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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?"
It depends on the license of the software. Always.
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.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
So the answer is yes.
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Did anyone else notice that his little toy database is practically useless without InnoDB, which was written by a third party and is owned by Oracle?
If you mean for transactions.
If you want a really fast free database that supports fulltext indexing, and you don't need transactions, MyISAM in the engine to use.
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.
My work here is dung.
Get the improved code here.
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I have to disagree, I think that would be immensely stupid of them. I think they'll just use it to try to funnel users butting up against its limits towards full Oracle. If they kill it they lose that potential sales channel.
Yeah, you're right. Foreign keys, who needs 'em?
Seriously though, this could be good news for PostgreSQL. Fingers Crossed.
But what license was the FICS code under? Was it really "open source"?
There are plenty of licenses that provide for distribution of source but are so restrictive that no one considers them to be "open source".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Or you can use SQLite, get more speed, and still have transactions. (Although fulltext indexing does require a loadable extension.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
FICS has been replaced by chessd: http://chessd.sourceforge.net/index-en.html
...to PostgreSQL. Seriously, I already use it for GpsDrive. Now I just need to convince the Cacti devs to switch over.
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As the owner of a software development company I think your would have to be stark raving nuts to open source your main product. It's not that the model can't work it just that if it becomes successful you are pretty much guaranteed to lose control of it at some point.
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. Only one of those forks needs to be any good and all of a sudden Suns not bought very much at all. If a company plays nice with the open source community forks are fairly easy but rare. The problem is they hang like a knife (or maybe that should be fork) over the company and if they are unfortunate enough to annoy the community they could eaisly lose control of their product.
That said I think there are situations where companies can participate in open source. The Linux kernel and Plone being a couple of good examples. Both of those projects are structured very differently to the MySQL situation though as no one company is trying to make a living off the code.
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If MySQL had a BSD license it would be owned by the community.
If MySQL had a "non-free" commecial license it would be owned by Oracle.
The mess MySQL, and you, find yourselves in is because of MySQL's stupid dual-level license bullshit. Nobody seems to be able to figure it out or agree on it and it has caused more column inches of claptrap on Slashdot than the MySQL/PostgreSQL threads themselves. MySQL's originator's wanted to have it both ways: Lots-O-corporate money AND GPL poster child. Well they got their money alright, but to get it they had to pray for a really wealthy, poorly managed corporation to come along and vet their convoluted business plan. That would be Sun.
Now, with a billion dollars spent to "buy" MySQL but a bunch of forks still out there, no company in their right mind is going to invest anything in MySQL because they'll be worried Widenius will just steal the improvements and fork it again. MySQL is pariah, it's poisoned.
If you're running any kind of data volume worth talking about you're better off with PostgreSQL. Not only is it faster with *real* queries and more robust, but now it's safer going forward.
Seriously though, this could be good news for PostgreSQL. Fingers Crossed.
AFAIK more and more people are using PostgreSQL. More and more providers are supporting it. Five years from now, it could be a whole different landscape...
Who said anything about closing the gap? Continuing to develop and support MySQL doesn't mean turning it into a powerhouse database like Oracle.
The simple fact is, MySQL and Oracle do not, and have never, played in the same league, and I believe it would be a mistake to try and turn MySQL into a shitty Oracle. MySQL has a niche... keep it there.
The gap between MySQL and Oracle is huge and not likely to be closed anytime soon.
Technology leaders in big companies aren't as into all the open source gossip as the slashdot crowd are and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't even know there were MySQL forks or what that meant.
They would rather go with a MySQL that is named MySQL and has a big company like Sun or Oracle, the leading db vendor that also owns the only sane database engine for MySQL, than some noname fork. Even if it was started by the MySQL founders and all the developers went to it. If all the MySQL developers go to a fork, well then Oracle developers will take over.
What's more concerning is IBMs partnership with EnterpriseDB, which is based on PostgreSQL.
If you want an open source database that closes the gap with Oracle, use PostgreSQL.
Sun should have never bought MySQL. Instead they should have put more effort into PostgreSQL. Sun has had some big wins with Solaris and Postgresql in the past and offer support for it on Solaris.
Must be tough since Oracle is an important part of Sun's business but Oracle has done things that could be considered as stabbing Sun in the back too.
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SQlite has supported per-table locking for a while, and I believe it supports per-row locking in some situations. It is not designed for concurrent writes, but it can be great for anything read-heavy workloads. It's certainly not suited for situations where you have a lot of concurrent writes, but for a CMS it can be a very good fit.
If you want full-text indexing, transactions, and lots of concurrent users, PostgreSQL is generally a better bet. MySQL is being squeezed at the bottom by SQLite and at the top by PostgreSQL, and both have less restrictive licenses (public domain and BSD, respectively). I'm amazed that it's survived this long.
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Yeah, you're right. Foreign keys, who needs 'em
They should even get rid of SQL support altogether and just call it My. Who needs all that complicated elitist crap anyway?
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The problem with forking is all the child processes, though.
Only two-bit operations that are run out of their mothers basement use PostgreSQL.
Operations like Skype
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You know, I never understood the point of InnoDB. One may want a complete, fully functional DBMS, in that case, there is PostgreSQL, or one may want a lightning fast data indexing/accessing machine, and for that case there is MySQL. InnoDB brings something that is slower than Postgres and still isn't a complete DBMS by any point of view.
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The point of MySQL isn't a "lightning fast data indexing/accessing machine". The point of MySQL is the modular backends which enable it to serve as a common gateway to tables that each use the storage engine most appropriate to the way the table is used. (some of which may require a lightning fast data indexing/acessing engine and accept some risks to get it, some tables may not.)
The point of InnoDB (and, presumably, Falcon) is to support the kind of usage scenarios for which traditional RDBMS are designed, while the point of certain other MySQL table drivers is to support other types of loads.
I started with MySQL because it had replication. Yeah, I know Postgres has slony or whatever it's called, but I cringe at the though of maintaining disparate pieces of software (that sometimes don't get along) on something as critical as a database. Maybe it's changed, maybe it hasn't, but that's how it was when I chose to use MySQL.
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