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

[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

[Wiseman1024]

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

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

[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?

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...

[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...

[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: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: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: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?

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.