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Why You Shouldn't Panic About Closed Source MySQL Extensions
jfruhlinger writes "Oracle has released proprietary extensions to the open source MySQL database, seeming to reinforce the worst fears of those in the open source community who opposed Oracle's acquisition of MySQL in the first place. But open source observer Brian Proffitt urges you not to panic: This dual source strategy really isn't unusual in the commercial open source world, Oracle has already released a bevy of open source improvements to the database, and anyway the EU extracted a commitment to keep MySQL open for another four years when it approved the Sun-Oracle merger."
open source observer Brian Proffitt
lol
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
... after which Oracle will be @ liberty to digest MySQL as closed, and the EU will have nothing to say about it.
from MySQL to PG. It was easy. You should do it too.
because of postgresql?
You can't handle the truth.
By "keep MySQL open for another four years", they mean "pay lip service to its life support, then on day 1462 stop even that". Sorry, but unless one of independent forks really takes off, I'm not going to even look at something else than Postgres. For that "bevy of open source improvements", what exactly has been added? Heck, MySQL development has been dormant even during Sun days.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
...because if you aren't already running some better DBMS, chances are that you are probably generally unable to panic about any DBMS quality.
Wake up. MariaDB has been around for some time already!
Free software is about setting minimum levels of respect: the four freedoms.
Many projects go beyond this, by using copyleft, by assisting community participation, by being transparent, etc.
By abandoning this standard, Oracle shows itself as just another free software freerider, not to be trusted and not worthy of community support or good will.
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In VirtualBox v4.0, Oracle released the core as an open-source projet and the proprietary extensions as a plug-in. This proprietary extension is free for home use but commercial users must by a licence. The extension is not 100% necessary but does provides some very useful features, such as being able to connect to the "console" of a headless VM. Cool right?
Well, not really. There is at the moment no way to actually buy such a licence from Oracle, so all the people using VirtualBox v4.0 with this extension in a business are technically out of compliance.
VirtualBox is cool, but they really need some leadership from Oracle.
Nobox: Only simple products.
How long did it take for LibreOffice to take over from OpenOffice?
You'll probably see a perfect replacement fork for MySQL the day it's open source life ends.
Perhaps the binary-only extensions from Oracle are part of an attempt to prevent that sort of thing. After all, if a large part of the user base is hooked on non-forkable proprietary extensions during the next few years, then forking MySQL when Oracle's commitment to keep it FOSS expires would be largely fruitless. Moreover, relying on these extensions may also make it harder to port one's DB and related applications to Postgres or other alternatives.
For this reason, I'd say Mr. Proffitt is utterly wrong: there is much to worry about. Each proprietary binary extension is potentially a poisoned chalice, and should be viewed as such.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I would think most distros will have policies that will make this a second class DB or drop it entirely. It rules it out of Debian for the next release, openSUSE will drop it to non-oss, gentoo wont like binaries and so on.
Having to go the Oracle website to get it would put off the majority of new non-commercial users or anyone wanting automatic update notification.
And, as with OpenOffice, the community will fork the Database and add a bunch of useful features to it.
Finally Oracle will either "donate" MySQL back to the community or keep it closed source and everyone will move over to PostgreSQL.
I suspect the binary-only extensions from Oracle are part of an attempt to prevent that sort of thing. After all, if a large part of the user base becomes reliant on non-forkable proprietary extensions during the next few years, then forking MySQL when Oracle's commitment to keep it FOSS expires would be largely fruitless. Moreover, relying on these extensions may also make it harder to port one's DB and related applications to Postgres or other alternatives. Furthermore, a MySQL donated to the community would be worthless to those who need the extensions (and nothing prevents Oracle from making those extensions quite expensive later). Conceivably, the extensions could even make it easier to port to a commercial DB offering from Oracle, if they are cunning enough.
For this reason, I'd say Mr. Proffitt is utterly wrong: there is much to worry about in these extensions. Each proprietary binary extension is potentially a poisoned chalice, and should be viewed as such.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I've migrated dozens of BIG sites from MySQL to PostgreSQL over the last couple of years, and I can confirm that more RAM was needed in some cases. But since this was on enterprise-class servers running 64-bit OSes (on SPARC and amd64), adding some GB RAM wasn't a big deal. The result was even better performance, both on Solaris and FreeBSD. The applications were never short of CPU cycles though.
So if you need 3-4 times the hardware, you're doing something wrong. Definitely wrong.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
What features will be added to MySQL that MariaDB doesn't have?
Oh, maybe you meant "what killer features that have been already in MariaDB are still not in MySQL"? Yeaaarh, I'm sure you made a mistake. In this case...
Ever wonder why MySQL is still stuck with a single core taking 100% of your CPU, while other cores are idling doing nothing? MariaDB, and it's been more than a year it does, had multi-threading. If you didn't know, it's been written by one of the main authors of MySQL in the first place, that felt he shouldn't stay in this Oracle world. And he's doing very well, by himself... The good thing: MariaDB is ABI compatible. Yes, it's a pure replacement. Remove MySQL, install MariaDB instead, and there you go, you got a multi-threaded MySQL. That alone is enough to convince any decent admin.
After the release of Postgresql 9.x. MySQL has no place, period. MySQL can't even get UTF-8 right. Bug laden transaction support. TS engine? CRAP. Trash OO wannabe. If you do not need the features, then use mongo or couch. I don't know why anyone would use it knowing Postgresql exists.
mysql = java = sun = oracle = trash