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Oracle Responds To MySQL Purchase Concerns

Posted by Soulskill on from the we-cool-man-we-cool dept.

Luke has no name writes "Yesterday we discussed MySQL founder Monty Widenius's objections to the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle. Today, Oracle released a statement to address some of these issues. Among their commitments, Oracle says they intend to continue releasing MySQL under the GPL, allow vendors to produce 'any-license' third-party engines, maintain the Reference Manual, invest millions into the product, and create a 'customer advisory board.' The pledges are still not enough for some, however."

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Makes sense by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you think about it makes sense for Oracle to continue developing MySQL, since this is like Nissan and Infiniti where the customer is provided with a high-end product and a low-end product. Oracle gets to offer service for both, recognising that not everyone wants to have to deal with the Oracle database product, either due to cost or needs. At the same time for customers growing past what MySQL is good at, Oracle can then offer them an upgrade path to their premium product.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    1. Re:Makes sense by herring0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Along the same line as the high-end/low-end thing Oracle does have a 'low-end' Oracle database (Oracle XE) but it's never really gotten any kind of following or use that I have seen. So I could definitely understand their interest in providing an entry-level system with their name attached.

      I've not understood the complaints about sharing the market space. Anyone running full-blown Oracle database systems will be well and truly beyond MySQL. Aside from that, try and get some PHB to understand that MySQL is in any way comparable to Oracle.

      On the plus side- if Oracle can actually provide an easy to use path to migrate from MySQL to Oracle or to provide some kind of abstraction layer that would let you use MySQL-backed applications with Oracle I would cheer them to no end.

      And as for the founder's (and the founder's buddy referenced in the article) concerns about the future of the product then he shouldn't have sold the damn thing. So sorry, you sold your rights to it. Fork it and start over if you really care that much.

  2. Fork? by ickleberry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Would it not be a good idea to fork MySQL at this point? rather than relying on Oracle who pledge (which is not legally binding) to continue supporting MySQL and giving it away for free. Even though there is no compelling reason for them to unless they plan to assimilate it into their outrageously priced commercial database packages

    Big companies like Oracle are just not to be trusted, any embracing they do must be seen as simply the first step to extending and extinguishing. It would be completely naive to think otherwise

  3. Re:Why bother with MySQL? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because 99.99% of the web hosting companies offer LAMP setups?

  4. Re:Monty and Florian want MySQL to be BSD licensed by mcoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, you could always switch to PostgreSQL. Once the switch is made, you never have to look back.