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Sun May Begin Close Sourcing MySQL Features
An anonymous reader writes "From the MySQL User's Conference, Sun has announced, and former CEO Marten Mickos has confirmed, that Sun will be close sourcing sections of the MySQL code base. Sun will begin with close sourcing the backup solutions to MySQL, and will continue with more advanced features. With Oracle owning Innodb, and it being GPL, does this mean that MySQL will be removing it to introduce these features? Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."
For PostgreSQL :) http://www.postgresql.org/
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun?
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
But this is going to seriously piss off those who've been relying on these features.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
WTF is "close sourcing"?
That's not what the linked blog post says, basically what they're doing is developing new features to be put in MySQL 6.0 enterprise, and these _new_ features won't show up in community.
...because someone with the source will fork it.
Sun appears to have made a bonehead move. Now the masses will turn somewhere else for high-quality FOSS SQL...
didn't sun buy star office and give us the OPEN SOURCE - openoffice.org?
given the size and nature of this move, I don't begrudge sun anything in its commitment to open source.
When all else fails, try.
How could you fork code that hasn't been released in the first place?
As someone who is not advanced enough in programming, I really don't care. All I know is that a great tool has been adopted by tech company with deep pockets, which means that there will soon be cool mySQL tools, GUI interfaces, backups/replicate/security features etc.
If I can't get to the code, it really doesn't bother me.
Just keep making the product better.
OpenOffice.org - no mention eh. :P
Java - I am running the IcedTea free software version right now
OpenSolaris - might not be GPL, but it still qualifies as free software... right?
Of course I'm hoping the first part is a joke too.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Since when could stars code?
Epic. Just epic.
Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything.
That's rubbish. The article claiming OpenSolaris isn't really open source bases it on the lack of community and ideology. I'm sorry, but if you want ideology, then it's Free Software you're after, not open source.
OpenSolaris is definitely open source, and Sun don't have a poor history of open sourcing things. Anybody who says otherwise has an axe to grind.
its time to fork...
It's not just going to piss off people relying on MYSQL, it should REALLY piss off the people who with a sense of open source community built it. Is this the new way for business to embrace OSS--to let all the cute little developers work on a project until it is stable and successful and then when the kids have had enough fun let the adults take over and transistion it away from OSS. This is very discouraging.
Those guys are such dicks, they never give the community anything.
Maybe it should be renamed Sun'sSQL.
Oh, no they don't. They can't do that to MySQL.
They can do it to TheirSQL, but not MySQL...
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
...because someone with the source will fork it.Uh-huh. That's especially likely when almost every contributor to said project works for the company that sells it. Oh, wait, it's not likely at all.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Sure, you can fork it, but almost all MySQL development is done by paid MySQL engineers (or paid InnoDB engineers). I think Google might have some engineers working on it, and I think Slashdot/VA Linux/Whatever they're called now might have had 1 at one point. The GCC/EGCS fork worked because most of the developers went with the EGCS. The XFree86/X.org fork worked because most of the developers went with the X.org. Lucid probably spent 250-500k in producing the XEmacs fork. How many other big projects have successfully forked?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Thank you for pointing this out. Sun is not close sourcing existing portions of MYSQL. Just adding new features for the customers who will pay an arm and a leg for it. It may not be the smartest move in scoring points with the open source community, but it gives them more leverage with their high end customers.
Sun will only develop and release certain features in the Enterprise version, specifically relating to online backup, management, and other advanced features. What's in the current version stays in the current version, but they will phase out those features in the community branch. Someone can still port them from the old version, but even then, we won't get the benefit of Sun's new developments.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...YourSQL?
We do get to keep what we made. If it's under the GPL, we can always fork it into a new Open Source product called OurSQL. It's just that we won't be able to integrate any of their proprietary new features that are NOT under the GPL. But, hey, who needs 'em for that? If Open Source could get it this far, odds are good Open Source can do even more.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Thanks for all the comments on this. We are listening attentively. Let me clarify some facts:
* The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO) prior to the acquisition by Sun, so this has nothing to do with Sun. On the contrary, Sun is more likely to influence this decision the other way.
* It is not a quesiton of close sourcing any existing code, nor anything in the core server. Everything we have released under GPL continues to be under GPL, and the core server will always be under GPL (or some other FOSS licence).
* We will introduce backup functionality for all users (Community and Enterprise) under GPL in version 6.0.
* Additionally we will develop high-end add-ons (such as encryption, native storage engine-specific drivers) that we will deliver to customers in the MySQL Enterprise product only. We have not yet decided under what licence we will release those add-ons (GPL, some other FOSS licence, and/or commercial).
* At all times, because the main backup functionality goes into the core server under GPL, anyone can of course use the api and build their own add-ons or other modifications.
Those are the facts on this. The interesting topic is of course the one of the business model and what the best business model for FOSS software is. I hope to cover that in a separate posting.
In all of this, you have our undivided continued commitment to providing a fantastic and complete MySQL server under GPL for anyone to download and use. If we for whatever reason would not do that, we would risk losing users to other open source databases or risk seeing a fork of our own product. This is the power of open source.
Make sense?
Marten
previously CEO of MySQL, now SVP at Sun
You mean like Postgres? (^:
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I like MySQL, I have no real issues with it. But if it's going closed source, I say let it be. Time to put energy behind Postgresql
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
MySQL was outstanding. At least in my opinion. Where Oracle took 2 GB of space to download then had to be burned to a CD, MySQL was a lightweight, straight-forward relational database managment system.
:-(
Closing off MySQL will have serious consequences for PHP and C developers since SUN will rewrite the entire MySQL API strictly in Java.
Perhaps now would be a good time to migrate to PostgreSQL.
Goodbye MySQL.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
No comment regarding XFree86/Xorg.
No comment regarding the Emacs/XEmacs fork, except to point out that there was an earlier fork called Epoch made in the version 18 days and that didn't go anywhere. I used it for a time in 1990 and preferred it to straight Emacs 18.
The only other major fork I can think of would be the *BSD forks, Open, Net and Free.
Successful forking is very rare and requires a truly dedicated developer community or large corporate backing to pull it off. Out of the few examples listed one of them was not a fork at all, but a coup and resulted in the death of the parent.
Actually it's true. So I can get the OpenSolaris sources... yay! Great. But what I really need is the
sources to the Solaris I'm actually running. So no, it's not really open source because we're not running here
some eternal Beta like OpenSolaris but production Solaris. I want the exact source that reflects the
patch level on the system. Where can I get that?!
All,
/.). I would hope we could please all, but I am afraid we cannot.
I tried to clarify the facts in another posting a moment ago: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=525246&cid=23098626
Here I will discuss the business model considerations, MySQL's commitment to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and why we made the decision we made.
First and foremost: we at MySQL firmly believe that open source is a superior way of producing software. You get better quality faster, and you often get better innovation too.
So it is not lightly that we have decided a few times to produce non-open software, such as the MySQL Monitor introduced some years ago. So why do we do that?
The reason is that we have an ambition not only to produce FOSS code, but also to be a profitable business that can exist for a long time. Each time we make more money, we hire more developers to develop GPL code.
If the world were perfect, we would only produce GPL code and we would have a great business that cna fund the software development. But we have found that the world is not perfect. We have been experimenting with a variety of business models around FOSS (dual licensing, support only, simple subscriptions, different binaries for community and enterprise, non-open source features) to find the best one. And we will continue to experiment until we are satisfied. We need to find a model that allows us to produce a ton of great code under GPL while having the financial strength to do all this.
To get to this goal of ours, we believe we have to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. Call it a necessary evil if you like. Having production add-ons that we provide only to paying customers currently seems to use to be a useful model. Our partners and customers think it is great. Many users think it is great. But not all do (as evident from this thread on
In all of this - i.e. as we experiment with open source business models (as there aren't really any role models bigger than ourselves that we could learn from) - we remain fully committed to producing the core database server always under the GPL (or some other approved FOSS licence).
In this work, we feel we have been able to produce enormous benefits to the world in the form of GPL software. The MySQL server could not have evolved as much as it did (not that I am saying it has evolved perfectly) if we hadn't had a revenue stream to fund the hiring of developers and others. We have open sourced MySQL Cluster which was an advanced closed-source database engine at Ericsson. We open sourced the Falcon storage engine.
I can appreciate that many of you are upset with our decisions. It has happened before that the community has been upset with us. But I hope that you can see that
* we are trying to be fully open and transparent with our decision-making in these areas
* we have a full commitment to produce the core MySQL server under GPL
* we are actively listening to your input
We can probably not please all, but you should know that we are trying to serve our community. We are immensely thankful for all the support and contributions that we have received in our 13-year history. We are hoping that we are good stewards of the MySQL phenomenon, and we hope that you can come to terms with the fact that we find revenue generation a vital part of our mission.
We may not have come up with the perfect business model yet (and perhaps the decision that is here being debated was utterly stupid), but we are determined to continue to seek the perfect business model for open source software so that we can continue to exist and be strong, and so that other software entrepreneurs can learn from our successes and mistakes.
Finally, please note that this entire decision and reasoning is something we developed on our own at MySQL AB several months ago, before being acquired by Sun. Sun has not asked us to do this or that. Or in fact, Sun has asked us the opposite - i.e. whether we should not
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think MySQL ever had an open source developer community. It was developed by a company and released as an open source product. Unlike PostgreSQL, which really is developed by a community of developers.
Looking at the actual link, this is talking about select _new_ features. The /. summary clearly is trying to scare us all into thinking that existing parts of MySQL would somehow be turned into a closed-source product.
Talk about someone trying to be misleading...
MySQL is hardly high quality.
I love how you can basically nowadays RELY UPON Slashdot to frame tech issues incorrectly, specifically with a sensationalist bent. If you want to get the REAL story, and not just the jazzed-up headline, you have to read the comments and find out where the editors lied.
Just like Firebird when Borland/Inprise close sourced Interbase.
Borland may have added features since then (I haven't even looked), but Firebird is much more useable than Interbase even was.
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/firebird
Friggin' "A" I've only "just" gotten comfy with MySQL. Time to start changing my server over to another application for my database needs. I have no issues with Java, since they didn't start open I don't expect much from them when they say they are "opening" things up, but taking a previously open application and closing parts off? No thank you, I'll find something else. What a shame, Justin
It's a nice feeling to remove all the fat from my hard drive.
The title of this article is a bit dramatic and incorrect. There is nothing in the story about the core MySQL engine being moved from open source to a closed source mentioned in the story. Rather a fancy new backup add-on is being released to Enterprise edition, and possibly added to the community version later.
/. and the open source community in general. I'd like to see more people showing respect for a company that has done so much for open source and respect the fact that they deserve to actually make a little money along the way.
MySQL is one of the most popular open source products out there, but they get lambasted if they create an add-on and want to actually get paid for it. Too many ppl react as if they are defecating on a holy shrine in the land of FOSS.
The title of this article and some of the reactions here strikes me a chicken little "the sky is falling" BS. I love open source software and the general movement, but I hate it when people jump to conclusions like this... and jumping to conclusions like this seems to happen all to often by ppl on
I can't help but wonder how many of the people, who treat this story like the evil Sun is going ruin MySQL, run MySQL but haven't open sourced the programs that they've written that access the database... I'd bet a hell of a lot of closed source programs use MySQL as their database... should we scream at them for being evil too?
Sorry to sound pessimistic but doesn't look too good for the future of MySQL. MySQL has always been an honest, what's best for the people kind of company in my eyes, and regardless of what really is happening, the end result of this is that my idea of MySQL has changed. This is something that other people will also feel so in any light, regardless of the outcome, doubt will now be part of people's minds when it comes to MySQL. Sorry guys!
http://www.gibby.net.au
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It occurs to me that buying an open source software company might be a sneaky way to get some good, old fashioned customer lock-in.
Look for free software program, preferably complicated, with a large user base.
Close it, and begin charging.
It seems as though you could get customers to stick around with the right price point. Now you may begin your ad infinitum licensing fees.
I'm not saying that's what's happening in this case, but it seems like something to evaluate. The two flaws in this idea:
The customers migrate to another free software tool - which might be difficult to do.
The program forks.
Seems to minimize risk a high percentage of the userbase would pay as the path of least resistance.
The fact that the buyers could get to this point on the (free) contributions of the original authors is kind of annoying.
Your probably still better off having used free software in the first place.
Absolute statements are never true
Would you like another round of ammo with that foot gun Sun? Um, yeah:
http://www.sun.com/software/products/postgresql/
http://www.sun.com/software/products/postgresql/support.jsp
"Sun is not close sourcing existing portions of MYSQL. Just adding new features for the customers who will pay an arm and a leg..."
In the end, that is the same thing as closed source. The development will be in the direction of helping the "Enterprise", expensive version, and eventually, after many years, that will be the only version in wide use.
Maybe Sun will change the name to "OurSQL".
I know it's all over the story on Slashdot's end but the article it self does not say anything will be closed. GPLed code can be open but cost money. Am I missing some other article? Because to me it sounds like they plan on doing things the Red Hat way. Public free version and Enterprise pay version.
I agree... it seems the headlines and articles have been getting things wrong more often lately... it seemed like the reviewer who posted the story would at least add to the post if they thought part of it was incorrect or misleading... but that doesn't seem to happen as often anymore... I hope /. editors start correcting this, because if the stories become more and more inaccurate... we won't be able to trust /. as a reliable source of tech news. And once ppl don't trust the source, well it's game over.
well, yes but, we wanna have all that new features OPEN too.. imagine RedHat tomorrow saying, "yo guys, RH engineers gonna add new advanced features closed source.."
this is not good, not good at al...
THere's an appropriate saying about getting free donuts and complaining about the holes...
You're doing it wrong!
When there are so many good alternatives! Check it out.
Hax-fu?
I don't know what to think now. My earliest memories of the 'net involve sunsite.unc.edu. I WANT to believe in Sun. They make that hard to do...
...the editors can't even be bothered to read the link and verify the information.
I went to firehose to vote this story down with the reason "not the best". I suggest we all start doing this for all such examples of yellow journalism. Maybe if we do it enough, the editors will start to get a clue.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
This is more like the adult teaching a kid about sharing by playing with a toy with the child. Eventually, the kid's gonna snatch it off the adult, clutch it to his chest possessively and and yell "MINE!"
I solved that with my 3 YO daughter by taking the batteries out of her toy and telling her that the toy is hers, but the batteries were mine. When she realised that the toy didn't work without the batteries, she understood the meaning of sharing.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
So, just where do you suppose sun's is actually shining?
Why, way deep down in a dark, smelly corporate code hole!
- just a thought -
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... and how, exactly, would I go about closing one?
the point is that the PAYING customers are still stuck with the same-old closed source product. The "open" version will always have little version differences from the supported version, so troubleshooting YOUR problems as a paying customer still isn't any easier.. for a matter of fact if you were using OpenSolaris developed software (free from the community) on Solaris, you could end up with MORE problems because the free people can't support you. It makes the free version nothing but a parlor trick.
[ ~]$ yum remove mysql
If you think you don't like the direction MySQL is taking have a look at PostgreSQL. That's all I'm going to say; just check it out and decide for yourself. :)
How can false opinionated stories like this be published? With it being Sun Week on campus, I've had some recent (yesterday) exposure and discussions with some of their representatives. Sun singlehandedly contributes the majority (Yes, above 50%) of Open Source code in the online community, thanks to their newly acquired MySQL. Read More, and next time get your facts right.
OK, stop right there. That's really all that has to be said. Sun sucks. Sun will make MySQL suck. It's not that hard to understand. Just as Java never really reached as far and wide as its potential, Sun will squeeze the fricking life out of MySQL.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
You don't have to deal with flametards on Slashdot. Open source is like welfare programs. The sense of entitlement is baseless and so it is defended all the more vigorously.
I was reading about RMS meeting a rep from IBM. IBM talks about running a closed source software on an open source platform. RMS immediately goes into geek puffer fish mode -- reaction is to compete with anyone trying to make a buck and run them out with Commie goodness.
As a geek advocacy group, Slashdot is its own worst enemy -- they want (1.) no patents for small developers, (2.) hate people selling software, and (3.) want increased liability for developers.
Now I feel better.
"Close sourcing"? What kind of genius English major came up with a term like that? A better, yet still sensationalist, title would have been "Sun to Begin Making MySQL Proprietary", or if you absolutely have to remain within the walls of the "open source" garden, "Sun to Begin Closing MySQL Source".
Also, this has nothing to do with being commercial or non-commercial, so please stop saying "commercial" like it's the opposite of freedom or openness.
I'm waiting for the announcement of somebody forking the code... if not there's always PostgreSQL.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
MySQL has a few advantages over PostgreSQL. Primarily, it's supported by just about every damn open source package in the world. If MySQL is closed up, OSS developers may choose to drop support for it. Personally, I think PostgreSQL is a better package than MySQL, but I mostly use MySQL because of its compatibility with everything. I won't, though, hesitate to switch if I am not happy with the direction of MySQL.
-- Will program for bandwidth
awhile. I was hoping that Sun would reverse that trend. It sounds like they are keeping the base package free (for now), but that high end add ons will be closed/commercial. That is fine, but it is also enough of a closed-source move for me to start looking at alternatives. I wish them the best of luck, but I will make sure I do what is best for me and my clients. Maybe I'll use MySQL, maybe I won't, it will depend on license, price, functionality, and community support.
I hadn't noticed before how cleverly, yet ethically Red Hat leverages the community by exercising enterprise features in Fedora before springing them on enterprise customers. Not only is playing with the latest LVM features in a low risk setting fun, but it helps Red Hat sell to big business when I discover breakage. (I really have to try out Zumastor...)
Fork, Fork, Fork!!! Stick a fork in Sun they are done.
I predict that more successful open source software companies will sell out for profit and go closed source.
OK.. everyone take collective breath... and Step 1. Hit CTRL+F Step 2. Type "MartenMickos" Step 3. Hit Enter Dont even need to RTFA, just read the comments and all your answers are belong to us. Summary: -1 Flamebait.
"My God, it's full of stars!"
I fully agree. I much prefer the RH OSS model. They provide enterprise software and services which many companies are more than willing to pay for even though the RHEL source is open.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
For a userbase that is always congratulating itself on how smart it is, there sure are a lot of gullible people reading Slashdot...
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Post / Grez / Queue /El
Because it is such a common question (and such an odd name), it is aptly an entry in the PostgreSQL FAQ.
If you don't like my phonetic spelling and prefer IPA, Wikipedia has you covered.
Many people, myself included, simply call it Postgrez.
While that's a little better, it means that those using the community version won't be able to take advantage of features that could be essential for future applications. The problem is that we don't know what features will become essential in the future.
Imagine if a hugely popular DB went closed source years ago before any ACID features were available. Then ACID features were developed as closed source and only available in the commercial version. Almost any large scale application would require the commercial version.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Yes, this is what Oracle does with Berkeley DB. On one project, we started out with using Berkeley DB. It wasn't meeting the needs, so we started looking at other options. Oracle had us hooked, and started reeling us in. Up until we got to the price tag. They wouldn't offer the support that we needed for their commercial version of Berkely DB, and instead wanted to push us towards their full Oracle DB. It sounded fine until we got to the price. They wanted, get this, 5% of the gross revenues of the product we were designing!!! Not a per-license fee, not a large finite sum for the product, but a full 5% of the revenues.
Needless to say, we told them to take a hike.
This is different than from a few years ago. Then they were willing to do a per license fee. But, of course, at an astronomical amount. Plus, this amount would literally change each time we talked to a different salesperson. There was a lot of confusion at the time. Now they've eliminated the confusion, but their greed knows no bounds.
Sun is welcome in this space, IMHO. More competition is good, because frankly, all of the vendors have serious drawbacks in one way or another.
The moral of the story is be real careful about the database you select, and your design. If you choose foolishly, you'll end up spending lots of money, when a better design could have saved you from this pain.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
anyone want to build me a free database. All i need is your total commitment to building this database that tracks everything on planet earth. Time need is everyday of your life. Your pay is 0 dollars. Anyone want to work for this. You need to devote 24 hours a day- and you have to earn your money otherways.....
ANyone....anyone.
SUN is not closing parts of MySQL, instead it is introducing new features in MySQL Enterprise, a product which always had extra features.
... for example at the conference I saw a presentation on Maria, a MyIsam-based storage engine that supports transactions.
...
Not to mention that SUN is not the only one doing interesting things with MySQL
Also, the features in MySQL Enterprise can (at least currently) be enjoyed by most developers using alternatives
1) the hot backup of myisam tables will be available in the open-source version
2) the smart load balancer is a MySQL Proxy configured with filtering scripts that you can write yourself in Lua
3) profiling can be done efficiently with Sun's DTrace
Disclaimer: I am currently attending the MySQL conference, but I am not affiliated with Sun in any way.
Wow, 3 YO and already playing with the battery operated toy. Gee, kids these days grow up fast!
What about the Compiz, Beryl, Fusion fiasco? That was a fork, merge, (branch?)... I've got svn repos with less confusing trees, for craps sake! Granted, it only lasted, what a couple of months or so, and I'm glad that every was able to humble themselves and work it all out... but it still was a fiasco!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
X.org should be mentioned here as it was forked from xfree86 when it changed its license.
I fully support what you are trying to do here, I wish MySQL to prosper in the years ahead as well.
Another way to put this so people can better understand - it's somewhat how Apple works, basing a lot of stuff on open source projects they contribute to but then building more proprietary and advanced things on top that they sell.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's always been that way. Editors can't be experts at everything or even dabble in everything. And if you pay attention, a lot of real news media with professional journalists and editors can be just as misleading. The true value of /. - and the reason I have been here for the last 10 years - has always been the comments from people that know what they are taking about or are even directly involved in the story. e.g. the ex-mysql ceo posting in this thread or Dr. Lisi about his exceptionally simple theory or even ex-grad students of scientists' work being reported.
:)
Anyway, if every story - or comment - were perfectly true and accurate you'd never get to exercise your brain, just inhale the information blindly. I don't want to do that.
never gets GPL anything
any REAL thing is under CDDL
only 0 sun resources will go GPL
...for a fork. Call it OurSQL
1) Fork MySQL (OurSQL anybody?)
2) Switch to PostgreSQL
3) Both of the above
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The /. summary is misleading. It isn't MySQL that is going to be closed-sourced, it's just that Sun will develop additional products that MySQL customers will be able to buy and use with their GPL MySQL server if they so choose. This isn't really news, MySQL AB has done so before, for example with the most excellent MySQL Enterprise Monitor.
This is nothing but FUD. Please keep your mind at least somewhat as open as you claim you want your source to be.
Sodipodi / Inkscape ?
"Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."
...
.org) with more opensourced project than Sun ?
Really, is Java not under GPL ? What about OpenOffice ? What about Netbeans ? Glassfish ? OpenDS ?
Can anybody name a company (nor a
Please, correct/moderate this misleading part of the article too.
Who sued the mozilla group for using their database trade mark in the nme of a browser?
Y'know, forgetting that a trademark is for the SAME FRIGGING FIELD? So that people won't get confused and buy one product thinking it another.
And how many people would say "well, this database sure looks nice, but it just wants me to look at html. how do I store my data in it?"?
So, no, Firebird is NOT an option.
this is not good, not good at al... EVERY commercial Linux distribution has parts which may or may not be open source, but if they are open they're certainly open to the extent that the GPL is.
Ubuntu has Landscape, a tool for managing a number of Ubuntu desktops. Only available if you're paying Canonical for support.
SuSE plugs into ZenWorks - most certainly not F/OSS.
RHEL has Fedora Directory Server (albeit rebranded as Red Hat). That one's open source but such an absolute dog to set up that you'd need your head examined if you tried doing it any way other than "throw money at Red Hat".
End of the day, lots of F/OSS projects have "Free" and "Commercial" versions, where the commercial version costs money and comes with a few extra bells & whistles. Just off the top of my head, there's Smoothwall, KnowledgeTree, any number of Exchange alternatives (free but if you want full Exchange-like functionality complete with Outlook integration it costs money) and ZenOSS. It seems to work as a business model, I can well understand Sun adopting it.
Not only Wikipedia's IPA, but also the FAQ which I mentioned. I noted in another reply that the z is probably unique to the way I've been saying it. Ah, the finality of /. posts.
Speaking of, I pronounce Post in American English such that it rhymes with the German Prost. I'm not an expert on IPA, so I can't be of much help with the transliterated IPA for that particular sound.
Since Lucid (and Sun?) bowed out, XEmacs went nowhere. So even though Emacs has moved at glacial speed, it has pretty much caught up featurewise, and is quite more usable by now.
The XEmacs community is hardly doing any development at all anymore: they are mostly bickering about how to shrink-wrap what they have best.
While the XEmacs fork is probably one of the most long-lived ones ever, nowadays it looks more like one of the longest-dying ones.
In short: forks don't stay.
The marketing of the free version community version has always been that you cannot distribute alteration it for commercial usage. They are always a bit vague about it to promote their enterprise version.
However since the community version is gpl software, there is absolutely no problem to use it for commercial purposes, until you are actually changing mysql db , something you rarely really want to do.
On their enterprise version they put all kind of claims for support and hot fixes, but for that kind of enterprice there are better commercial alternatives available ( Oracle/MS-SQL server). It is nice that good support is availaable for those who are more or less locked to the Mysql platform because their mission critical application was written in mysql by a programmer in his spare time. "Just because my sql works"
Interesting indeed - though MySQL was always a rather screwed-up "open source" company, with it's extraordinary interpretation of the GPL license, and it's attempts to extort money from it's users. Is this ultimately a confession that the acquisition & the open-source hype, (and the vastly inflated Web 2.0 price) was a mistake [ entirely predictably ] ?
There is almost no difference between them. Though you feel confused when you com back to either system for after a year or two, then you have to ask yourself, was it route or netstat this time?
;-)
BSD feels so enterprise and colossal..
The simple fact that you regularly post substancial information on hot MySQL topics here personally tells me that using MySQL as the prime choice for the persistance layer can't be bad.
:-) .
.Net prototype and start with the versions that run on MacOS X and Linux? That would be nice. Thank you. :-)
I personally hate SQL as an additional language and would like it removed from the generic application stack ASAP, but all things RDBMS being more or less equal in the DB world, I choose the most frictionless DB which is MySQL in my view.
Being someone who runs a small business around OSS myself I fully understand your position and reasoning, and personally think it's a good decision. It might even be a sustainable business model keeping SQL alive to bug people with it as long as possible and sell tools to avoid it for those who can afford them
Thank you for staying commited and so close to the communtiy.
A satisfied customer
P.S.: One more thing: Could you *please* go down and tell the Workbench crew to finally finish up the
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh sorry, I didn't see it, on account of it not being moderated up. Apologies!
/o:/ indeed, but if it's short it's // (a backwards c, if the Unicode gets stripped). But that would be its German pronunciation, or German-accent English, and not its English pronunciation.
I'm afraid I can't say whether the vowel in "Prost" is long or short --- I have begun taking German classes because I plan on going over there later this year (Christmas in winter? What a novel idea!), but after only one lesson it's no surprise I haven't come across that vowel yet. In any case, if it's long, it's
Look out!
"Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything"
Get back in your hole Troll. According to the EU Sun is the No 1 contributor of code towards open source by a very, very wide margin.
Me think it's all M$'s fault.
They disrupted trust between community and enterprise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this how all open source projects will end? With some for-profit company buying it and then trying to squeeze every last cent out of it? We'll be only left with the kernel and a handful of core utils that won't be hamstrung because of who own them?
MySQL was my default choice for DB on *nix systems, it worked great and was pretty easy to maintain. Now that Sun owns it, and plans on destroying it with closing off the source (and the backup code, etc, is ONLY THE BEGINNING, I assure you) I'll have to go elsewhere. PostgresQL, here I come.
This sickens me to no end. It makes me wonder is there is any hope for true FOSS in the long term.
Pax Vobiscum
I'm coming in on this discussion late, and I have a question. I know nothing about mySQL yet, and just a little about PHP. I do know HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript and JQuery, and am looking to learn more server-side stuff.
Amazon is supposed to be shipping me this book soon. What do these changes imply for me? If I learn mySQL now, will have to pay to use it? Would it be hard to switch over to some other flavor of SQL once I've got the basics down?
Would appreciate any advice you can offer. :)
Thx! I will pass your msg to the Workbench team. By the way, they just released the product as GA (Generally Available), as you may know.
Marten
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lesson: When you share something you both end up with nothing worth having?
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
OpenSolaris, from which came features such as Dtrace and ZFS ,
OpenOffice.org,
GlassFish,
OpenSSO, or
OpenDS
(and probably several others that I missed) aren't really open source?
Thanks for enlightening me. After scratching all these projects off my list, it looks like you're right. Sun hardly open sources anything!
For Solaris 10 & below, this is true. Sun has repeatedly explained that they cannot open source those because they contain code that they do not have the legal license to open source. Solaris 11 & above will be completely based on OpenSolaris and more akin to what Fedora/RHEL is. If you need to SEE the source of older versions for your own development needs, that is available, just not openly published.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Can anyone here point me towards a fair, unbiased, RECENT comparison between MySQL and PostgreSQL? I hear fanboys on Slashdot always touting PG being oh-so-much-better, but I have yet to see a real comparison done on the most recent versions of each. I have done quite a bit of Google searching, but all I've turned up is articles written 3-4 years ago, comparing ancient or beta versions. My company is currently trying to decide between the two, and thus far, I haven't really found any reasons not to go with MySQL. I'm already familiar with it, it seems to have all the features we need built-in, there just doesn't seem to be any compelling reason for using PG besides the already discussed free-and-open vs. free-and-owned-by-Sun arguments. Help? Anybody?
-- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
How much resemblance is there between MySQL and Postgresql? In other words, would porting a web app be a time-consuming and complicated matter or well doable?
Bert
So...how hard is it to migrate my data to Postgres? Anyone have some pointers, or online references?
Constitutionally Correct
Inkscape is another successful fork, this time from Sodipodi. and it was a coup, too.
most of forks are coups, actually.
Let's see. First, I can't actually find anything in the article that says these new features/changes won't be open-source, just that they won't be in the Community Edition. The Enterprise Edition business is a service offering that already has proprietary tools, and has before Sun bought MySQL. So, either there's no change from MySQL's current policy, or there will be a different version open-sourced. Since Sun is open-sourcing more or less everything, I bet it's the second, but even if it's the first what's the point here? That nothing has changed?
Second, let's just follow the links rom this statement: "Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."
In the first one, the author says "yes, it really is open source, but being 'open soure' means having a community. And yes, Sun is building a community with all the trimmings, but it's not really a community because people have to get together, except Sun is running Solaris SIG meetings."
In the second one, Sun is objecting to Google changing Java without running its changes back into the main source. That never happens in the open source would of course: there's never any controversy about companies making changes to a product and not releasing them back to the core.
Can we have a Slashdot category for "prevarication"? Of it that word is too big, how about "lying"?
This is the most obvious flamebait I'm read in a while. I'm surprised that Slashdot's editors let this one through.
if you make mistakes with the mysql thing, we'll be easily jumping to postgres.
Read radical news here
I will have to admit, postgres suddenly looks a lot more attractive :-(
Need an ISP in South Africa?
Most of Sun's software is available for community or hobbyist use. If you want support, this is where the enterprise versions come in hand. I hope Sun is a bit more careful about the actual code migration. XFree86 Project is now defunct due to a simple license change. My concern is especially regarding Sun owning the software. Sun has a tradition to say what is and is not included in a application. Such behavior has been exhibited on the OpenOffice.Org project. If that is the case, your coffin is ready because you just put the last nail and hammered it down. RIP MySQL.
As a friend in my office mentioned earlier: thierSQL? We will just have to see I guess,
The reason I use MySQL is because of the GPL community and philosophy. You can't get a little bit pregnant. So no matter what SUN says, once they start down this path it will be a slippery slope. If this is true then see ya MySQL. My guess is there will be several open source branches of it shortly if at all possible (not sure of current licensing). Otherwise I guess PostgreSQL will become quite popular in a very short period of time.
I have no desire to lecture you on the subject of base ten vs base two prefixes, nor to be lectured by you, but your sig strikes me as ambiguous. Is that the point, or do you have a preference for the 1000 or 1024 multiplier for bytes? Computational convenience for people would dictate the 1000 multiplier, and 1024 would be arbitrary to us; but 1024 would be computationally convenient for computers, and 1000 would be arbitrary to them. Obviously computers do more calculations with bytes than people do, but (lacking emotions) they can feel no inconvenience.
Look out!
If your referential integrity is in your application then your database engine is broken. His professor had it right. He wasn't writing to a product, he was writing to just about any modern relational database management system *except* for MySQL and SQLite. At least SQLite never pretended to have a complete feature set. MySQL lacked and blamed its lack on "avoiding bloat."
And constraints in MySQL? Is that why CHECK constraints were silently ignored for so many years? What you call "constraints," I call "the vast subset of constraints that MySQL managed to support in a timely fashion." Big difference.
You can simulate 3NF with application patches, but without actual DB support, it's smoke and mirrors. Without enforced foreign keys, it's not an ACID database. A database engine missing ACID is like an operating system with cooperative multitasking. Sure you can have multiple apps running at the same time, but don't for a second pretend that it's the same thing as preemptive multitasking as long as you have proper application support. To assert as much is missing the underlying point altogether.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Verbification weirds the language.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
The software that was proposed to be closed source are portions of the online backup drivers. Each such driver has to be written in close cooperation with the developers of each storage engine. Well...
InnoDB already has an online backup tool, and even if/when they revise their tool to use this new API, it's still going to be theirs, open or closed, not the property of the MySQL Group.
Online backup of the engines for Archive, CSV, Blackhole, and Memcached doesn't even make sense, and even if it did, BrianA will flat out refuse to write crippleware into his own software.
Similarly, while online backup makes sense for Maria, I don't see MontyW writing crippleware into his work.
How about MyISAM? I think that work is already done, but, the horse is already out of the barn, in that the online backup drivers for it just went up on bkbits.
Looking even closer, the part that was going to be closed was not even the entire online backup driver set, but just compression and encryption. Any halfway competent developer would be able to hook in the necessary calls to azio, zlib, and openssl, and replicate the work.
So this is a big tempest over something that's not going to happen, and doesn't matter anyway.
Plus, best practices for backup dont even use or want online backup. The Right Way to backup a real production MySQL instances is via filesystem snapshot, using something like LVM or ZFS.
As a small aside, the headline was not entirely accurate. It wasn't Sun who did this. What the Sun CEO does in response to this, right on the heels of his keynote, remains to be seen.
I think SUN has done all they can do as far as open sourcing Java. From what I understand, they couldn't open source every component because some were proprietary and licensed for use in the SUN JVM. A couple of examples were the 2D/image libraries that were actually owned by Kodak, and sound libraries or codec libraries owned by ...? uh, can't remember.
Anyway, what the OpenJDK project is seeking to do is fill in all these gaps left by the removal of the proprietary components and integrate the sum into a simple package. There should be plenty of options out there, like for example Cairo for 2D, OpenGL for 3D, etc...
Please correct any mistakes I've stated.
That's the cool think about F/OSS code.
Just fork it, and the new fork will move faster than Sun every could.
Dumbass, read the other posts.
what about compiz / beryl / compiz-fusion?
Does Sun even understand what free/open source is? They seemed to gave some understanding with Java, but this...
You can't just control FOSS, because you don't hide the source, and the licence alllows ANYONE to tinker with it and release the result (why do you think M$ hates the GPL?)
So let's just fork it, and if the closed stuff is worth anyrhing, independently create better versions-just for the free fork!