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Widenius Warns Against MySQL Falling Into Oracle's Hands
jamie sends in a blog post from MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius calling for help to "save MySQL from Oracle's clutches." While the US DoJ approved Oracle's purchase of Sun back in August, the European Commission has been less forthcoming. Widenius points out that Oracle has been using their customers to put pressure on the EC, and he questions Oracle's commitment to MySQL, saying their vague promises aren't good enough. He writes:
"Oracle has NOT promised (as far as I know and certainly not in a legally binding manner): To keep (all of) MySQL under an open source license; Not to add closed source parts, modules or required tools; To not raise MySQL license or MySQL support prices; To release new MySQL versions in a regular and timely manner; To continue with dual licensing and always provide affordable commercial licenses to MySQL to those who needs them (to storage vendors and application vendors) or provide MySQL under a more permissive license; To develop MySQL as an Open Source project; To actively work with the community; Apply submitted patches in a timely manner; To not discriminate patches that make MySQL compete more with Oracle's other products; To ensure that MySQL is improved also in manners that make it compete even more with Oracle's main offering."
That's one of the reasons we have open source licenses. So we can fork if we have to.
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Besides being a hippocrite, after he was paid, bolted for the door the first opportunity he got. If it was so important to him, he wouldn't have sold to Sun in the first place. Man up and stay with the company and product if you are so concerned.
So, now, being a very rich guy (1B is a lot of money), he wants to it back for free? That's fair... Right...
It's strangely appropriate that Neo, when he went to see the Oracle to find out that he is The One, was also shown that the reality he was constantly presented with was simply a computer manipulation. This is why "there is no spoon" was such a critical piece of the Matrix puzzle. There may be no spoon, but there can still be a fork.
The Oracle told Neo that he wasn't The One, but the Oracle was lying and just telling him what he needed to hear. The One knows that there is a fork, even if the Oracle leads him astray.
Then there was a whole lot of crap about rogue agents in the system, but the whole movie was clearly an allegory about databases and the GPL.
Widenius tell us sooner?!?
If he gave a shit about what happened to MySQL, he would not have sold it.
Instead, he made gobs of money and no longer has a say in what happens to the property except insofar as he is free to fork it.
Perhaps Monty SHOULDN'T HAVE SOLD the damn thing in the first place if he's so worried about these things happening, no? Besides, there is NOTHING in the world preventing him from forking it, naming it something else and continuing development. NOTHING.
People in the Open Source community have been warning against this for years with MySQL. It is one of the key tenets in the PostgreSQL vs MySQL playbook. Use PostgreSQL because no single company controls the source. It can't be bought. MySQL dug its own destiny by tying its hand into the GPL AND (note the AND) being owned by a single entity.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
How about calling the fork 'MySQL2: The Sequel'?
No one should take his opinion seriously because if he really cared then it wouldn't have sold it. Just fork the thing and forget Oracle.
Maybe he's hoping it would stay open source so he could pinch Oracle's improved code an basically have his mysql money and access to the myql code as it improves so he can plug it into his branch.
As others in this discussion have pointed out, if the concern about Oracle close-sourcing components of MySQL, then why not fork it now?
Also, beyond the large installed user base, is there anything particularly important about MySQL as a database that other open source databases cannot do?
But for me, the biggest frustration is that while there is all this concern about MySQL, the lack of direction is really damaging Sun who make excellent servers (SPARC and x64), software (Solaris 10/Open Solaris with ZFS, Dtrace, Containers etc. etc, OpenOffice, Glassfish, Virtualbox, Sun Cluster (free), QFS/SAMFS (cluster FS)) and many more interesting technologies).
IMHO, the existence of Sun is a positive thing for the open source community and MySQL is a small and largely unimportant part of Sun's inventory.
I agree that Oracle's dominance and proprietary nature places it in a unique position to dictate terms to its customers. The problem is that Oracle is at least twenty years ahead of all of their competitors in database technology. Oracle 7, ca 1991, has a better overall implementation than the latest and greatest from IBM, Microsoft, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and so on. I mean MySQL is barely out of the 'toy' stage (special purpose applications excluded). In the intervening two decades Oracle has widened the gap. That means for a certain classes of OLTP applications, people tend to think you are suicidal if you recommend anything else.
The only way to minimize this problem is to bring (open source) databases closer to parity, even with where Oracle was twenty years ago. PostgreSQL is the only one that comes close in the open source world. MySQL started out with so many bizarre design decisions and gratuitous incompatibilities, that I wonder if it will *ever* come close, at least not without losing backward compatibility in a big way.
Seriously, these MySQL founders have been whining ever since they sold out to Sun.
Please stop. If you're worried about MySQL why did you sell the rights in the first place?
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
Agreed. As a big ferinstance, MySQL just barely got two-way replication w/ 5.1, and even then you had to do some seriously weird hoodoo on it to make that happen (hint: it's not a listed feature)... this is a basic function of any full-on enterprise-level DB.
Now Postgres comes fairly close, but everyone else can't even touch it.
If Postgres ever got something resembling the ease and power of RAC, then Oracle would have something to worry about. Until then, they're in a position to dictate whatever terms they want to. (I would've put MS SQL Server as a contender, but clustering that into something resembling RAC is a friggin' nightmare to build and maintain, and I doubt that too many MCDBAs have quite wrapped their heads around using SQL Server on a Core (read: non-UI) install of Windows Server just yet.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
On the contrary, it is not a problem at all. MySQL can be forked and the people dependent on it can use the forked version indefinitely. The commercial users who want to stick with the evolution of "MyOracle" can pay for the privilege. Everyone is happy. The EC has no need to worry. A fork of MySQL could provide all the necessary competition, to say nothing of PostgreSQL.
I encourage anyone who mistakes Monty for a friend of Open Source to do a little reading...
The case against the case against Oracle-MySQL
MySQL and a tale of two biases
Monty Program AB's Suggestion to EU Commission to Get Rid of the GPL on MySQL
How Many Times Can Monty Sell MySQL?
MySQL is the Visual Basic of databases - clumsy and of poor quality, used most strongly by people who don't know any better. I would be delighted to see MySQL fail as a project and have its mindshare go to projects that are superior, like PostgreSQL. There are only two things I can think of that the world would miss - MySQLe (the embedded version, which competes with BDB-esque type uses - it's a really cool idea) and the solid Windows support (PostgreSQL added this about a year ago - I'm not sure how solid it is yet).
MySQL's wins tend to be based on good marketing for a bad product.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
#40. I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
As long as there was a company behind it, there was always potential that it could be bought. Switch to PostgreSQL. Nobody owns it.
A fork of MySQL could provide all the necessary competition, to say nothing of PostgreSQL.
It's not quite as bad as it was 5 years ago, but there are still a hell of a lot of F/OSS applications which only support MySQL and users who have neither the need nor the desire to tweak them to support PostgreSQL.
(Though FWIW, I stopped taking MySQL seriously when I figured out the product was designed with a downright cavalier attitude to data integrity)
This is all about the EU blocking Oracle's acquisition of Sun. They are trolling for testimonials about how the Sun acquisition would force people to buy Oracle DB, which is almost certainly would not:
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/ibu_index.php?storyid=832
Look at Berkeley DB (on which OpenLDAP uttely depends.) It's now "Oracle Berkeley DB". I don't see any monkey business with that arrangement (although the OpenLDAP people are probably working on ditching BDB just as due diligence.)
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Just to make his life easier?
Welcome to the world of commercial open source...
I didn't say "features" (although there are those) but rather "better overall implementation".
For example, with Oracle you can add columns, drop columns, and modify columns while there are ongoing transactions against the table. Try that with DB2 sometime.
MySQL is worse:
That is a trivial example. Generally speaking, however, Oracle gets significant new features with a high quality implementation about a decade before anyone else does. For example, during the 1990s the lack of MVCC and row level locking were serious problems with virtually every database except Oracle. Without them, you can't reliably run large or long running transactions without risking locking every other user out of the database, even if the transactions don't have any row level overlap.
No single entity controls the source of mysql either. It's GPL. If you want to fork it, fork it. You guys are missing the point.
The point is Widenius wants to start a new company, and wants to work off of what mysql, the company (and thousands of volunteers who have contributed to the project) have created over the past N years. He does not care if it goes to Oracle, Microsoft, some made-up nonprofit-ish foundation, or dies. He could really care less about that. He wants to build a company that will make a proprietary product and will make him money.
The thorn in his side, however, is the fact that he can't take the code that was once released as GPL and use it in his proprietary software. He either has to open up his software (which he does not want to do), or else not be able to benefit from all those years worth of effort by mysql AB and others who have contributed to the project.
If the license was just about anything but GPL (apache, BSD, whatever), he could do just that. But he can't.
What, you really think it's all about evil Oracle taking over mysql, and it's not really the license that's a thorn in Wideniuses side? Read a more in-depth analysis by someone who understands the issue a _whole lot better_ than I or just about any of you folks do. Here: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091208104422384
Jobs? Which jobs?
This is correct; using MySQL despite the availability of a clearly superior open source competitor is definitely using the tool wrong.
I don't work for Oracle, and I would like to see other databases to get into the same league inf every material respect. Take Oracle RAC (formerly Oracle Parallel Server) for example, Oracle's shared everything database clustering technology. There are no open source equivalents. MS SQL, PostgreSQL, and MySQL don't have anything like it. Apparently IBM DB2 does, but only in the mainframe editions.
There are often things that can be done to work around these limitations (replication works in some cases, for example), it is just a question of cost effectiveness. There is no reason to buy Oracle just because it is "Oracle". Only if it does what you need better than the alternatives. For many businesses that is the case. Oracle doesn't dominate the business because of FUD. It dominates due to true technical superiority. A business would be positively stupid to pay a large premium for a database that doesn't have any real superiority to much less expensive (if not free) alternatives. That is one of the reasons why it would be great if the alternatives caught up. Transparent clustering for PostgreSQL would be outstanding.
I *can* use PostgreSQL to do everything I could with Oracle 7 back in the early 90s. That is saying something (MySQL doesn't come close). A lot of people don't need much of what Oracle has added since then. If that is the case, there is a great case to be made for using something else. It is certainly a lot less expensive.
Maria: She goes down frequently and has no standards. Unfortunately, she's full of bugs and may silently truncate your input :(
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Online upgrades. Suppose you have a service that needs to be available on a 24 x 7 basis. Is there any reason to shut everything down just because the upgrade script needs to add a new column, drop an old one, or increase the precision or maximum length of an existing one?
We do software as a service, for example, and generally speaking, we don't take our site down *ever*, certainly not for application software updates. Logged in users stay logged in and continue their work without noticing.
First came QUEL. The followup developed at IBM was jokingly called SEQUEL. It was changed to SEQL and then SQL for trademark reasons. See Wikipedia.
So it was originally called "sequel". Pronouncing it as S-Q-L came later.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
That is a great comparison, and contrary to some of the responses, being able to do alter table statements on an in use production system is vital to any serious database solution. It doesn't say anything about Oracle vs. Postgres though as Postgres has been able to do this for a very long time.
I'm not just trying to be contrary here, I would really like to know. What does Oracle have that puts it (20 years?) ahead of Postgres (other than RAC, there were very informative posts above about that).
Online upgrades. Suppose you have a service that needs to be available on a 24 x 7 basis. Is there any reason to shut everything down just because the upgrade script needs to add a new column, drop an old one, or increase the precision or maximum length of an existing one?
We do software as a service, for example, and generally speaking, we don't take our site down *ever*, certainly not for application software updates. Logged in users stay logged in and continue their work without noticing.
The same is true for any serious MySQL site. Just with MySQL, you have to go to the hassle of take out slave, apply change, let slave catch up, repeat for all other slaves, promote some slave to master, apply change to old master to get everything working. This works for changing columns' type/adding columns/removing columns/etc. because MySQL normally uses statement-based replication, not row-based. It can be fiddly, but it works fine. Wikipedia has no downtime for database changes, or any planned downtime at all, and it's a pure MySQL shop. Of course, being able to change tables without this whole procedure is probably quite convenient.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
Oracle has announced a statement today making commitments concerning MySQL that may (or may not) address some of these concerns -- of both Widenius and the EU.
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Oracle-Corporation-NASDAQ-ORCL-1090000.html
These include:
* Continued Availability of Storage Engine APIs
* Commitment to enhance MySQL in the future under the GPL
* Support not mandatory
* Increase spending on MySQL research and development
* Continuing to maintain the MySQL Reference Manual
* Preserve Customer Choice for Support
And some other things about preserving the conditions of licenses currently held by storage vendors.
Healthy skepticism is of course always a good idea. On first reading, I can't tell how binding these commitments are (the statement says "Oracle hereby publicly commits to the following", and that's about it), and it doesn't exactly make Widenius' commitment to the timeliness of new releases and patches, except for the commitment to increase spending, which Oracle presumably would like to have result in new revenue.
But Oracle is evidently trying to address the EU's concerns in an effort to get the deal approved, and the EU might get them to make these commitments binding. The EU's initial reaction appears to be positive:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a4SRxTHKHzTA&pos=7
Always keep a sapphire in your mind