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Mickos Says MySQL Code Better Than Ever Under Oracle
jbrodkin writes "Oracle hasn't done much to foster a community around open source projects, but the former CEO of MySQL said Oracle's expertise has helped boost the database to new heights from a technology perspective. 'Many in the community will ... feel that it's not as open and open source as it used to be and that's true,' Marten Mickos said. 'But the core product, the actual code, is in better shape than ever. And I think they will keep it that way.' Mickos, now head of Eucalyptus, left Sun before the Oracle merger because he correctly predicted that the company could not survive on its own."
PostgreSQL will stay open, and stay strong.
Until Oracle buys them up too.
I've always preferred PostgreSQL anyway. It never acted as squirrely as mySQL always did for me (personal opinion).
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I think the founder of MySQL would disagree, since he forked MySQL and started MariaDB. MySQL 5.5 was a long time coming and added quite a bit, but much of what it added was already in the stable MariaDB by the time it came out. Some of the linux distros such as debian are looking to add or switch to mariadb. I switched to MariaDB a while ago and development in MySQL looked like it was starting to stagnate. Not to go dragging out things, but look into Maria, it has quite a few bug patches, performance enhancements, features and such that MySQL lacks and may never have if Oracle splits off community development features from the "enterprise" version.
PostgreSQL will stay open, and stay strong.
Until Oracle buys them up too.
Unlike MySql, there seems not to be a single entity that owns the copyright for PostgreSQL. Meaning: Oracle would have trouble to buy all the copyrights, probably it will think twice before doing trying to do it (and at the secind round of thinking, will actually stop of even attempting).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Oracle charges about $2,000 per server each year to use MySQL, and about $200 per user or $6,000 per processor for Oracle (perpetual licence).
With $10,000 you can get the MySQL Cluster edition (which is the highend version) for an unlimited number of users.
Oracle Enterprise is actually $47,500 per core base rate. Where it gets interesting is the fact that different processors are given different "core factors" based on their performance and/or Oracle's business interests that you multiply by the base price; so, for instance, Power7 and Itanium 9300 both have a core factor of 1.0 (full price) whereas various SPARC chips have 0.5 or 0.25.
I hope so because mysql runs like ass in the cloud.
How so?
On several large scale projects I worked on (online games) our servers were pushing (at peak) up to 5000k queries per second.. and this was a relational database.
Being a seasoned DBA I have found that most database issues (whether MySQL, PostGres, or Oracle) are related to the following:
1. Horrifying SQL statements written by amateurs that have no idea what they are doing to the server
2. Horrifying ORM's that uses a cascade of queries to do things that a single query can resolve.
3. People that have no clue how to tune their database to their application.
Most, if not all of the issues are related to the developer and *this* my friend is the real problem.
I've been through lots of version upgrades in the 5.1 series with a couple of our managed hosting customers, and they simply don't appear to be able to make a stable release. One customer's car loan system segfaulted after 600-odd days (surpriiiise!), another seems to break it every 100 or so. The latter had a support contract with MySQL AB and I dealt with them personally - what seemed really worrying was, even though this customer was paying £6000 per year, it *still* didn't seem important to anyone at the other end that a "stable" / "general availability" release of their flagship database was segfaulting. I had filed bugs, with backtraces and sample data, offered them them root passwords so they could do whatever they needed to catch the bug, but no thanks, we can't take control of your server.
To anyone that might say "but why not use 5.5, surely 5.1 is ancient history!" I'd say - this customer has been through 4, 5.0 and 5.1 and not found a single release that will stay up for more than a couple of hundred days. This customer is a MySQL "power user" who got burned on every new feature that was introduced. Stored procedures, the geospatial functions, massive sub-SELECTS - anything new tends to crash it even more often than before, and he's often had to back out and rewrite features as a result. So major version upgrades aren't considered lightly.
MySQL is going to need more than a press release to convince me that they have a commitment to high-quality code. I'll continue to plan my installations around the assumption that it dies under heavy traffic.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I'm a PostgreSQL contributor. Oracle can't buy my copyright. There are dozens of other code contributors just like me in that regard, working for many companies. It was possible to buy MySQL because most of the code was developed by MySQL Ab, and copyright assignments required for contributions to be merged. See Some thoughts on Copyright Assignment for more details. That's not the case for PostgreSQL.
Furthermore, the PostgreSQL community has already been through the process of having a single corporation "buy" many of the top contributors, when a company named Great Bridge hired many of them. The disruption to the PostgreSQL community of Great Bridge failing was such that even starting in that direction is actively rejected now. So even if a company did start gobbling up developers one at a time, they would face increasing resistance at obtaining the remaining ones.
I thought MySQL was under the GPL? You can't charge for using GPL'd software.
MySQL has always been available under a dual license, and you can charge for GPL'd software.
-- Linux user #369862
> Now they're charging for MySQL? Is this like Oracle Linux, where you are paying for the "support" or are they properly charging you?
The community version is still freely downloadable, as it has always been. Supported versions are freely downloadable too, but of course you have to cough up for maintenance contracts. That, too, is how it has always been.
I don't much look at the actual code, so I can't comment on the quality of that; but more bugs seem to get closed and more features seem to get developed than before. I'm not complaining.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
You have no idea what you're talking about, apparently. Get informed before you start whining.
The community editions of MySQL and Cluster (NDB) are still as freely downloadable as ever. If you want support, you'll have to cough up. I know, it's terribly bad form of them to not support you for free. Oh, except for the mailing lists, on which quite a few of the lead developers and some pretty good DBAs are active.
As for the Oracle licenses, you seem to be stuck in 1990 or something. Oracle pricing is way to complicated to explain here - even if I did understand all of it - but list price is one hell of a lot more expensive than what you say.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Uh, yes, you can, you just need to make sure your code is licensed under an OSI-approved license.
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You can charge anything you want for GPL software. $1b if you want. Your call.
But when the software is distributed, you must provide the source code free of charge. And you cannot prevent your customer from distributing said source code.
As far as Oracle is concerned, if they keep on improving MySQL and if they keep the community edition free, then it's all for the best. Why complaining?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
please see this tutorial to understand oracle licensing : http://www.oraclelicensestore.com/en/oracle-licensing-basic-tutorial
It's actually quite simple.
You use that phrase "quite simple" - I do not think it means what you think it means.
If a tutorial is required to understand the licensing, its not "quite simple."
>Why complaining? /. Oracle-phobia
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Nope, not me. I have not railed against Sun or Oracle, nor written open letters to the community. On the contrary. At Sun I was in charge of the MySQL business. When Oracle then acquired Sun, there was nothing wrong in it. I can admit that I personally did not specifically want MySQL to end up with Oracle, but that's just my personal view. Their acquisition of Sun (and of MySQL) was perfectly legitimate. I was invited as an expert witness to the European Commission and I told them the same.
Could be that you are mistaking me for one of the founders of MySQL. I was not a founder. I was the CEO.
Marten Mickos