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David Axmark Resigns From Sun

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-this-job-and-shove-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "From Kay Arno's blog we see that David Axmark, MySQL's Co-Founder, has resigned. This comes on top of the maybe, maybe not, resignation of Monty. We saw earlier this year that Brian Aker, the Director of Architecture, has forked the server to create a web-focused database from MySQL called Drizzle. The MySQL server has been 'RC' now for a year with hundreds of bugs still listed as being active in the 5.1 version. What is going on with MySQL?"

7 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Drizzle? by krow · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi!

    We are still working on the first version of Drizzle. While folks are using it, I don't really recommend it at this point. When we feel like it is ready for adoption we will publicly start recommending it.

    Cheers,
          -Brian

    --
    You can't grep a dead tree.
  2. MySQL greetings by martenmickos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thanks slashdotters for being passionate about all topics FOSS and MySQL!

    David's departure is in all ways amicable, and he will continue to be an ambassador for MySQL and for free and open source software in general. For some time already, David was working only part-time for MySQL. After about 25 years of working on MySQL and the projects that preceded MySQL, he very much deserves do whatever he pleases to.

    Marten
    SVP Database Group at Sun
    (previously CEO of MySQL AB)

    1. Re:MySQL greetings by martenmickos · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think if you ask people who know me, they will say that I stand for transparency and truthfulness.

      If the departure had not been amicable, I guess I would not have commented on it at all, or I would have focused my commentary on whatever other positive aspect I could find.

      But the best may be to ask David directly. I don't want to publish his email address here, but it is not difficult to guess. Most early employees of MySQL AB, like myself, use firstname at mysql dot com.

      Marten

      P.S. Generally I am somewhat perplexed by the attention this topic is getting. The beauty of open source is that you can be actively contributing and participating in your favourite project whether you are employed by a certain company or not. So what's the big deal about David choosing not to be employed? He is not abandoning MySQL. With the enormous payout from the acquisition, the founders can now allow themselves to pursue whatever interests and daily routines they like. Good for them, and I think we should all just be happy that open source can provide not just software freedom but also financial freedom. Just my 2c.

    2. Re:MySQL greetings by krow · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you look around there are couple of articles that quote David on why he is leaving. It is perfectly amicable, he just dislikes paperwork and would prefer to not deal with it.

            -Brian

      --
      You can't grep a dead tree.
  3. Re:MySQL sucks by TheLink · · Score: 5, Informative

    "and the utility of a RDBMS is not defined by database sizes it can handle"

    Actually there is some relevance.

    If you needed a database gigabytes in size a few _years_ ago, MySQL would have been a really bad choice (it still is crap, just less so IMO).

    For MyISAM:
    You would have to configure it to get tables bigger than the default 4GB limit (there's a number of row limit and table size limit). Hope you don't make the new setting too small so you're still working in the place when those run out too ;).

    For Innodb:
    Before the single file per table, if you're moving about gigabytes of stuff, you end up with one huge multigigabyte innodb table.

    For both:
    Adding an index was the same as "alter table" and involved making a copy of the table.

    So let's say you have a 40GB table and 40GB of space free. No index add for you :).
    Keep in mind if you have plenty of space free making a copy of a 40GB table does take time.

    BTW concurrent inserts to an innodb table with an auto increment field were slow till only recently (well allegedly they've fixed that).

    --
  4. Re:That's the power of the open source license. by SiggyTheViking · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, there is this.

  5. David Axmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lots of press about a not to large event. I have been working less with MySQL over the past several years (as the company has grown). And when we got acquired we got to big for me (I like to know everyone in a company).

    A huge part of my work have been spreading FreeSoftware/OpenSource and I will continue to do that. And tell about the MySQL story many times more hoping to inspire others to try to start FLOSS businesses.

    And I hope to meet many of all the people who made MySQL such a sucess many times over the coming years. /David (who posts so seldom he does not remember his slash login/password..)