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Is MySQL's Community Eating the Company?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the get-yer-drizzle-on dept.

mjasay writes "Craigslist's Jeremy Zawodny reviews the progress of MySQL as a project, and discovers that through third-party forks and enhancements like Drizzle and OurDelta 'you can get a "better" MySQL than the one Sun/MySQL gives you today. For free.' Is this a good thing? On one hand it demonstrates the strong community around MySQL, but on the other, it could make it harder for Sun to fund core development on MySQL by diverting potential revenue from the core database project. Is this the fate of successful open-source companies? To become so successful as a community that they can't eke out a return as a company? If so, could anyone blame MySQL/Sun for creating its own proprietary fork in order to afford further core development?"

6 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Welcome to GPL/OSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is always the case when you release open source. Someone else can offer support cheaper than you. Someone else can make modifications that people want. Someone else can even fork it and choke you out if they're doing whatever gets more attention than what you are doing. The good news (for them) is that you provided them a getting-started point with all your work so they didn't have to put all that time (and money, since time is money) into getting it off the ground. This is the way GPL/OSS is *supposed* to work. You have to keep investing more time and money while pushing and driving your costs to zero or you'll get snaked by just about anyone else who has the motivation to do so.

  2. Huh? by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If it's all OSS, then why isn't MySQL picking up the best 3rd party pieces and rolling them back into the official distribution?

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  3. In a word, 'yes' by StringBlade · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sun/MySQL can and should be blamed if they are failing the community that made MySQL so popular and strong.

    Sun has a bad reputation for having very closed open source projects such as OpenOffice. The project is managed much more like a proprietary venture than an open source project and community input is minimized or ignored altogether.

    I can't feel sorry for Sun when they drop buku bucks on MySQL and then complain that others are taking their revenue away from them doing what the OSS community does best - improve the software on their own.

    --
    ...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
  4. Re:lack of understanding of the biz model by neomunk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think it's Taco's way of passive-aggressive intellectual baiting. He wants us to get pissed about the idea and shoot it down thoroughly.

    At least that's what I -HOPE- is going on.

  5. Re:more of a sign they need to improve their proce by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Interesting


    An important question is not whether the Open Source community is eating some of SUN's cake, but whether the cake itself (and thus SUN's total amount of cake) is larger because of the community. I don't have any figures but this is at least a considerable possibility. After all you have something technically superior like PostgreSQL *ahem* ;) but MySQL has far greater popularity which I think it would have been held back from without the surrounding community and their efforts.

    Half of a big cake or all of a small one. SUN bet on the former, I think.

    --

    Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
  6. Re:more of a sign they need to improve their proce by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't HATE Microsoft like so many people do. Making money is not evil.

    Note: I strongly dislike Microsoft, but not because they're profitable.

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    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?