Sun Announces New MySQL, Michael Widenius Forks

viktor.91 writes "Sun Microsystems announced three new MySQL products: MySQL 5.4, MySQL Cluster 7.0 and MySQL Enterprise Partner Program for 'Remote DBA' service providers." which showed up in the firehose today next to Glyn Moody's submission where he writes "Michael Widenius, founder and original developer of MySQL, says that most of the leading coders for that project have either left Sun or will be leaving in the wake of Oracle's takeover. To ensure MySQL's survival, he wants to fork from the official version — using his company Monty Program Ab to create what he calls a MySQL "Fedora" project. This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?"

Comments

It depends

[raffe]

It depends on the license of the software. Always.

Re:It depends

[digitalunity]

Well, even if the maintainers have the copyrights, that only means future versions can be closed source. They can't terminate the already-outstanding licenses without a breach of terms. They also own the trademarks to the MySQL also.

IMO, Sun lost the hearts and minds of the developers which is where the real value was. The trademarks and copyrights are worthless if the community views MySQL's direction is wrong and moves entirely to a fork.

Re:It depends

[AKAImBatman]

They can't terminate the already-outstanding licenses without a breach of terms.

On the flip side, the forking company can't use the same business model as MySQL AB. Since MySQL owned the copyrights, they could see non-GPLed versions of the software under terms that were more palatable to corporations. To a certain degree, it served their purposes to fuel GPL fears.

Now that the forking company is 100% bound by the GPL, they must attempt to undo any misplaced fears about the GPL and seek to convince companies that what they really want is a support licene, additional tools, or trained consultants.

Re:It depends

[paulthomas]

Agreed. See x.org for how quickly a community can switch to a fork.

Re:It depends

[TheRaven64]

What do you think most companies do with an RDBMS if they are not building software on top of it? Most either build in-house software on top of it, or license third-party software to run on top of it. In both of these situations the license is important. There's a reason MySQL AB made so much money selling licenses that let people avoid the GPL.

Cases Like OpenOffice.org

[eldavojohn]

This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?

No one. Or, perhaps, everyone. That's kind of the point, isn't it? It isn't locked into anyone's individual grip.

"Open source" is just too broad a term to address this way. You would have to look at individual licenses. On top of that, you have things like Open Office, which is "open source" but clearly controlled by Sun (or Oracle now I guess).

While you claim you can always fork an open source project, it's not always that simple. Especially in massive open source efforts (like Linux) where they have contacts and knowledge that are vital to the project. It isn't possession or control or fiscal ownership but instead a name you've made for yourself as the Father of some project that gives you "ownership" or "rights." And usually the market share of your user base reflects that.

You'd be surprised how many of your open source solutions are actually controlled and operated by a single entity. And this is great for those products because the entity is usually donating a lot of time and money to it. Should the entity ever drop out, that's when someone can pick up the cross and take it a new direction with everyone helping.

I think it's time to switch...

[Khan]

...to PostgreSQL. Seriously, I already use it for GpsDrive. Now I just need to convince the Cacti devs to switch over.

Re:I'm so going to get flamed...

[Abcd1234]

If we look at MySQL for example: here's a company that produces half way decent database engine that that make open source. They play the open source game "properly" producing code that a mortal can compile to get a working database. While the company is giving the community what they want everything is hunky dory and there is peace.

Enter Sun who buy MySQL and suddenly the community isn't happy and it's fork fork fork.

Congratulations! With your very example you actually managed to disprove your original assertion. See, your original claim was this:

"As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product."

But, the very first paragraph in that quoted text demonstrates that isn't actually the case. The community was very happy with and supportive of MySQL corporate.

The problem, as you pointed out, was the purchase by Sun. In that case, the customers didn't feel Sun would necessarily have their interests at heart, and so there was dissatisfaction. This is only increased by the fact that Sun has now been purchased by Oracle, a company that actually markets a product in the same general space (I would argue they aren't actually in the same market, and so MySQL has little to fear, but... people aren't exactly rational).

So the key to running a company on an open codebase seems simple: keep your customers happy, and don't give them the impression that their interested are being threatened. But, of course, that's a good general rule to follow regardless of the license your code falls under. The only real difference between open and closed source, in this case, is that if the source is closed, you may have achieved vendor lock-in, which gives you more freedom to buttfuck your customers, as they won't have a clear avenue for recourse... but if that's your strategy, well, frankly, fuck you.