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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."
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.
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
Those guys are such dicks, they never give the community anything.
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
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
Having a good bit of experience with both, I'd say that the documentation and overall support structure for PG is about the same as MySQL these days.
The only caveat that typically hangs up new users (especially ones coming from a MySQL background) and is not particularly clearly documented is the default authentication mechanism.
By default (at least on many distributions), Postgres uses "ident" authentication, which means no password is required for database logins on a local socket. What *is* required, on the other hand, is that you must be logged in/running as the UNIX user of same name. Obviously this poses problems for webapps that want their own database user and is generally just very confusing for users who are used to the database having its own independent set of usernames and passwords (which Postgres still does, for remote connections... causing further confusion)
Of course, like any good database Postgres will be more than happy to handle its own user authentication entirely natively, you simply have to use md5 instead of ident in pg_hba.conf
Random and weird software I've written.
Just one line for you...
http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/
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.
As to tools, I'm not sure what you're after, as postgres has less need for addon tools than mysql, doing more via SQL instead. The only thing that's especially tricky in configuration is pg_hba.conf -- but comparison with mysql's user auth shows the complexity to be worthwhile.
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.
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.