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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?"
He also spammed everybody who's ever been dumb enough to let him get anywhere near their e-mail address with the same self-serving, hypocritical screed...
This has been hashed out before. Monty wants to force the legitimate owner of MySQL to give up its rights to the documentation and proprietary parts of the source code so he can deploy his own commercial product using MariaDB. It's that simple. He got a big payoff when he cashed out and now he wants to double dip by getting back for free what he has already been compensated for.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
FTA:
Q: Didn't you sell MySQL to Sun? Do you want to have the cake and eat it too?
First a little background:
I started to work on a code that would later become MySQL in 1982. MySQL was released in 1995 under a dual licensing scheme that allowed David Axmark and me to very quickly work full time on developing MySQL.
I lost the rights to the MySQL copyright in 2001 when MySQL AB was created and we allowed investors to come in. We needed to bring in investors to be able to create a full-scale working company to satisfy big customers and to be able to hire more developers and take MySQL to the next stage. To ensure that MySQL would continue to be free, David and I stated in the shareholder agreement that MySQL AB would have to keep MySQL under an open source license. The problem with a shareholder agreement is that it is terminated when the company is sold. This is just how things works.
David and I however thought that this would not be a problem, as we would help ensure that MySQL would be bought by a good owner.
I continued to lead the MySQL project and have been one of the leaders and top contributors for the project since then.
When the sales process to Sun started, I was at the time not anymore in the MySQL Board (just a MySQL shareholder). I was just informed about the deal, after it was agreed to. I did get money for my shares, that is true, but it did not change in any way my dedication or involvement in the MySQL project.
Background: MySQL is an open-source database used by millions. Originally developed by closely-held Swedish company MySQL AB, it was sold to Sun Microsystems Inc in January 2008. Sun is now in the process of being acquired Oracle Corporation. The deal is still awaiting European regulatory approval.
Not happy with selling MySQL AB to Sun for a cool billion, Monty Widenius is now trolling regulators, the media, and anyone who will listen in his efforts to get back control of "his" database (without having to give back the money).
European regulators still don't "get" the open-source software model
The Europeans are holding up their approval of the Sun-Oracle deal because of concerns that the acquisition will reduce competition in the database industry. Oracle Corp, which is already the dominant player in large-scale corporate databases, already "controls" several open-source database products such as Oracle Berkeley DB and the InnoDB transactional storage engine for MysQL
The reason I put "controls" in quotes is because it's very difficult to actually exert full control an open-source project, especially one that is licensed under the GPL or similar open-source license. It would probably be more accurate to say that Oracle "sponsors" both BerkeleyDB and InnoDB.
It's all about being an unabashed hypocrite
Widenius was originally able to control MySQL by insisting that the copyright for all code contributed by outsiders be assigned to MySQL AB. By doing this, Widenius was able to "dual-license" MySQL, with both a free GPL version and a paid commercial version.
This licensing scheme was good enough when Widenius was in control of MySQL AB, but now that Oracle is buying Sun, suddenly Widenius wants both the licensing scheme changed to something that would allow his new company to sell modified copies without having to release the source code for their changes, and to have Oracle turn over control of MySQL to someone other than Oracle - perhaps the EU should consider (nudge nudge, wink wink) his new company, Monty Program AB?
Calls the GPL licensing scheme an "infection", wants the EU to violate international treaties
You can read more about the attempt to get the Europeans to retroactively change the licensing scheme from the GPL to something more "Monty Widenius-friendly":
In other words, he wants the European Union to violate Articles 9 and 12 of the Bern Convention on Copyrights and retroactively change the license from the GPL, which requires him to share any changes he makes to source code covered by the GPL, to a license that would let him take from the original authors, but not give back anything in return.
When we were kids, our parents told us "share and share alike." The authors who contributed source code under the GPL adhered to this principle. If you don't want to share your changes, simply don't "borrow" their
Can you elaborate on the 'correct' with emphasis?
Google says that both postgresql and mysql get hits from 'incorrect results'. Are you stating that mysql's bugs have gone unfixed while postgre's have not? Or what?
For fairness, I'm going by MySQL version 5.5, the development version.
The default storage engine will quietly ignore foreign key constraints and transactions. source for default engine, claim that MySQL parses and ignores for non-InnoDB
There are multiple "SQL Modes" that can alter correctness, source, but by default the DBMS doesn't try to validate input. It's pretty confusing what mode does what, and I don't care enough to figure it out, but MySQL's approach has always been Do What I Think You Mean, and if they set the new version to be ANSI compliant by default it'd break all the existing sites built on it.
(I'm claiming this qualifies as "not being correct" by virtue of the Information Principle. Granted, SQL itself violates it in many ways, but MySQL proved that you can do worse than SQL.)
PostgreSQL has a far more correct transaction model. In some ways, they're actually better than Oracle. (In Oracle, a DDL statement will start a new transaction, whereas PostgreSQL wraps DDL into a transaction.) For starters, there aren't multiple "storage engines" per table with different transactional behaviors. source, sort of.
Also, PostgreSQL, to my knowledge, correctly validates input. It's kind of hard to cite a source for this since there's just no FAQ entry "Q. How do I configure PostgreSQL to silently corrupt my data? A. You can't." But by the same token, they don't have any long-standing terrible design decisions that they have to maintain compatibility with.