MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source

krow writes "I am very happy to be announcing that MySQL will be forgoing close sourcing portions of the MySQL Server. Kaj has the official statement in his blog. No portion of the server will be closed source including backup, encryption, or any storage engines we ship. To quote Kaj 'The encryption and compression backup features will be open source.' This is a change from what was previously posted here on Slashdot. I've posted some additional thoughts on my own blog concerning how we keep open source from becoming crippleware. Word has it that we will also have a panel at this year's OSCON discussing this topic. Contrary to the previous Slashdot discussion, this shows Sun's continued commitment to Open Source."

Comments

Now change the ZFS license SUN

[ctdownunder]

And we will all love ya bro'

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[E-Lad]

If you want it in Linux, I'd say that the onus is on the Linux community to change to a more permissive license.

Everyone, including Sun, has the freedom to choose their own license. The Linux community, of all people, should respect that ideal. Unless, of course, you support having a Henry Ford mindset - "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black."

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[waferhead]

It occurred to me driving into work that this might happen after all...

Novell still (almost certainly) owns the SysV code.

Sun bought a liscence from SCO (that is probably invalid)so Sun could release OpenSolaris.

Novells ball...

Novell could easily wave it off with a stipulation that say... ZFS would become GPL or std BSD...

Sun would have the choice of killing OpenSolaris, or marginalizing it via GPLing the only parts of it that gives it any advantage over Linux.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[cdw38]

Well said. Sun is not doing anything to try and keep OpenSolaris alive by locking up ZFS. Quite the contrary, BSD is picking up ZFS. Too many people want to sit around and cry about Sun "not allowing" ZFS to make its way into Linux, but at the end of the day its Linux that wants to force its terms upon everyone else.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why it's important to assign joint copyright to an organization that can make changes to adapt to future needs.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

ZFS doesn't have anything to do with SYSVR4.

Novell said they have no interest in pursuing Unix copyrights.

Novell is trying to get their 95% portion of the license Sun paid to SCO. By saying the agreement between Sun and SCO was part of the APA between Novell and SCO they are affirming the deal between Sun and SCO. Sun actually helped write SYSVR4 with AT&T before Novell bought it. According to Schwartz, Sun paid AT&T about $100million for rights that basically gave them ownership. What was purchased from SCO were mainly device drivers since SCO's UnixWare had the best x86 support.

What is Novell's position going to be to the public? "We're an open source company but we're going to sue a company for releasing open source?" Nothing good can come to Novell if they challenge Sun.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[larry bagina]

Sun doesn't want the GPL anywhere near ZFS -- and for good reason. The GPL ought to be called the "Me Me Me PL". Let's say Sun did release ZFS under the GPL and it's adopted into Linux. Sun is shut out from any changes unless they release SunOS under the GPL as well. With the CDDL, anyone can use the code (without giving up rights to their own code) and Sun gets back any improvements (without affecting their other code). It's like the LGPL, but with much better granularity.

We see this attitude a lot with BSD/GPL conflicts. When BSD code is relicensed as GPL, the original code is denied access to any changes. Think about that for a minute. "We want you to share your code. So we won't share our changes to your code with you." Free as in "free room and board at gitmo".

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux community CAN'T change to a more permissive license. The decision to use the GPL ensures that, in order to even make a linking exception, permissions must be obtained from every person whose code still exists in the kernel. That's a classic RMS design feature of the GPL. (To ensure that a project cannot be pressured to compromise their principles)

Besides, the problem lies with Sun to begin with. Software patents are just algorithm patents in disguise and it's well established that one cannot patent mathematical algorithms.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[SpammersAreScum]

By saying the agreement between Sun and SCO was part of the APA between Novell and SCO they are affirming the deal between Sun and SCO.

I disagree. Novell is saying that the APA means SCO owes them a goodly chunk of the moneys it got it the SCO-Sun deal. It is also saying SCO exceeded its authority under the APA when it made the deal without consulting Novell. Neither statement indicates approval or disapproval of the deal itself, and Novell has not to my knowledge committed either way.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[waferhead]

I'm NOT saying ZFS has anything to do with the old Unix code... directly.

But legally, it doesn't look like Sun bought anything in from SCO in reality that legally enabled the release of Opensolaris.

Novell has leverage, if they choose to flex it or not is up to them.

I'm proposing GPL'ing ZFS as a possible bone for the dog, so to speak.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[E-Lad]

The Linux community CAN'T change to a more permissive license. Welcome to the bed that RMS, via Linus, has made for you. Please - sleep in it.

You're just upset that there's this cool thingy called ZFS and DTrace and you're smarting because your favorite OS cannot have it in part due to a decision made long ago by one Linus Torvalds.

Sour grapes. Linux/GPL zealots need to stop blaming everyone but themselves for things they've barred themselves from accessing. No one in this world is obligated to release code under the GPL, no matter what RMS would have you believe. That is true freedom. I believe that the concept of freedom of choice was a core concept of the Linux/GPL camp before it got too big for its britches.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

I disagree and I'll leave it at that. Except to say that it would have made more sense for Novell to claim that SCO is not entitled to collect that money rather than SCO owes them the 95%.

Anyway, according to Schwartz in a 2003 interview he said:

eWEEK: Some critics are saying that its not just Microsoft funding SCO but also Sun, citing the fact that you acquired another license from them recently, received warrants to buy shares in SCO and are losing the most customers in the migration from Unix to Linux. It thus makes enormous sense for Sun to fund SCO, their logic goes. How do you respond to that?

Schwartz:We took a license from AT&T initially for $100 million as we didnt own the IP. The license we took also made clear that we had rights equivalent to ownership. When we did the deal with SCO earlier this year we bought a bunch of drivers and when we give money to a company oftentimes we get warrants, which is part of the negotiations. I have warrants in 100 different companies, we have a huge venture portfolio. I cant do anything about the perception thats out there and to be blunt, I dont care as those people arent going to drive our futureâ"customers are. Which makes sense considering Sun developed SYSVR4 with AT&T.

From this article:

"We're not interested in suing people over Unix," Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said. "We're not even in the Unix business anymore." How would it look for Novell, to sue Sun over an open source project? Especially considering Sun is the biggest corporate open source donor. By the way, the article doesn't specify, but if you read the study, those numbers are from the source of Debian. They do not include OpenSolaris, OpenJDK or any of the other open source projects Sun participates in or has released.

While I do believe McNealy and Schwartz shared similar views, McNealy's mouth did tend to get in the way. As we've seen here Schwartz is sticking to his commitment to open source.

It looks to me like Novell is talking about OpenSolaris to bolster their case. Novell's CEO has also been spreading a lot of FUD about OpenSolaris.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

You should read my response above to the previous reply.

In addition let me add some history of SYSVR4 which explains why suing Sun over SYSVR4 is so funny.

In 1988 I believe, AT&T and Sun got together to work on SYSVR4. SunOS was primarily based on BSD at the time and a lot of BSD bits went into SYSVR4. Bill Joy, a founder of Sun was also a leading developer of BSD. AT&T and Sun handed off the rights to a seperate entity, Unix Laboratories, to handle licensing so that others can implement it. Sun always pushed for open standards, before open source was that popular.

Solaris is based on SYSVR4. You can see the relationship here. Solaris developed on it's own after it's SYSVR4 base. As did UnixWare. What Sun needed for Solaris 10 was better x86 support. SYSVR4 did not provide that. UnixWare did. At the time UnixWare had a large i386 deployment and good drivers to support that platform. So it makes sense that if Solaris got anything from SCO it related to UnixWare. Other than the x86 support, I don't think anyone can argue that UnixWare was better than Solaris.

Imagine if somewhere down the line, someone sued Linus over his use of Linux.

The problem the APA has is that it gives different treatment to UnixWare than it does to SYSVR4. Basically, SCO can do what it wants with UnixWare and Novell's lawyers are trying to separate the UnixWare parts from SYSVR4 which doesn't make much sense. It's like if you buy a source license for Windows 3.1 which is built on Windows 3.0 but you don't have rights to the code in Windows 3.1 that is from Windows 3.0.

Another interesting thing, the thing I think has Novell, IBM, and HP worried, is that in that simplified Unix History Tree. Solaris is the only Unix still on there. AIX, HP/UX, Irix are all gone. That indicates to me that Solaris still has value. UnixWare I believe is still on there because of the SCO trial. The original Unix History Tree is a mess and unreadable but you can google it and find it.

Novell and some others would like to get Solaris off the map because they think it would help Linux. To me that's a very short sighted view. I like what Jonathan Schwartz has to say on that issue.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun doesn't want the GPL anywhere near ZFS -- and for good reason. The GPL ought to be called the "Me Me Me PL". Let's say Sun did release ZFS under the GPL and it's adopted into Linux. Sun is shut out from any changes unless they release SunOS under the GPL as well. With the CDDL, anyone can use the code (without giving up rights to their own code) and Sun gets back any improvements (without affecting their other code). It's like the LGPL, but with much better granularity.

We see this attitude a lot with BSD/GPL conflicts. When BSD code is relicensed as GPL, the original code is denied access to any changes. Think about that for a minute. "We want you to share your code. So we won't share our changes to your code with you." Free as in "free room and board at gitmo".

True dat. That's because the BSD license is based in ethical principles higher than the GPL or than the FSF in general.

Oppose Stallman. Having an almost complete OS without a kernel means that you DON'T have an OS. Drop the "GNU/" and just call it "Linux" in protest.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Daniel Phillips]

Honestly, I hope Sun doesn't change the ZFS licence, because in another couple of years I expect we will have been able to achieve pretty much everything ZFS does without having to roll it all into one jinormous all singing+dancing filesystem that ate the OS. In other words, we think we can do snapshots, flexible raid, allocate from pools etc, efficiently without violating layers. And actually, we were replicating before the ZFS guys and, um, the ZFS algorithm bears a striking resemblance to ours, which we published a few months before they showed up with a prototype. Hmm. Anyway, even if ZFS does go non-evil it certainly won't mean we will stop, because we still do things they don't do like run underneath _any_ filesystem so you can stick with what you know or what works for you. But it would definitely remove some of the incentive for further developing our stuff. Smartest think Sun could do to tell the truth, but personally I think they won't do it, and one day Mr. Schwartz will wake up and find ZFS irrelevant because Ext4 + ddsnap outperforms it plus has millions more installs and ten times as many developers to widen the gap. We shall see.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Wiseman1024]

Not only this is a ridiculous demand because Linux' copyright is shared among everyone and their mother, but Linux' license is crafted to guarantee that software is free AND STAYS FREE. I see no need to change this; in fact, the problem would be that Linux needs to be upgraded to GPLv3 because the previous, obsolete version of the GPL (2) was found to have pitfalls that still allow for corporations such as TiVo to defree it and abuse the community.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Wiseman1024]

Easy to fix: licence your original code under the licence that guarantees yours and everybody else's freedom. That is, the GPL.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Anonymous Coward]

That's total rubbish.

Sun doesn't want ZFS in Linux, period. Why? Because it's one of the unique selling points, and because Linux is a big competitor for Solaris. The *BSDs, as good as they may be on a technical level, are not; in the real world, they're pretty much irrelevant, so Sun has got no problem with allowing ZFS to be put into them, especially given that it allows them to then play the "see, we support FOSS after all!" card.

Which, if you'll pardon the mixing of metaphors, you've swallowed bait, hook and sinker.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[rtaylor]

I want freedom from having to understand and obey a multi-page license.

GPL does not give me that freedom.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

Honestly, I hope Sun doesn't change the ZFS licence, because in another couple of years I expect we [zumastor.org] will have been able to achieve pretty much everything ZFS does without having to roll it all into one jinormous all singing+dancing filesystem that ate the OS. Good, hopefully the ZFS guys will read this and hold off their development for the next 2 years until you catch up.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Wiseman1024]

You do? Fine, you can get that. However, others could take out everything else from you. I'd rather give up on my freedom to... choose not to understand four basic principles which, when written in legal text which you never read but need there so that lawyers won't come to piss on your wounds, seem to fit several pages.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Directrix1]

If Sun released ZFS under the GPL they could also release it as CDDL. They could release it as proprietary if they fucking want. The only thing releasing code under the GPL means is that they can no longer revoke the GPL from that codebase and any GPL code added to it. It wouldn't stop Sun from doing anything, except incorporating any additions to the GPL codebase into their pet CDDL or proprietary lines.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[SpammersAreScum]

... it would have made more sense for Novell to claim that SCO is not entitled to collect that money rather than SCO owes them the 95%.

Why "rather than"? Once again, it looks to me that Novell is saying both, and appears to have strong arguments for doing so. Mind you, saying SCO exceeded its authority when it cut the deal is not the same thing as saying the deal is (or will be) repudiated. I think I'm agreeing with you when I say it's unlikely Novell will sue Sun, but I'm not sure Novell has publicly committed either way.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

Why "rather than"? Because you can't have your cake and eat it too. The law does not allow you to be remedied twice for the same act.

Just like in the example where a salesperson sells something they shouldn't have sold, the store owner cannot get the product back and keep the money from the sale.

Sun already bought out their rights to Unix so if what Novell is saying is true, SCO coudldn't sell them anything. So if Novell's claim of SCO exceeding their authority is true and the deal is invalid, then Sun didn't get anything it didn't already have. If that's the case, how can Novell get something for nothing? Again, Sun along with AT&T developed SVR4.

Novell has said publicly that they will not be pursuing their Unix copyrights. I posted a link to that previously.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[debatem1]

I hear this a lot, and don't get it. Sun spends the better part of every day changing its mind on whether open source is the wave of the future or needs to be bludgeoned with giant rocks. Now its the Linux guys, without whom there would probably not be an open source movement to argue about, who are sticking it to the open source community? Get real. The CDDL contains almost exactly the same relicensing provisions as the GPL does except it contains an exemption for binaries, and if you're worried about code lockout, you're no fan of BSD-style licenses and their penchant for turning open source software into closed source products. The bottom line is that Sun decided that they wanted to use their license on their code *specifically to stop it from being used in Linux*, which they view as a competing product.
As for BSD/GPL conflicts, the truth is that the BSD guys probably have the moral high ground and the GPL guys probably have the legal high ground. Code derived from projects dual licensed under BDS and GPL should probably be released as BSD as a courtesy, but there is no obligation to do so, a fact frequently (and hypocritically) cited as an *advantage* by BSD advocates. If you want your license to mean something, the dumbest law school dropout will tell you that it needs to *say it*.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[Daniel Phillips]

Good, hopefully the ZFS guys will read this and hold off their development for the next 2 years until you catch up. I hope they develop like crazy, but I also kind of hope they continue their de facto Linux embargo, it just makes it more fun and interesting over here to recover the functionality. Maybe do it better. Certainly do it a more Linuxy way, after all you get to keep using your tried and true Ext3 filesystem and still have the latest sexy features.

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[SpammersAreScum]

Because you can't have your cake and eat it too. The law does not allow you to be remedied twice for the same act.

A reasonable argument. At the same time, having the court tell SCO, "you weren't allowed to do that, but you get to keep the money for doing it" would strike me as a miscarriage of justice.

Sun already bought out their rights to Unix so if what Novell is saying is true, SCO coudldn't sell them anything. So if Novell's claim of SCO exceeding their authority is true and the deal is invalid, then Sun didn't get anything it didn't already have.

But Novell is claiming that Sun did gain rights in the 2003 deal. And I'm still seeing the implication that "SCO exceeded its authority" = "we declare the deal invalid", which I don't think is right. I suspect it's more like, "SCO exceeded its authority, and we want a ruling to that effect so they don't do it again; but we'll honor the deal anyway."

Re:Now change the ZFS license SUN

[njcoder]

A reasonable argument. At the same time, having the court tell SCO, "you weren't allowed to do that, but you get to keep the money for doing it" would strike me as a miscarriage of justice. Stuff like that happens all the time. If court found the SCO/Sun deal to be invalid he has no authority to get SCO to give the money back. Just because SCO shouldn't have it doesn't mean Novell gets it. Sun and MS could sue SCO to try and get the money but SCO doesn't really have much left.

But Novell is claiming that Sun did gain rights in the 2003 deal. And I'm still seeing the implication that "SCO exceeded its authority" = "we declare the deal invalid", which I don't think is right. I suspect it's more like, "SCO exceeded its authority, and we want a ruling to that effect so they don't do it again; but we'll honor the deal anyway." Novell is claiming that in the SCO trial. Nothing has been done with respect to Sun or MS.

I already had this discussion on another thread here and not in the mood to go through it again. Basically, it just sounds like Novell FUD. I wonder if MS gave them a free lesson along with their recent partnership.

There is also some more discussion that I found at the OpenSolaris message board

ZFS next to be open sourced?

[axehind]

This is great to see!
Hopefully Sun will show even more commitment to Open Source by GPLing ZFS.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[brunascle]

ZFS is open source, using Sun's CDDL license. the problem is that the CDDL isnt compatible with the GPL.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[ctdownunder]

lol same group-think!

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[axehind]

Thanks for the clarification. That is what I meant.
It would be great to be able to use ZFS on linux without fuse.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Enderandrew]

I'm sure you could write a patch to get it in the kernel without FUSE, you just couldn't distribute it.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's neat FreeBSD has an advantage over Linux for once. FreeBSD has ZFS.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Uncle Focker]

Wasn't there talk of Sun possibly doing a port for Linux? That would be much appreciated if they did so.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[stox]

And DTrace, in current, too.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Kjella]

I'm sure you could write a patch to get it in the kernel without FUSE, you just couldn't distribute it. Actually, nothing could stop you distributing just the patch under the CDDL. You definately couldn't ship binaries, and I'm not sure if they could go together since it's somewhat beyond "mere aggregation". The more likely problem is that you'd need to hook fairly deep into the kernel's subsystems and so keeping a set of zfs-pathces current with each kernel release would be no non-trivial job.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Sancho]

So is a patch not considered to be a derivative work?

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[mysidia]

So is a patch not considered to be a derivative work?

It is, but you can dual-license your modifications under both the GPL and the CDDL.

You distribute your modifications to the kernel to add ZFS hooks as one piece (dual-licensed).

Then you distribute the CDDL-licensed pieces as a separate package, modified to utilize the hooks you added to interact directly with the separate CDDL-licensed package.

Your ZFS hooks enable the the separate package to be 'loaded' into the kernel after it is compiled from source.

A derivative work is created when the CDDL -licensed package is loaded, BUT this derivative work is created by the end-user, not you the programmer, or you the person distributing the package.

The act of the user creating a derived work isn't prohibited by the GPL, so long as they do not copy or distribute their derived work.

The modified CDDL-licensed package is a derivative work of your own kernel modifications, hence the choice to dual-license the kernel-modification package.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[claytonjr]

ZFS is open source, using Sun's CDDL license. the problem is that the CDDL isn't compatible with the GPL. That is a two-way street. It could be said that the problem is with GPL, in that it is not compatible with CDDL. FreeBSD or MacOS X doesn't seem to have a problem with the license.

While the GPL is a fantastic license, it isn't always nice, about who it plays with.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem is that the GPL isn't compatible with the CDDL and many other licenses.

I say that because the terms that prevent the code from being combined are in the GPL; not the CDDL.

Re:ZFS next to be open sourced?

[Anonymous Coward]

And its moving away from UFS2, which doesn't suck balls like Linux's ext3.

Good for Sun

[trybywrench]

Good for them.

Sun has been in the back of my mind a lot lately. I like their Sunfire servers and will be needing a decent 2U server in about 6 months. Maybe i'll buy one from them.

Wow good PR works ;)

Re:Good for Sun

[booleanoperator]

Good for them, good for us. Developers that is.

Re:Good for Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

What about this is redundant?

The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Mark Atwood]

The MySQL software that was originally 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 CSV, Blackhole, and Memcached doesn't even make sense. Archive already has a publicly available open source online backup tool.

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 are already publically available..

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 doesn't matter, and couldnt have happened 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 Slashdot headline of the original article was not entirely accurate. It wasn't the Sun executives who decided this. It was the MySQL executives. What that means, especially in light of the keynote speeches given by CEO Jonathan Schwartz and VP Rich Green, is interesting, and remains to be publically seen.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Rary]

As a small aside, the Slashdot headline of the original article was not entirely accurate.

Actually, that headline and this headline are completely inaccurate, because both mentioned a decision where none had been made.

MySQL had not decided to use a closed source license. They were considering many different licenses, including a closed source license -- but also including the GPL and other open source licenses. No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Jherek Carnelian]

No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject. Baloney. The former CEO of MySQL even posted otherwise right here on slashdot:

The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)...

The decision was made and then was reversed.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Use of LVM or ZFS to backup the on-disc copy is... questionable, as there remains the possibility, ever so slight, of the on-disc image not being completely consistent. Albeit the database journal is supposed to take care of this.

Most "let's have it consistent" approaches involve having it consistent on disc, not necessarily in the in-memory copy (fsync() flushes to disc what is already in memory) currently has in it, which may not be entirely atomic (only if it guarantees that single PAGE_SIZE writes [to memory] are consistent).

On the other hand, maybe the engineers make none of those assumptions and the journal takes care of it all, and the journal commits are sufficiently atomic. However, LVM or ZFS does not guarantee that the application in the above layers has put down a consistent file-image.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[njcoder]

No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject. Baloney. The former CEO of MySQL even posted otherwise right here on slashdot:

The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB (by me as the then CEO)...

The decision was made and then was reversed. Read your own link:

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)

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Alex Belits]

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. (owl goes here)

Databases backups over filesystem snapshots? With the assumption that all database commits are automatically filesystems commits, and there is no buffering between those layers? And with no incremental backups through transaction logs?

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Yenya]

Well, backups over FS (block device, in fact) snapshot sound reasonable to me. After all, database has to be prepared to be in consistent state in case of a filesystem crash.

You may miss few commits just before the snapshot has been created, but in case the database does buffering, you will miss them anyway when/if machine crashes.

The point is that FS snapshot should give you a backup of the database in a consistent state, which is sufficient for most uses.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Alex Belits]

You may miss few commits just before the snapshot has been created, but in case the database does buffering, you will miss them anyway when/if machine crashes. Or you can miss a rollback because you don't know if you had an incomplete transaction in progress -- they don't all stay in memory.

On the other hand, a backup with transaction log can be made MORE reliable than a filesystem snapshot because it is specifically optimized for this purpose -- state can be reliably recovered even if filesystem is few steps behind, as long as log is committed after filesystem became unwritable (easily achieved by sending it to another host)

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Rary]

No decision had been made. This announcement is the first actual decision on the subject. Baloney. The former CEO of MySQL even posted otherwise right here on slashdot... The decision was made and then was reversed.

I read Marten's post when the story originally came up. Apparently you didn't. He clearly states that no decision had yet been made. Nothing has been reversed.

Follow your own link.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[illtud]

Use of LVM or ZFS to backup the on-disc copy is... questionable, as there remains the possibility, ever so slight, of the on-disc image not being completely consistent. Albeit the database journal is supposed to take care of this.


Mod up, if there's anybody still modding this story. Snapshots won't guarantee you a consistent database backup.

Re:The whole thing was pointless anyway

[Yenya]

I think there is no way to miss a rollback. Rollback is simply a transaction without commit.
So when you create a FS snapshot with a transaction still in progress, then you will see partial transaction in the log, and maybe rows modified by a transaction which is not explicitly marked as commited, so when you restore from this backup and start the database engine, it will correctly detect it as an unfinished transaction and will not use its data.

The backup with transaction log _cannot_ be made more reliable (if it could, then the database would not be resistent to the host computer crash). It can be faster, easier to restore, etc. But more reliable? No way.

Yawn

[Rary]

This isn't much of a change. They hadn't made up their mind regarding what license would be used for the new backup utilities. They just hadn't ruled out proprietary licensing. Now they have.

It wasn't much of a story before, and it's only slightly more of a story now.

Good day for all

[Uncle Focker]

Good. I'm glad that Sun was able to convince the MySQL staff to not close source any of the codebase. And yes, as was pointed out in the other thread, Sun wasn't the one pushing the close source move they were actually trying to convince them to go the opposite.

Re:Good day for all

[Jherek Carnelian]

I'm glad that Sun was able to convince the MySQL staff to not close source any of the codebase. Totally! Don't you hate it when you buy a company and they won't do what you tell them?
Good thing Sun was able to convince Sun to stick to Sun's official policy.

Re:Good day for all

[Uncle Focker]

MySQL was considering the close sourcing of the enterprise stuff before they were acquired by Sun. After being acquired Sun was pushing that they don't go with the close source route as was confirmed in the previous thread. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=525246&cid=23098626

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. Troll harder next time.

Re:Good day for all

[Jherek Carnelian]

After being acquired Sun was pushing that they don't go with the close source route as was confirmed in the previous thread. "Pushing" against whom? MySQL ceased to exist as a separate entity once it was acquired.

MySQL was considering the close sourcing The business decision on this was made by MySQL AB Your own quote disproves your claim. The decision was made, not just considered, pre-acquisition.
Post acquistion, the decision was reversed.

Re:Good day for all

[njcoder]

"Pushing" against whom? MySQL ceased to exist as a separate entity once it was acquired. You know that companies are run by people right? Their not some big robot or computer program. People need time to adjust and get familiar with the new vision of their new company. You don't right click on MySQL AB, select Refactor and expect everything to just change.

Certain initiatives that were started pre buyout continued. When it was detected that those initiatives weren't inline with Sun's plans, it was corrected.

All the 400 or so employees that were with MySQL are now with Sun and they need to get used to how being part of Sun frees them from increasing direct revenues from MySQL.

Sun buys an open source company and doesn't force them to change their business practices. Doesn't sound so bad. And when it does get them to change their business practices, it results in being more open.

Re:Good day for all

[Jherek Carnelian]

All the 400 or so employees that were with MySQL are now with Sun and they need to get used to how being part of Sun... No. Really the only ones who need to get used to be being part of Sun here are the handful of PR flacks who vet public announcements. It shouldn't take much for them to get up to speed on Sun corporate policy and thus be able to hold back any public announcements that are in conflict until the conflict is resolved.

But you go ahead and keep believing the bad management is just part of the normal process of an acquisition.

Re:Good day for all

[njcoder]

Are you for real?

An open source company wants to close some of its new features. The "proprietary" software company that bought them wants them to keep everything open.

Somehow, everyone wants to paint the proprietary company in a bad light. The original blog post from the first story never even mentioned Sun but the title on Slashdot was about Sun closing MySQL.

Sun's management has MySQL change that decision and the headline is about MySQL reverting.

There's an obvious bias here that's laughable.

Mickos is the one that needs to adapt here. Though I personally don't think it's fair to give him a hard time about it. I mean the guy just closed a big deal, got a ton of money and needs to do a different job than he was doing for the last 7 or so years. If he does the same stuff in a couple more months, that's a different story.

And this wasn't a "public announcement" it was at a partner meeting. Which is a bit different. And nothing was actually released or finalized, it was just a roadmap to let partners know what to expect. Sometimes these things change but people made a big deal over it.

Most large acquisitions have their hiccups. That shouldn't come as any suprise.

Alternate interpretation of events...

[Edgewize]

"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"

Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[JustinOpinion]

What?

So you not only believe:
1. Sun (a corporation) makes decisions not based on what will bring in the most revenue, but based on what "fanatics" want;
You also apparently believe:
2. The Slashdot crowd has the ability to shape corporate policies to their whims.

I think a reality check is in order.

Sun/MySQL were considering a variety of licenses (including closed source ones). To the extent that comments made on Slashdot (and other online sources) made sense, they were probably taken into account. However, the final decision was undoubtedly what they thought would maximize profits. Yes, maintaining community good-will is probably part of their strategy, since it gives them free advertising (evangelism, etc.) and some free development (patch submissions, etc.).

Frankly I don't see how this isn't a victory for both open-source and MySQL. The community gets open-source code, MySQL gets development and exposure. Win-win.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics... more like open-source saboteurs...

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[Anonymous Coward]

The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect. New to /.?

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[hxnwix]

Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics Right; just as the openness of the Linux kernel denies Redhat revenue?

Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The MySQL eco-system remains that much more open. I'm sorry this bothers you, but it's hardly a defeat for OS.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[njcoder]

"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any boundary between open-source MySQL server APIs and closed-source enterprise utilities which call those APIs"

Despite the outcome, this is not a victory for the open-source movement. The original Slashdot story was inflammatory and designed to mislead, and now it has had the desired effect. MySQL AB needed to generate revenue directly from MySQL as that was pretty much their only product. They were looking for an IPO before Sun bought them so they needed to increase revenues.

Being part of Sun, MySQL doesn't have the same pressure to generate revenues directly from MySQL. Sun/Schwartz's plan is to drive revenue in Sun's other lines from MySQL. Hardware sales, support, etc.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[this great guy]

"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics [...]"

Actually Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has explained numerous times in his blog that opensourcing your products increases your revenue stream in the long term. I invite you to read in particular this 2-day old post where he answers the FAQ "Why don't you just stop giving your software away?" and gives precisely the example of MySQL.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[shmlco]

"....opensourcing your products increases your revenue stream in the long term."

In some cases. Here, the hope was that they'll buy a license and support package. If they don't, no revenue.

Further, I'd argue that basing a business on support fees and licenses means that it's against your best interests to ever create a powerful easy-to-use product that DOESN'T need support. If you want income, then complexity and bugs are your friends.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[this great guy]

You don't see far enough. There is more than licenses and support fees. Schwartz explained in other posts that giving away software increases the opportunity for Sun to sell more of other stuff: give your customer an open source database and they will buy more SAN storage, servers, networking equipment, etc !

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[Alex Belits]

"Company forced to give up revenue stream due to open-source fanatics who refuse to acknowledge... Just throw a chair into Yahoo HQ parking lot, Steve.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[njcoder]

You don't see far enough. That's what happens when you stand on the shoulders of midgets.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a loss for open source because MySQL should die; except for that...

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[geminidomino]

The MySQL eco-system remains that much more open. I'm sorry this bothers you, but it's hardly a defeat for OS. If it maintains/increases MySQL usage, it's a defeat for HUMANITY

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[Jherek Carnelian]

I'd argue that basing a business on support fees and licenses means that it's against your best interests to ever create a powerful easy-to-use product that DOESN'T need support. If you want income, then complexity and bugs are your friends. That's just another variation on the information-hording paradigm of proprietary software.
It ignores the network effect. If your stuff is easy to use, then it becomes widespread. If it is hard to use, hardly anyone will be interested. It's like having 50% of a $1M market or 10% of a $1B market.

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[shmlco]

Again, that applies only in some cases. IBM is doing the same thing, using OSS and then selling hardware and consulting services.

And as you said, it "increases the opportunity for Sun to sell more of other stuff". No guarantees. He thinks it will generate move revenue than it consumes. Maybe. Only time will tell.

But that still assumes, like the give-music-away-and-sell-the-t-shirts model, that you have SOMETHING else to sell. What happens when someone spends a year writing a program and that's ALL he has to sell? No t-shirts. No servers. And no consulting and support fees because he just happened to do an exceptional job making his software stable and easy to use.

So to borrow a quote, "You don't see far enough."

Re:Alternate interpretation of events...

[shmlco]

MySQL is a perfect example, in that it's free and extremely easy to get started with. It also maintains a running list of hundreds of bugs, and can be extremely complex to setup clustering or several kinds of replication environments.

So to continue the thread around your thought, it only has to be easy enough to suck people in and build a dependency on it. While at the same time not being so complex or unstable that people give up on it and go elsewhere (PostgreSQL).

Just in case you're interested, Lyris is yet another example of a company walking that same tightrope. When it works, it works extremely well. But their customers DEFINITELY need to pay for support and maintenance.

Alternative ending

[aliquis]

"Contrary to the previous Slashdot discussion, this shows Sun's continued commitment to Open Source."

Sad enough this shows how Sun still have a hard time deciding what they want to, or more importantly should do, and if they should just dip their toes a little or go all in.

I do understand peoples critisism for it but it's their property and they are free to do whatever they want with it.

Re:Alternative ending

[pembo13]

You may want to read the comments of at least one of the stories on this posted to the Slashdot. Sun was never the one pushing for closed source anything. This was always a nonsense story in the first place.

Re:Alternative ending

[aliquis]

Oh, I see, and yes, I just read the Slashdot stories without RTFA. I was like "it's their product and I can understand how Sun would want to be able to have a more premium package which cost money." so I didn't bothered. I don't like this "omg everything has to be free"-attitude from pirates and OSS-evengalists alike. I do like free software, and I am a pirate, but I won't try to force that onto someone else :)

Lol Slashdot is too much

[njcoder]

When it was announced that MySQL would be releasing some features in MySQL Enterprise and not in the community edition the original Slashdot headline was "Sun to close MySQL" or something similar.

Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.

So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change his strategy the headline is "MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source"

HAHAHAHAHA

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[krow]

Hi!

If anyone in the know had written the original article I doubt they would have put "Sun" in the title. It was pretty much a MySQL decision all along. The original article was not completely wrong, but it certainly was wrong on the Sun part.

Cheers,
      -Brian

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's pretty retarded. I'm surprised such tripe was ever modded up the firehose.

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[jez9999]

When it was announced that MySQL would be releasing some features in MySQL Enterprise and not in the community edition the original Slashdot headline was "Sun to close MySQL" or something similar.

Then Mickos (former CEO of MySQL AB and SVP of Sun Database group) comes here and says that it was MySQL's plan to do this before the acquisition by Sun and that it was in fact Sun who wanted them to release everything to the community. And if Sun had their way it would.

So now that Sun convinces Mickos to change his strategy the headline is "MySQL Reverses Decision On Closed Source"

HAHAHAHAHA

See, Slashdot's like an omelette. We have a combination of sausage and ham and tomatoes and eggs and more. By 8PM, we want to have an omelette worth eating. And if it's not... sometimes we have to whip out the Tabasco sauce.

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[Apotsy]

The problem is, you mention Sun when the outcome is "bad", but fail to mention them when it's "good". Biased much?

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[krow]

Hi!

I believe that I did mention Sun in the post, and I did so in a positive way. So I do not understand your comment.

Cheers,
      -Brian

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[Apotsy]

Old story:
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! SUN DOES SOMETHING BAD!!!!
(actually, it wasn't really sun)

Today's story:
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! MYSQL DOES SOMETHING GOOD!!!!
(actually, sun may have been involved)

Understand now?

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[krow]

Hi!

Well I have no ability to edit a previously written story so I can do nothing about what went on before :)

Cheers,
      -Brian

Re:Lol Slashdot is too much

[njcoder]

You may have said something that makes sense. All I keep thinking is I'm hungry.

Re:More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Noyourwrong.

I don't see any problem with close sourcing

[iamacat]

Just because you release one product as open source doesn't mean that you have to release all you works or future versions under the same license. Just as long as you don't mislead anyone about old and new license terms and do not try to harass developers who have forked off your old version and are possibly duplicating your closed source extensions.

Re:I don't see any problem with close sourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you release one product as open source doesn't mean that you have to release all you works or future versions under the same license. However, when your CEO says that [Open Source is] not a cheap complement to throw to the community in order to drive sales of "the real value" you will be expected to release all your works as open source.

Re:I don't see any problem with close sourcing

[krow]

Hi!

I would completely agree with you on this point. I added the link to my "crippleware" blog entry for this reason. While I believe it is best for the server to be open source, there is nothing stopping anyone from writing closed source extensions to their open source projects. As long as licenses are obeyed and a company acts in an even handed manner I believe that they will avoid creating crippleware.

Cheers,
      -Brian

Great to see? Want to make a bet?

[spun]

How much do you want to bet that when they say: "No portion of the server will be closed source," what they actually mean is: "We will be developing separate closed source backup tools rather than incorporating that functionality into the server, to keep you bitches from whining."

Re:Great to see? Want to make a bet?

[njcoder]

Click the link and read more

* MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
        * so will the MySQL Connectors, and
        * so will the main storage engines we ship.

In addition:

        * MySQL 6.0â(TM)s pending backup functionality will be open source,
        * the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
        * the encryption and compression backup features will be open source,

where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.

The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware products.

Re:Great to see? Want to make a bet?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do you want to bet that when they say: "No portion of the server will be closed source," what they actually mean is: "We will be developing separate closed source backup tools rather than incorporating that functionality into the server, to keep you bitches from whining." Sun's CEO has been saying stuff like, [Open Source is] not a cheap complement to throw to the community in order to drive sales of "the real value" for quite a while now.

Which is why:
a) It was a shocker that the MySQL division of Sun was going to keep parts of the code closed in the first place.
b) This new announcement is not fluff to keep people from whining.

Re:Great to see? Want to make a bet?

[blowdart]

No but it doesn't show "Sun's continued commitment to Open Source" as the summary makes out. If anything it shows quick back-pedalling in the face of vociferous criticism from one of the louder, more vocal IT communities. If no-one had complained do you think Sun would have changed their mind?

Re:Great to see? Want to make a bet?

[njcoder]

If no-one had complained do you think Sun would have changed their mind? Uhm. Sun didn't change it's mind, Mickos SVP of databases former CEO of MySQL changed his mind. Or more likely Sun helped him change it to align with the corporate open source strategy.

In Jonathan's words

[isilrion]

I was almost sure I had gotten this link from slashdot, but after googling around, I just can't find where.

Anyway, here is an " interview with Sun's CEO. For those lazy enough to not click the link:

JesseStay: does he anticipate a fallout of original MySQL users or fork in the mysql code and how will they handle that if it does happen?

JonathanSchwartz: I'm not anticipating a fork - Marten Mickos (SVP, Database Group at Sun, former CEO, MySQL) made some comments saying he was considering making available certain MySQL add-ons to MySQL Enterprise subscribers only - and as I said on stage, leaders at Sun have the autonomy to do what they think is right to maximize their business value - so long as they remember their responsibility to the corporation and all of its communities (from shareholders to developers). Not just their silo.

I think Marten got some fairly direct and immediate feedback saying the idea was a bad one - and we have no plans whatever of "hiding the ball," of keeping any technology from the community. Everything Sun delivers will be freely available, via a free and open license (either GPL, LGPL or Mozilla/CDDL), to the community.

Everything.

No exception.

I just hope it's true.

Oh, my

[BattyMan]

Is there a "-1: incoherent ranting" moderation option?

"Weather control"? Wow.

Please box up some of that shit you're smoking, and send it my way.

Nice to see some good news from time to time

[unity100]

sun and mysql people made some part of my day here today, with this news.

Floating a Balloon to see if it will Fly

[zuperduperman]

This has all the hallmarks of a classic PR maneuver - Sun wants to figure out how they can extract more $$ from the high end users of MySQL. They need to find out how the market will react if they start selling closed source MySQL extensions without committing themselves if it goes horribly wrong. So they sprinkle some unsubtantiated vague rumours around and look for the reaction. The reaction was: PostgreSQL. So now they can kill the whole idea with minimal losses and try their next plan for how to "monetize" MySQL some more without pissing off their entire user base and killing the golden goose.

I don't believe for a second that things like this are an accident. These folks are far too smooth to just accidently let this kind of thing drop and run for a week.

Re:Floating a Balloon to see if it will Fly

[njcoder]

This has all the hallmarks of a classic PR maneuver - Sun wants to figure out how they can extract more $$ from the high end users of MySQL. They need to find out how the market will react if they start selling closed source MySQL extensions without committing themselves if it goes horribly wrong. So they sprinkle some unsubtantiated vague rumours around and look for the reaction. The reaction was: PostgreSQL. So now they can kill the whole idea with minimal losses and try their next plan for how to "monetize" MySQL some more without pissing off their entire user base and killing the golden goose.

I don't believe for a second that things like this are an accident. These folks are far too smooth to just accidently let this kind of thing drop and run for a week.

I doubt that. When MySQL AB was a separate company and interested in an IPO, they had to find ways to boost their revenues.

While MySQL makes money on support and some of the "Enterprise" tools, their main source of revenue is from companies like Cisco that want to buy a non-GPL license to MySQL to embed it in one of their products. Since MySQL AB offered MySQL in dual licenses, it gives companies that want to include it in their projects, and possibly extend or modify it the ability to keep their changes to themselves and not have to GPL their own work.

Now that MySQL is part of Sun, it doesn't need to generate the same revenue from MySQL directly. Seems that MySQL's management didn't get this. But to be fair, they never specified that the source would be closed. They mentioned it could be available under the GPL but they haven't decided. What they said was that it would be in MySQL Enterprise and not MySQL Community.

Re:I don't think so.

[dedazo]

If ZFS is worthwhile

Ha ha, good one.

make it's way

make its way.

no further action is required on Sun's part.

Read the GP of the comment you're replying. It doesn't work that way. Hubris is bad for your health, you know?

no onus

[mkcmkc]

I'd say there is no "onus". Linux has a license that the Linux developers like, and ZFS has a license that its owners like. If it happens that they are incompatible, that's okay. As long as no patents are involved, the Linux people are free to reimplement ZFS, and Sun is free to reimplement Linux. This is a good thing.

As a practical matter, I suspect that virtually no one would switch OSes to use ZFS, but for some users this will be a good tradeoff.

Re:no onus

[E-Lad]

You're absolutely correct. That's why I have to wonder about all the "$SOLARIS_FEATURE is not GPL'd" whining. Your good statement helps show that this is more-or-less sour grapes from a community (or a large subset of it) that thought they had it all, either politically or technically.

I'm reminded of a rather large company in Redmond, Washington that carried on similarly throughout the 90's and early 00's, eventually being zapped in the ass for their hubris.

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

Yea, but one of the strengths of open source is that you don't NEED to re-implement stuff all over the place. This however is a political license issue completely voiding one of the strengths of open source code.

In this case with ZFS, GPL is causing problems. There are other operating systems using the ZFS code Sun released, the odd one out is Linux because of the GPL.

Re:no onus

[dreamchaser]

That's because the GPL, for all the good it's done, is at the end of the day more of a political statement than a license.

Yes, yes I know I'll get modded as flamebait for this, but the truth hurts. Don't get me wrong, I use tons of GPL software and have contributed to some as well. I'm just sick of the more fanatical among the OSS crowd acting like it's the only license fit to ever use under any circumstances. As others have noted in this discussion it's also held Linux back in a few areas.

Re:no onus

[larry bagina]

As a practical matter, I suspect that virtually no one would switch OSes to use ZFS, but for some users this will be a good tradeoff.

Not a switch, per se (I run linux on my NSLU2), but I used solaris when setting up my home RAID NAS server strictly for ZFS. (otherwise, it probably would have been FreeBSD).

Re:no onus

[God_Retired]

But why the fuck would Sun reimplement Linux? If they have binary compatibility with Linux base binaries, what the hell is their problem. I'm thinking about switching my box to OpenSolaris. Have been thinking that for awhile. The only stop, and the same one I had with FreeBSD several years ago, is the license. Yes, I like the code to be free. Yes I have given weeks of my life to GPL'd code. I really don't see what the problem is.

I make my living doing non-code things. It always seems to me that scriptkiddy people are the only ones who are so adamant about the license. Truly skilled make good livings in companies working on systems that it wouldn't make any sense to GPL. No one else would use it. In other words, highly customized code.

I try to only work with code that I have the chance to look at and improve. Then send to my friends, as well as upstream.

Re:no onus

[mkcmkc]

As others have noted in this discussion it's also held Linux back in a few areas. Well, the fact that I'm not willing to give away the fruits of my labor also "holds me back", but I don't look at it that way because I have goals other than just wanting as many people as possible to use my software. The same can be said for the GPL--it's goals are simply not the same as those of Open Source in general. I think you'd have to say that RMS has gone to great ends to make that clear.

Re:no onus

[mkcmkc]

I think it's fair to ask whether Sun has an agenda in choosing one license when they could have chosen another. That's not the same as saying that they don't have the right to choose any license they like.

Personally I don't really care. Solaris is about where Perforce is--they can still make money, but the leading edge has passed them by, probably forever. The thought of using an OS/distribution with which I couldn't install (say) callgrind in 90 seconds is just about unthinkable at this point.

Re:no onus

[chromatic]

The thought of using an OS/distribution with which I couldn't install (say) callgrind in 90 seconds is just about unthinkable at this point.

That thought made me shiver. You're a bad person for even suggesting such a situation could exist.

Re:no onus

[E-Lad]

One can also say, with some agreeable degree of accuracy, that RMS birthed the GPL and chose that for his code due to an agenda of his own. Is it a surprise to you that licenses are chosen and nix'd based on how in line they are with the choosing org's goals? That's an agenda dictating things. Everyone has one. The question is, is whether you are amicable towards that agenda, or not. But, yes, some people can be bafflingly dumb and pick a license out of thin air with no purpose or foresight behind why they did so.

Re:no onus

[BlueParrot]

As others have noted in this discussion it's also held Linux back in a few areas.

Ok, this is nonsense. There is a license incompatibility, yes, but it is because BOTH licenses make requirements the other does not fullfill, not just the GPL. In other words , the license of ZFS does not permit using it in Linux because the GPL does not fullfill the requirements of the CDDL. SIMULATENOUSLY the GPL does not permit combining Linux with ZFS because the CDDL does not fullfill the requirements of the GPL.

There are a lot of trolls here who try to interpret this as the FSF the GPL being fanatic and Sun and the CDDL being more reasonable, the reality is that the the incompatibility arises from similar terms that exist in both licenses, namely that you cannot impose any further restrictions on derived works. Since the set of restrictions in two licenses differ they are incompatible. So basically, if you are going to consider this "a problem caused by teh GPL" then it is as much "a problem caused by the CDDL" and vice versa.

Of course bashing the GPL on slashdot is a lot more fun, but the boring reality is that both Sun and Linus have picked a license of their choice, and they turned out to be incompatible. It is either the fault of both parties or neither. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Re:no onus

[dreamchaser]

I really wasn't bashing it. Like I've said I use and have worked on GPL software. It is what it is. There was no bashing in my post. Save your knee jerk reaction next time :-)

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

Yea i get that they both chose the license they wanted, which is fine, and yet here we are with open source code that can't actually be shared between open source projects. Ridiculous. I could be wrong here but this sort of situation is a symptom of overly restrictive licenses making demands they shouldn't be making.

I don't actually care WHY they are incompatible, to me its all political crap getting in the way.

Re:no onus

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument only works if there's a mutual desire between Sun and the Linux userbase to have ZFS combined with Linux, but that's not the reality. The only party actually doing the complaining -- or at least, that's vocal about wanting the current situation changed -- is the Linux userbase. So the only license incompatibility that's relevant here is the GPL's.

If Sun had a burning desire to see ZFS combined with Linux, it would be unwarranted for them to complain about the GPL. In this case, because it's the Linux userbase that wants ZFS combined with Linux, it's unwarranted for them to complain about the CDDL.

Re:no onus

[makomk]

The thing is, there are patents involved - Sun has them, and they don't hand out patent licenses to GPLed software. (Not to mention the NetApp patents, which are what caused the last person to try and create a similar filesystem for Linux to give up.) Actually, IIRC the patents Sun are using to sue NetApp are fairly nasty - they affect far more than direct clones of ZFS/WAFL.

Re:no onus

[medlefsen]

I'm sorry but no. The CDDL makes *no* requirements on other files. You can link it with whatever you want. Yes, the GPL and the CDDL have incompatible terms, but the reason that's a problem is because the GPL is copyleft. Furthermore, when something like copyleft is preventing good code from moving from one open source project to another I think someone who cares about technological progress has every right to "bash" it without getting accused of following the crowd.

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

From what i understand the CDDL requires modified source to be released but doesn't become viral to all combined code like the GPL would.

I also read that there were some attribution differences between the licenses.

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

I also found this on suns site:

"The CDDL provides an explicit patent license for code released under the license. This means that you can use, modify, and redistribute code released under CDDL without worrying about any patents that the contributors of the code (including Sun) might have on the contributed technology. The license also includes a provision to discourage patent litigation against developers by revoking the rights to the code for anyone initiating a patent claim against a developer regarding code they have contributed."

So if you use the CDDL licensed code you were granted a patent license for anything involved. If you re-implement ZFS yourself and avoid CDDL code because of the GPL, you aren't covered.

Re:no onus

[debatem1]

Largely because the CDDL was designed to be incompatible with the GPL. When it looks like a GPL'd ZFS implementation is 95% complete, Sun will make noises about GPLing it, just like they do with Java. Until then, they will do everything they can to boost the competitiveness of Solaris relative to Linux. It's their right as a business and entirely contrary to the spirit of open source, which should give us some idea as to what the mood over at Sun HQ is at the moment.

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

It's not intentional, they went out of their way to craft a license that suited their needs and the CDDL accomplishes things the GPL can't do.

For instance, it allows someone to statically link together CDDL code with anything else they want, even proprietary software, while still requiring modifications to that CDDL code to be released.

Re:no onus

[debatem1]

The primary drafter of the CDDL (Danese Cooper) has repeatedly stated either that it was "specifically designed to be GPL incompatible" or was "not compatible with the GPL by design". It seems clear to me that Sun regards Linux as a competitor and, while willing to abuse buzzwords, is not ready to embrace open source. Maybe you see things differently (heck, maybe even Sun does now), but at least at that time there is very little doubt that Sun was quite hostile to community driven software in general and Linux in particular.

Re:no onus

[mkcmkc]

Just wait until you find out what Solaris uses for its root shell...

Re:no onus

[mkcmkc]

Right. I know exactly what RMS's goal is--he's been completely consistent for decades. Sun, on the other hand, well, I'm not sure what they're up to...

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

Yea except other open source OS are using the CDDL code Sun released....

The odd one out is Linux because of the GPLs restrictions in a few areas.

Sure the engineers might have wanted it incompatible with the GPL but to me it appears to be incompatible with good reason and allows more flexibility.

Re:no onus

[debatem1]

Let's not kid each other. There's another argument going on here, and we might as well stop dancing around it: the BSD-GPL argument, played out with the CDDL as a proxy warrior against the perceived injustices of the most popular open source license in the world.
You come at it from one side: you see BSD as truly free, and choose to call the relative paucity of protection offered by the BSD license 'freedom'. There's merit in that argument and I won't denigrate it except to say that you get what you ask for in licensing. You should not be surprised when somebody does not back propagate code if you don't put it in your license terms.
I come at it from a different side, choosing to emphasize the openness of open source, rooted in the virtues of fair play, generosity, and common action for common good. I believe that the primary value of free software is not in the freedom to abuse it but rather in its ability to free information from the screw-you, zero-sum world of traditional property. The GPL's goal is to expand the free software ecosystem while protecting existing open-source code against predatory code borrowing. In so doing, it provides exactly the same protections you seem to feel BSD code needs against the GPL, but did not write down for reasons that are terribly unclear to me.
You intelligently point out that other open source projects use CDDL'd code, and that this leaves Linux somewhat in the cold, a situation again not too dissimilar from the one faced by BSD. The solution here seems to me as simple and as elegant as the solution there: do the Right Thing, and sign a dual-licensing agreement for all code derived from that originally shared, thus protecting both the GPL and BSD or CDDL camps' interests in the code.
The point about flexibility vs. protection is well taken in the case of BSD and GPL but very questionable in the case of the CDDL, which does not provide freedom in excess of other more popular and more compatible licenses. Given the intent of its design and what seems to me to be an insufficiently distinct set of terms, my read is that Sun is simply playing a predator- they want to use the Open Source buzzwords to slash their development costs while simultaneously denying competitive advantage to an entity they perceive as a dangerous rival. Our reads of 'open source', its goals, and its intentions, vary- but to me that seems profoundly contrary to the goals of an open community.

Re:no onus

[mrsteveman1]

Yea, the problem with that BSD vs GPL view of things, is that the CDDL mixes some of both licenses capabilities.

CDDL code is copyleft, you modify and release it, you release your source. On the other hand it can be linked with any code you want to link it with, unlike the GPL, even if it is statically linked together with proprietary code.

Thats probably a big reason sun went with it, they needed to support code mixing especially somewhere like the kernel with drivers, but still wanted the code to remain in their control and perhaps as an afterthought, also open.

Re:no onus

[debatem1]

if you believe the person who wrote it, the CDDL was designed *to be GPL incompatible*. It isn't the other way around, and it wasn't their intention to make some big statement about how awesome software freedom is. They intended to screw another open source project out of open code, and for exactly the same reasons that I presume both of us condemn some GPL zealots for refusing to dual license code derived from BSD projects, I condemn Sun for its brazen abuse of the community-driven model.

Red Hat Global File System.

[gnutoo]

GFS looks like it does most of what ZFS is supposed to do. There is no hubris in hoping that the nicer parts of ZFS are not patent encumbered - the hubris is in software patents and people who think they can own ideas. If there are no patents in the way, those better ideas will make their way into free file systems.

Re:Red Hat Global File System.

[njcoder]

You're confusing ZFS with clusterfs GFS is more like Lustre

Re:Red Hat Global File System.

[willyhill]

Anyone posting on this thread should be aware that twitter and gnutoo are the same person.

Re:Red Hat Global File System.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your clusterfs drive goes bad, do you run clusterfsck on it?

Re:Red Hat Global File System.

[dedazo]

I can't believe you actually gathered enough testicular mass to actually reply to me with one of your lame sockpuppets. I really didn't know if I should cry or laugh uncontrollably. Listen, do me a big favor and reply with the same account, or FOAD.

And to stay on topic, no, GFS is nowhere close to ZFS and in any case it has an installed base that rapidly approaches zero. ZFS is tested and mature, mostly due to the fact that it is used in Solaris. Nice try though. Not every technological innovation comes from your bearded and unwashed godlets, no matter how much you want to pretend that's the case.

Not what the CEO said

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious, especially since the CEO of MySQL said yesterday at CommunityOne that they WILL be offering some closed source, pay-for components.

Re:I don't think so.

[twatt3r]

You make an excellent point.

However, I shall wait until I hear from inTheLoo, MacTrope, and Erris before making up my mind.

It only makes sense to be well-informed, and to hear all sides of an issue.

Closed source... no wait, open source

[c_stromblad]

Whichever side you're on in this never ending battle between the choice of open source or closed source I find it most interesting that sun is "committed" to open source. How come? The acquire MySQL, try to make parts of it closed source and ... then because of market forces decide not to do it. Then in some weird market propaganda they are suddenly committed to open source.

Ha, good one.

Re:+1 Troll

[Wiseman1024]

"If SUN (or any developer) wants to keep things locked up it's their right." --- Then don't ask for code back from the Linux community.

"Just how helpful is the GPL anyway?" --- Does more for you than you yourself will.

"Did ZFS come from the Linux camp? No. Did OS X come from the Linux camp? No." --- So what? Did my penis come from the Linux camp? No, and I still have fun with it. So what?

"While the Linux camp was in a royal pissing match about whether Gnome or KDE was better, and similarly important things, both the hated SUN (slowaris? Huh, you think) and the despised Apple (they're so gay) have out-innovated you." --- Hahaha oh wow. What Apple invented summarizes as metrosexual crap. And Sun? Well, I guess the best I can say is that, even if their OS is free, I still use GNU/Linux, and I'm not the only one to do so.

Its Tuesday...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its Tuesday. Every Tuesday, Sun goes 'pro' open source. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they are 'anti', they abstain on the weekends, and Thursday is a 50/50 split. Sun can be counted on to run hot and cold on open source. Open Office is supported as open, but limited to who can contribute. Java is open source, but reluctantly, and with some strings still attached. ODF is open completely, with Sun being benevolent, as they tell us and promising not to sue... Sun has eventually given a lot, and taken a lot. They still play tricky, and run hot and cold, buying MySQL for $1 billion U$, closing, then now opening. I still think they are trying to figure it all out. At every turn they stumble. Their first order of business is to be draconian (like any other brick and mortar business). Reality and logic come roaring in within 10-20 months, (weeks, hours), and they regroup, rethink, Tuesday comes along, and we are all friends again. The sick and twisted truth.

Re:Its Tuesday...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing, you scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page to hit the Reply button, but you didn't bother to read any of the existing comments that might have kept you from sounding like an idiot.

Re:More like...

[cloakable]

Welcome to -1 karma hell. Meet your new friend Anonymous Coward.

Close sourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until editors can fix screw-ups like this ("closed source" is not a verb, stupid), I refuse to continue to read articles like this. Not that it matters to anybody, but I was on my soapbox, anyway.

Sun Microsystems to lay off up to 2,500 workers

[Anonymous Coward]

this great guy wrote :

Actually Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has explained numerous times in his blog that opensourcing your products increases your revenue stream in the long term.

Sun Microsystems is laying off 2500 people.

Title: Sun cushions slumping Q3 with layoffs
Author: Ashlee Vance
Date: 1st May 2008 23:28 GMT
URL: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/05/01/sun_q3_down/print.html

Sun's third quarter revenue dipped half a per cent to $3.283bn, as the company struggled to close large deals in the US. The slow quarter pushed Sun back to red ink with the vendor posting a $34m loss, which compares to a $67m profit in the same period last year. Sun now plans to layoff between 1,500 and 2,500 workers to lower costs over the coming year. .... .... ....
Investors let Sun know how they felt about the quarter during after-hours trading as they shredded JAVA shares by 15 per cent, at the time of this report

Looks like Schwartz's strategy is working.

patents are evil

[mkcmkc]

I agree that if there are patents involved, that changes everything. To the degree that Sun is using patents against Free Software, the situation is no longer benign, and I'd consider them evil.