My take: while MySQL has improved technically in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, stuff like this (or having its transactional backends bought out from under it by Oracle) makes it increasingly difficult for me to recommend it as a business proposition to my clients. Meanwhile PostgreSQL continues to get the job done for the majority of my projects; I have a network of professionals who support it competently; and having followed the project since 2001 or so, I'm confident it's not going anywhere but forwards.
Before anyone bitches about it, this is perfectly legal. The GPL only requires you to provide source code to people who you also provide the compiled software to. You just can't restrict what they in turn do with the source code, which is why most GPL developers make the source code available to everyone and their dog.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
It says that the source will no longer be shipped as a tarball. You now have to take it out of bitkeeper. IOW, you still get the source.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's right in keeping with the GPL. The GPL doesn't say "you have to give the source to all and sundry." No, they just have to give the source code to those they gave the binaries to, i.e., their paying customers.
The work-around for the community is hinted at here:
"Though MySQL AB will not be distributing the source tarball, Urlocker says that MySQL isn't going to try to stop distribution of Enterprise Server source by others. "If somebody wants to, that's fine. People can distribute it.... "
Getting the source code as a tarball on a public server for everyone is an intellectual exercize for the reader.
I read this as a "We're not going to be hosting for leeches. You want a public server, set your own up"
--
BMO
They are planning an IPO.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Since it's currently in a state after being MySQL, I propose we confuse everybody by calling it PostMySQL.
If they provide the source code along with the binaries, the GPL considers that to have satisfied their obligations. After that, they're not obliged to give the source code to anybody else. Not even customers.
Now, if they don't provide the source code with the binaries, if customers are obliged to get it separately from the binary package, then the obligation is to provide the source to anybody who asks for it, customer or not, and that obligation lasts for 3 years after the last binary was distributed. Note that if the binaries are available via download, offering the source for download at the same time and from the same page satisfies the GPL's requirement to provide source along with the binaries even if the customer doesn't actually download the source code at the time.
Yeah, those damn MySQL idiots are acting just like this crazy Emacs hippie back in the 80s... what was his name... Richard Stallman I think. Anyway, the greedy bugger only distributed the source to people who bought the software! Even though it was GPL'd! And the FSF did nothing!
Lots of OSS projects use Mysql. If they want to take their ball and go home, so bet it. we can take a tarball and create OurSQL.
Come on people this is what OSS is all about. forking and starting a new project because the current project leaders became poopwads.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A MySQL fork: "OurSQL" or something like that
or
A general shift to PostgreSQL... seems a lot of people are favoring that route.
I don't care which way it goes, the community will respond and MySQL will become irrelevant.
You are spot on with one problem....
Code that was "contributed" doesn't belong to MySQL but to the individual authors. Unless they have something assigning the rights to MySQL (always a possibility since I don't use MySQL I wouldn't know) those copyrights still belong to the authors of that code. In short, they would still need the "official" OK in some form from the authors (ALL of them) of the code. That is why a license change is always something to be avoided where GPL is concerned.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
By discouraging people from getting and using the Enterprise version, I feel less and less safe deploying it myself. Less users = less chances to catch problems. Less code = less review = less security.
I'm about to deploy 4 MySQL servers for some serious volume and was strongly considering buying into an enterprise package, largely on the strength of their monitoring tool, but now I'm seriously thinking it's time to try Postgres.
I dont think anyone is really suprised.
PostgreSQL is still free and more powerful anyway so no great loss.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The title does not accurately reflect the summary or the real state of affairs. It is sensationalist in the extreme.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
This is actually the tendence that worries me. These days many people (thankfully not everybody) think they have the RIGHT to get everything for free. One bitches because product X is not Open Source (Ohh what a crime!!!). The other bitches because X (which VERY GENEROUSLY was giving many years of hard work to people who don't even write a line of code) is taking their hard work back for Y reasons (yes, making a buck for many years of hard work is not a bad thing , you know)
Another funny thing: I was talking to a man here at work. The man is a a rabious defender of OS. He wouldn't touch a non- OS program, he almost cried when MS made a deal with Novell, he screams how much he hates Photoshop and how great Gimp is (just because is OS)... And guess what? He develops a very good backup solution for databases and he takes good money for it. He was having some difficulties adding features. Knowing how good of an OS supporter he was I had the nerve to suggest to him to open the source of his program. ARE YOU FUCKING MAD?- he said. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I WORK FOR THIS SHIT? AND I WOULD GIVE IT TO THE DOGS?....
Moral of the story. If you work hard for your work and wnat to share , so be it. If you want to get your work back iand this is posible, just do it. You have the right. people will bitch, people will call you a shit, people will hate you... And yet, the majority of them won't share a shit either giving the oportunity.
Making money is not a crime folks....
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
MySQL requires code contributions to be re-assigned to MySQL AB, so AFAIK they actually own every last line of code. Which of course means that they are free to do anything they want, including close-source the whole thing.
Not going to happen.
According to the summary anyway, it will still be legal to distribute. So it won't end up as a torrent.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
And it's a good thing we had such a measured and non-sensational response to that situation....
It's interesting to see how the community often openly promotes and vehemently defends an "open" piece of software but if the software starts to "close" then all the problems start coming out and suddenly it's a piece of @#$! The robustness of software doesn't change with a philosophy. It's all the in marketing. I mean if MySql were still open then we'd see posts comparing it against Microsoft's software. Now for "some reason" they're equivalent in the garbage bin. I will remember this indeed.
... meh. SQLite is better for "toy database" problems anyway. It's fast, it's free, it's Free, and it's very compact. For a lot of applications where people use MySQL, it will fit in with just a few little changes.
Sod MySQL, SQLite is the future.
The issue isn't that they are keeping what they made. They didn't make it all since they used stuff others had contributed under a certain condition. That being Open Source. The open source model is that you let others help you build the software. To close the source they would have to comb back through the contributions of other people over the years and take out all OS code that is what they didn't pay for in-house. Otherwise they would have to rewrite a whole new system from scratch and walk away from the MySQL code base as it stands.
It's like getting divorced and your ex gets only the second floor and the garage.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It's okay. We've all had a drink or two and then posted.
this is the real utopianfiat. the prior utopianfiat, who hacked the last utopianfiat, has been sacked.
"MYND YOV MOOSE BITES KAN BE PRETTI NASTI"
The last thing you want to hear about a DBMS is this line from MySQL: "the company has introduced features into the Community edition of the software that "[weren't] as robust as we thought, and created some instabilities"
This, among other reasons, is why we switched to Postgresql some years ago. MySQL was (is?) not even ANSI SQL compliant, at least when we were struggling with it.