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Monty Wants To Save MySQL
An anonymous reader writes "It seems as if the MySQL author is trying hard to win back control over MySQL. In his blog he calls upon the MySQL users to 'Help keep the Internet free' by signing his petition. He fears that if Oracle buys Sun they automatically get MySQL which would spell doom for the project. But I have have mixed feelings with this call for help, because after all — who sold MySQL in the first place?"
I hope that the EU hurries up and approves Oracle's acquisition of Sun, so that Oracle can finally kill MySQL. It's a product line that should've been put down well over a decade ago.
Then we can all move on to using decent open source databases like PostgreSQL, Firebird and SQLite. We'll finally be able to use foreign keys and transactions when using the default storage engines...
Migrating your typical apps from MySQL to PgSQL can take a bit of effort, but it definitely isn't difficult.
Are you insane? In the current economic climate finding time to make a coffee is difficult.
In order to stay in business you have had to be damn lean recently. For a lean business finding the time to rewrite legacy applications is almost impossible as you have to concentrate on work that will bring in money and hence pay wages. Some legacy applications however might be reasonably mission critical and hence need continued security patches coming from upstream to the underlying database. There are going to be a lot of companies who built large web based applications on the LAMP stack and now have to try and find a way to recode a system for a different DB when they should be doing paid work.
Ok, maybe it will be a year or so before Oracle can screw MySQL into the ground, but that is still not very much time if you already have 6 months of booked in paid work. Normally you might be able to borrow money to fund an expansion of the development team, but you go to a bank as a small business and try and get some cash? If you do not have a house to offer up as security they are not interested, and who wants to put their house on the line. If MySQL does get bought by Oracle we can only hope that the recovery is in full swing before the ill effects of the takeover take hold.
The other issue here that currently SUN hold various patents covering MySQL for defensive purposes. This might cause substantial problems if an attempt was made to fork the project. I am not a lawyer so have no idea the extent of this issue, but just the uncertainty regarding this may put larger organisations from sponsoring a fork of the MySQL project.
Maybe then we will be able to call it the LAPP stack, but that is a long way off. In the mean time I would much rather see Oracle forced to sell MySQL or spin it off as a separate company as a condition of the purchase of SUN.
I dont read