Red Hat Ditches MySQL, Switches To MariaDB

An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat will switch the default database in its enterprise distribution, RHEL, from MySQL to MariaDB, when version 7 is released. MySQL's first employee in Australia, Arjen Lentz, said Fedora and OpenSuSE were community driven, whereas RHEL's switch to MariaDB was a corporate decision with far-reaching implications. 'I presume there is not much love lost between Red Hat and Oracle (particularly since the "Oracle Linux" stuff started) but I'm pretty sure this move won't make Oracle any happier,' said Lentz, who now runs his own consultancy, Open Query, from Queensland. 'Thus it's a serious move in political terms.' He said that in practical terms, MariaDB should now get much more of a public footprint with people (people knowing about MariaDB and it being a/the replacement for MySQL), and direct acceptance both by individual users and corporates."

Comments

MariaDB?

[ArcadeMan]

I use unencrypted XML and CSV files you insensitive clod!

Re:MariaDB?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't laugh - I worked for a company which used an excel sheet as a database. The tech would actually have to manually resize the table border in that sheet when the table became too full of test results. Labview + Visual Basic for the win.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:MariaDB?

[stanIyb]

I have become an absolute bootynude.

Re:MariaDB?

[Anonymous Coward]

The interesting part is: will Oracle's copy of RHEL include the change to use MariaDB?

Or will they 'fork' to keep their own MySQL?

Wish I was a fly on the wall @ oracle when this gets discussed :)

Re:MariaDB?

[monkeyhybrid]

In the telecoms lab I worked at 15 years ago or so, we used Visual Basic to control many of our GPIB test suites and they all spat out data as CSV files that could then be imported into Excel for quick and easy graphing, etc. It was maybe not the most elegant of solutions, but it was perfect for the task at hand. We could write new tests very quickly and the data could be easily emailed to anyone with Excel to analyse. There are not many things I'd suggest using Visual Basic for, or CSV for that matter, but for some jobs that simplicity is wonderful and a more 'professional' solution would have slowed the process down drastically.

Re:MariaDB?

[Anonymous Coward]

You joke but I believe mysql and mariadb both have a CSV and XML storage engines.

3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Here come the PostgreSQL fanboys, adding their standard fodder to everything related to MySQL.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a victory for Free Software as a whole. We can argue about ACID tests another day.

Congrats to the MariaDB team for making quality fork and fulfilling the dream of the GPL: that WHEN corporations try to buy/take our code we'll simply route around the damage.

Good job Gentlemen.

Re:3, 2, 1

[adnonsense]

Nah, Postgres sucks. Doesn't even have a decent REPAIR TABLE command or support for Februaries which have more than 29 days.

Re:3, 2, 1

[stanIyb]

Why are you cowering? It's because my power is incomprehensible to a pathetic individual such as yourself! Just vanish already, and don't you dare return until you become One With Gamemaker! Return to Gamemakerdom immediately, you worthless sow!

Re:3, 2, 1

[bluefoxlucid]

Sure, why not? MySQL is crap. MySQL is crap. 10 years later, MySQL is still crap. MariaDB and Percona are less crap, but still crap.

Oracle is on-par with PostgreSQL, with some drawbacks, and you can argue and haggle--personally I think Oracle is inferior, but you'll get dissenters and they *are* in the same class. MS SQL Server is inferior--it's a good product in its space, but its space is a subset space of PostgreSQL. More to the point, Oracle and MS SQL Server are both closed, proprietary pay-ware; PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB2, and SQLite are free. That means the argument is essentially PostgreSQL vs MySQL.

PostgreSQL actually functions like a real database (MySQL does a lot of crap it shouldn't), outperforms MySQL, has working replication now (FINALLY, since around 8.0-ish, a few short years back), has BETTER replication than MySQL, and is about as easy to set up (I learned it in about 30 minutes). In general it's a better product as a database. Since it has no real drawbacks besides blunt protocol compatibility (i.e. a MySQL-specific app can't talk to PostgreSQL, either because of network presentation protocol (MySQL protocol 3306) or application protocol (MySQL-specific command language)) compared to MySQL, and many advantages, it's essentially a higher-quality and thus better piece of software.

Optimally, RedHat, Debian, Ubuntu, SuSE, etc should provide the best MySQL possible--Percona, MariaDB, whatever--while providing the guideline that PostgreSQL is a better product. Because, hell, they're already endorsing by dumping MySQL instead of simply including both Percona and MariaDB. The issue is that the political chip of saying, "X is better than Y," is very volatile. We could sit here and hash out merits and come to that exact conclusion--but even then, when we're all convinced that this is FACT and not OPINION, what do you think would happen if RedHat and Ubuntu both flatly said, "Use PostgreSQL, MySQL is crap"?

Re:3, 2, 1

[frodo from middle ea]

You do realize that they were the ones who sold MySQL to Oracle in the first place, right ?

Re:3, 2, 1

[stanIyb]

Wow! Another Slashdot intellectual for me to defeat without a single problem! Why are you cowerin' as such never before!? Know your folly, Slashdot intellectual! It's time for me to grand slam your bare ass right into a mysterious fuckin' dark alley! Wow! A quarter going down a slot machine!

Such a thing!

Re:3, 2, 1

[VGPowerlord]

Congrats to the MariaDB team for making quality fork and fulfilling the dream of the GPL: that WHEN corporations try to buy/take our code we'll simply route around the damage.

Here's the real solution: Don't sell it to a corporation in the first place like Monty did.

Do I even need to point out that this kind of thing hurts the perception of Open Source developers and by extension Open Source software? Then again, it's about time we have a term to replace the horribly racist "Indian Giver" term. "MySQLGiver" maybe? "Open Source Giver"?

Re:3, 2, 1

[JDG1980]

If you buy web hosting from a cheap cpanel-based provider, you get MySQL for free and it's hard to set up anything else. Moreover, a moderately skilled web developer can get a database-driven site set up in just a couple of minutes with PHP+MySQL.

MySQL+PHP is popular for the same reason VB6 used to be popular. It's quick and easy and it gets stuff done. Elite computer scientists look down upon both because they are perceived as quick and dirty hacks. But that doesn't matter; for many applications, a quick and dirty hack is good enough.

Re:3, 2, 1

[gmuslera]

PostgreSQL is included with RedHat too, is not taken out. But, if despite all what its critics say, you still want a MySQLish database in Redhat, then you will have MariaDB, that is more performant and more future proof in the open side than MySQL.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Because every time I hear "Indian Giver" I think of Native Americans.

Damn those Algonquins!

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think Oracle is inferior maybe you need to learn performance tuning.

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

You do realize that they were the ones who sold MySQL to Oracle in the first place, right ?

No. Open source people never sold MySQL to Oracle.

What happened is that Monty sold MySQL to Sun, with a clause that it must not be sold to Oracle.
Oracle then bought Sun.

Re:3, 2, 1

[saider]

So they get to keep doing what they were doing AND have a boatload of cash in the bank.

Re:3, 2, 1

[ShanghaiBill]

Here's the real solution: Don't sell it to a corporation in the first place like Monty did.

MySQL had already been owned by a corporation for more than a decade before Sun bought it. That corporation was "MySQL AB", incorporated in Sweden.

Re:3, 2, 1

[greg1104]

Which part of that is supposed to make people feel comfortable that MariaDB will still be around in a few years, after Monty gets an offer to buy that company? "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results"

Re:3, 2, 1

[saider]

Monty made some money for himself - why shouldn't he do this, particularly when the sale of the product would not have any material long term impact to the availability of the product.

Sun paid him off, and now he is doing the exact same thing, in open source, he gets to keep his money, and Oracle now has zero influence over this open source project.

Win, win, win, win(unless you are Oracle)!

Maybe he can do this every 10 years and buy a new boat. Good for him. It will also help get the message across that you really cannot buy Open Source software.

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

Here's the real solution: Don't sell it to a corporation in the first place like Monty did.

That's easy for you to say, not being in Monty's shoes.
Selling it helped him pay alimony and child support for his daughter My [*], for which the database was named.

And it did not kill the open source - as per usual, it forked around it, and evolution continued.

[*]: Off-topic: Pronounced with a near-close near-front protruded vowel, which doesn't exist[**] in English. The closest approximation is "ee" said with the lips rounded like saying "oo". "Y" is a vowel in its own right in Swedish, and saying "Mee" is as bad as saying "Moo". Which is why Monty doesn't object to the common "Mai-SQL" pronunciation - it's better than the alternatives.
[**]: Off-topic: Parents who give their children names that aren't pronouncable in major languages like English are bastards. I know this first hand, and had to change my name.

Re:3, 2, 1

[gorzek]

Given that there are plenty of good alternatives, it seems that the real value in MySQL is the branding. Oracle could've bought any DB engine they wanted, but which open-source one has the most name recognition? Sometimes, "what's in a name" turns out to be "everything."

Re:3, 2, 1

[TheSunborn]

But if Oracle require special performance tuning which none of the other databases does, then it does suck in 90+ percent of all usecases for sql servers(That is: The usecases where there is no fulltime person hired just to tune the database).
   

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

Which part of that is supposed to make people feel comfortable that MariaDB will still be around in a few years, after Monty gets an offer to buy that company?

That you (or anyone) can fork it. Open source routes around this problem nicely.

Re:3, 2, 1

[deadbeatsaint]

But if Oracle require special performance tuning which none of the other databases does, then it does suck in 90+ percent of all usecases for sql servers(That is: The usecases where there is no fulltime person hired just to tune the database).

This is very true. I work on many different projects and move from company to company setting up web applications, usually for in-house use - well, after I'm finished, I don't have time to constantly come back and re-tune the database, nor would the company want me to do that and keep paying for an application that is essentially "completed". Also, hiring a full-time database tuner would be ridiculous for all of the cases I've been involved in (monetarily crazy and otherwise). Some places using MySQL for my application is more than enough, however, when its not, I setup PostgreSQL. It only requires a little more design time on my part and the results and great.

Re:3, 2, 1

[krammit]

Do I even need to point out that this kind of thing hurts the perception of Open Source developers and by extension Open Source software? Then again, it's about time we have a term to replace the horribly racist "Indian Giver [wikipedia.org]" term. "MySQLGiver" maybe? "Open Source Giver"?

You're right. Such an egregious abuse could never happen with closed source software. *cough*Skype*cough*

Re:3, 2, 1

[greg1104]

Open source doesn't remove the damage here, it just contains it. Look at how much effort is being wasted by people who are switching from MySQL to MariaDB now. All of that overhead is damage to an open source community that could have been working on other things with that time. If you're smart, instead you'll switch to a truly open database, one that doesn't have a company requiring copyright assignment involved at all.

MySQL was a reasonable choice back when PostgreSQL didn't have Windows support and people needed that to do development. Now there's really no good reason to put efforts into a MySQL->MariaDB change, not when there are viable free alternatives and MariaDB has the same fundamental problem that destroyed MySQL. The right answer for an open source community is to route completely past MySQL and its ugly dual-licensed code altogether, use this transition point to migrate off there altogether.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results"

please stop repeating this garbage

Re:3, 2, 1

[XanC]

There isn't any effort to migrate from MySQL to MariaDB. It's a drop-in replacement.

Re:3, 2, 1

[killkillkill]

https://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql-compatibility/

For all practical purposes, MariaDB is a binary drop in replacement

Re:3, 2, 1

[greg1104]

The whole point of this article is that RedHat is putting effort into this switch. Individual users may not see it, but this mess is causing headaches for people who maintain and distribute open source software stacks. And incompatibilities for users are coming one day too, as soon as the feature set starts drifting between MySQL and MariaDB.

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

And incompatibilities for users are coming one day too, as soon as the feature set starts drifting between MySQL and MariaDB.

If users have been using Oracle MySQL, yes, they may find incompatibilities when migrating to open source MariaDB. That's hardly the fault of the open source community, now is it?

I.e. if you chose to go to closed source Oracle MySQL, you have to pay the price. That seems reasonable enough.
Those who stayed with open source MySQL have no such problems.

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

Sure, why not? MySQL is crap. MySQL is crap [arstechnica.com]. 10 years later, MySQL is still crap. MariaDB and Percona are less crap, but still crap.

You must not be a sysadmin. Everything is crap, and the job is to find out what oozes least amount of crappiness for the job at hand.
In some cases, that is MySQL (or now MariaDB). Despite being crap.

Re:3, 2, 1

[XanC]

It would have been just about as much effort to "switch" to the latest version of MySQL as it was to "switch" to the latest version of MariaDB. They were going to do one or the other.

And incompatibilities for users are coming one day too, as soon as the feature set starts drifting between MySQL and MariaDB.

Probably so. Which makes this the ideal time to pick MariaDB, while it's zero-effort.

Re:3, 2, 1

[keytoe]

MySQL+PHP is popular for the same reason VB6 used to be popular. It's quick and easy and it gets stuff done. Elite computer scientists look down upon both because they are perceived as quick and dirty hacks. But that doesn't matter; for many applications, a quick and dirty hack is good enough.

I am sick to death of being told I'm 'being academic' for having a preference for quality.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

My Oracle machine has 2 quad core CPU's, 16GB of RAM, 6x15k disks, has been benchmarked and tuned by multiple people, and has automated jobs to keep things cleaned up. My MySQL machine is much more stable, consumes less disk space, and is often faster using only 2 older disks, 1/4th the CPU and 4GB of RAM. I tuned it once by setting 3 values.

I think Oracle is inferior for giving me ORA-0600 errors all over the place on things like syntactically correct queries that were simple enough to write in sql*plus, and charging loads of money on support just so I can find out it's a known bug they don't plan on fixing. I've never seen a program that requires so much hand holding and few that crash so often. I can't think of any thing so buggy off hand, but if you'll excuse me, I'm off to tune my dev server running btrfs (Ubuntu didn't let me install with compression enabled).

Re:3, 2, 1

[aztracker1]

Oracle, keeping DBAs employed for over three decades.

Re:3, 2, 1

[AdamWill]

We haven't had any problem at all replacing MySQL with MariaDB in Fedora per se.

MySQL folks wanted to keep MySQL in Fedora *too*, and we had some fun figuring out the packaging and upgrade paths such that both new-world-MySQL and MariaDB could be in Fedora with MariaDB replacing old-world-MySQL on F18->F19 upgrades, but RHEL will very easily avoid all that by simply not including new-world-MySQL (I expect).

Re:3, 2, 1

[AdamWill]

RH isn't really in the business of telling people what database to use. We provide all the major ones, including pgsql. You can pick whichever you want to run.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. It's just insane.

Re:3, 2, 1

[BitZtream]

No it doesn't, it uses that tired old excuse like its true.

Reality: When a vendor of an open source product drops it, 99 times out of 100, thats the end of the product. That 1 time left, is the MySQL example. Where they just intend to try and scam someone else in the same way.

You're an idiot if you think MySQL is a good example of why people should use open source.

Re:3, 2, 1

[BitZtream]

Really? They distribute libmysqlclient? I could go one, but I'm lazy.

Its not a drop in replacement. It does take effort to move to it. You just choose to ignore differences.

If it took no effort, you wouldn't hear about Red Hat putting work into it.

Re:3, 2, 1

[BitZtream]

When you get to the point that Oracle requires 'special tuning', you're so far beyond what MySQL is useful for its not even funny.

When you start 'tuning' Oracle, MySQL isnt an option because you're tuning features MySQL doesn't have.

You also can afford a full time Oracle DB or 20 because we're not talking about a tiny ass db used for your one sale a week shopping cart and mediawiki clone.

Re:3, 2, 1

[BitZtream]

And ... you're using them for the exact same thing ... right? I mean, thats clearly why you have two of them ... so you could compare them with the exact same workloads, right?

Its always nice when you compare orange juice and hard apple cider.

Re:3, 2, 1

[BitZtream]

'more future proof' ...

Its EXACTLY THE SAME AS MYSQL in that respect. MariaDB can be sold JUST LIKE MySQL! Go figure

Re:3, 2, 1

[amorsen]

Parents who give their children names that aren't pronouncable in major languages like English are bastards.

Nothing is pronounceable in English. You basically cannot import any non-English word from any other language and have it sound remotely the same. The set of available sounds is both small and weird.

Re: 3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

... and, of course, Oracle can't tell the difference between a NULL and an empty string.

Re: 3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

woot, the elephant never forgets

Re:3, 2, 1

[arth1]

Reality: When a vendor of an open source product drops it, 99 times out of 100, thats the end of the product. That 1 time left, is the MySQL example.

If that's the case, you shouldn't have any problems naming 99 open source projects that have gone closed source and subsequently been dropped so "thats the end of the product".

If you cannot provide any examples to back your claim, you're just mouthing off.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretty cool what he did.

Sell a product
Fork it
Continue on

Of course MariaDB has many source files that Oracle owns the copyright to so Monty won't be able to sell MariaDB.

Why Sun bought it is a mystery

Why Oracle bought Sun is an even bigger mystery.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

That's interesting. Just today I accepted and merged a contributed bugfix to the MySQL codebase, which is GPL.

Yep, sounds pretty closed to me.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Zontar The Mindless]

Why smear all the good people who've used and/or worked on MySQL over the years like that?

Say instead, "He's pulled a Widenius," and give credit where actually due.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nothing is pronounceable in English. You basically cannot import any non-English word from any other language and have it sound remotely the same. The set of available sounds is both small and weird.

Bzzzzt, wrong.

In fact, English has a rather high number of phonemes, compared to most languages.

This has made it quite easy for English to adopt words from other languages, which in turn has given English an unusually large lexicon compared to most other languages, as well.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to look up all the synonyms we have for "dog" in English, and then determine which languages they came from.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Define sold.

If you define sold in the way that MySQL was sold to Sun, then no, MariaDB can NOT be sold.

Oracle owns the copyright to much of MariaDB's codebase.

If you mean sold as in get the program and a little support for $1000yr, then yes it can be sold.

Re:3, 2, 1

[amorsen]

Yet none of those imported words sound anything like the original.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? They distribute libmysqlclient?

Yes.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Zontar The Mindless]

And yet, a Tennessee hilljack can travel to Oz-tralia and communicate with the folks there, despite the fact that he and they pronounce things very differently.

In any case, we have already demonstrated that your original assertion was based on a false premise, so I see no point in continuing this. Have a nice day.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Patman64]

Elite computer scientists look down upon both because they are perceived as quick and dirty hacks. But that doesn't matter; for many applications, a quick and dirty hack is good enough.

If anyone wants to know why this is now a crock of shit, look no further than this post: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/07/28/quick-doesnt-mean-dirty/ It goes through the development of a simple web-app using proper technologies as the author discovers and uses them for the first time, and serves as a good introduction to Flask, SQLAlchemy, and Postgres.

Quote:

This is a recurring sentiment: developers telling me, well, yeah, Python may be all cool in your ivory tower, man, but like, I just want to write some programs.

To which I say: what the fuck are you people smoking? Whence comes this belief that anything claimed to be a better tool must be some hellacious academic-only monstrosity which actively resists real-world use?

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and developers keep writing non performing code for over three decades. Not sure who is keeping who employed here.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Does MariaDB still have the someone shady requirement that all devs sign their copyright over to his FOR profit company? Theres nothing to stop the whole debacle happing again.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you buy web hosting from a cheap cpanel-based provider, you get MySQL for free and it's hard to set up anything else.

"Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"

Re:3, 2, 1

[amorsen]

You have demonstrated no such thing. You still basically cannot import any non-English word from any other language and have it sound remotely the same. Advising people to pick names that are pronounceable in English is practically the same as advising them to pick native English names. The world is poorer for it.

Re:3, 2, 1

[bluefoxlucid]

The issue is that the SQL Standard says NULL is an unknown value and "" is a known value of empty string. Oracle considers "" to be NULL, which is incorrect in the same way that considering 'char *s = "";' equivalent to 'char *s = NULL;' in C is incorrect.

Re:3, 2, 1

[bluefoxlucid]

Unless you're PR, you shouldn't use 'we' when talking about RedHat.

Also, RedHat is garbage, so stick that one in your hat. Debian and Ubuntu both have the policy that any updates must absolutely not break release; if they do, they're slated for next release. RedHat? Oh, right in the middle of RHEL6, let's drop crmsh for pcs, which didn't exist before in RHEL6, and not even note in our 6.4 release notes that crmsh is going away. People tell me "technology preview" a lot, but that's only an excuse for it being not-totally-functional to begin with; in Ubuntu, the policy of "Don't break shit that already works" applies to unsupported software as well as supported software--even if you don't get regular patches or bugfixes unless somebody is bored or you submit it yourself, you still don't wake up one day and find out that something that worked when the distro was released no longer works now because of an update.

RedHat is in the business of supplying crap.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The douche at veekum.com is an uneducated dipshit that doesn't understand programming principles.

Just because he stated the obvious(PHP is rotting shit) doesn't make him an authority on anything.

Stop linking to the dipshit.

Re: 3, 2, 1

[Nutria]

And doesn't have actual scalar integers.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Some places using MySQL for my application is more than enough, however, when its not, I setup PostgreSQL. It only requires a little more design time on my part

Is that because of Postgres, or because you only use it for applications that need the extra design work in the first place?

Re: 3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hibachi" came to English from Japanese. It sounds exactly the same in both languages. You are simply wrong in your assertion, and this one example disproves your generalization. There are numerous words in which the variation between native speakers is greater than that of foreigners borrowing the words.

Re:3, 2, 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think that MySQL and MariaDB are going to be 1-1 forever?

Re:3, 2, 1

[WiseZ]

You must love microsoft. Or work for Oracle. Can't explain this better

Red Hat

[ArcadeMan]

We're nobody's bitch.

Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat might switch to MariaDB from MySQL, but businnesses still use MSSQL server.

Re:Business use

[bmo]

>businesses still use MSSQL server

No, they use Ingres.

--
BMO

Re:Business use

[Tridus]

Except for the ones that use Oracle. Or any of the other databases out there.

"Business" is a pretty broad category using a very wide range of database products.

Re:Business use

[arkane1234]

Businesses use both, actually. Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, American Express, Charles Schwab... I could go on and on.
MSSQL is mostly used when Microsoft-related items need to query the data, or some other product that drank from the Microsoft kool-aid. Every other time, I've seen a mix of Oracle, MySQL, & Postgres.

With a smattering of db2.

Re:Business use

[Mitchell314]

HAH. Real businesses just store everything in word docs with the timestamps in the file name.

Re:Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

DB2 needs to die in a nice long fire. ... with the 40 year old machines it's running on.

Yes, I'm bitter.

Re:Business use

[mwvdlee]

Yeah! Who needs machines that run for 40 years.

Re:Business use

[stanIyb]

My ass is a bit rancid, you know. What say you?

Re:Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Real businesses use a craptastic Access database with a bunch of hackish VBscript layered on top, in my experience.

Re:Business use

[smooth wombat]

Except for the ones that use Oracle.

Oracle sucks as well. It's just a different kind of suck. Sort of like the difference between a Geo Metro and a Ford Taurus. They both suck, just in different ways. (Did I get the car analogy right?)

Re:Business use

[bws111]

DB2 runs on 32- and 64-bit Intel and AMD processors, POWER processors, and System Z processors. Please tell us which of those is 40 years old.

Re:Business use

[ttucker]

Red Hat might switch to MariaDB from MySQL, but businnesses still use MSSQL server.

MSSQL is an expensive turd.

Re: Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done Red Hat and MariaDB. Finally back to open understandable cheap DB support.

Fuck you Oracle. You don't have customers, you have hostages.

Buy something, then squeeze the customer's balls because you know that it is too painful to change from your stagnating 80s shitware.

Re:Business use

[RabidReindeer]

DB2 runs on 32- and 64-bit Intel and AMD processors, POWER processors, and System Z processors. Please tell us which of those is 40 years old.

I run DB2 on 64-bit Intel. I pray that one day it will add the same level of import/export capabilities that come for free with both MySQL and PostgreSQL. Or at least that I can do a dump from an i5 system to the Intel system.

For that matter, I would be overjoyed if they'd just do like everyone else and add a create-from-select SQL option.

Re:Business use

[arth1]

Oracle sucks as well. It's just a different kind of suck. Sort of like the difference between a Geo Metro and a Ford Taurus. They both suck, just in different ways. (Did I get the car analogy right?)

No, it's more like the difference between a Ford Transit and a Scania 18-wheeler.

Re:Business use

[aztracker1]

Maybe if your car choices were a station wagon (MS-SQL) and a dump truck (Oracle)...

Re:Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle sucks as well. It's just a different kind of suck. Sort of like the difference between a Geo Metro and a Ford Taurus. They both suck, just in different ways. (Did I get the car analogy right?)

Nailed it!

Re:Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Better analogy:

MS SQL Server: kids bike with training wheels

Oracle: Unicycle

Re: Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

we can roast the minstrals

Re: Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

o, 'e said The WORD?! 8'p

Re:Business use

[Anonymous Coward]

Which ends up being about the same quality as the MySQL apps I've seen.

Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[Anonymous Coward]

... except for the parts that aren't.

(waves arms)

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[arkane1234]

Like the name?

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[greg1104]

The main thing Oracle Linux does is run a newer kernel version than the RHEL kernel. RHEL6 for example is based on 2.6.32, while Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R.2 (pdf) was running 3.0.16 when they last updated things.

Grabbing the newer kernel lets Oracle win direct performance shootouts against RedHat. They can get away with it because the only applications they're testing on it is Oracle, so if the upstream kernel breaks other things they don't care. RedHat cares about all of their supported software, so they have a lot more QA issues to deal with. Note that this little trick is also how Oracle has gotten around caring that RedHat made it harder to see what individual patches they apply to the upstream kernel in their release. They aren't using that version of kernel at all, so whatever RedHat is doing to customer their 2.6.32 branch they're ignoring.

Of course, if you're willing to do this, you can easily grab a newer Linux kernel from kernel.org yourself on regular RHEL, too. The game Oracle is playing with "Unbreakable Linux" is all marketing hype.

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[silas_moeckel]

Pretty much the only thing anybody run on it is oracle anyways. If your going to pay through the nose for support contracts you might as well have one place supporting the whole thing.to stop the finger pointing.

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[bill_mcgonigle]

Of course, if you're willing to do this, you can easily grab a newer Linux kernel from kernel.org yourself on regular RHEL, too.

Even better, install elrepo.repo and enable the elrepo-kernel repo and install the package 'kernel-ml'.

I just build a CentOS 6-based Xen server last weekend with kernel-ml and mayoung's xen packages, and it's a beautiful thing.

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you have never dealt with a vendor who likes to point fingers to "other departments"

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[eclectus]

I'd argue otherwise. Oracle submitted a boatload of bugs (performance & otherwise) to Redhat to make Oracle products run better. Redhat ignored most of them. Oracle forked red-hat & rolled their own. Isn't that the benefit of open source?

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[greg1104]

Companies that throw submissions upstream and then fork if they're not all accepted are not very useful to me. RedHat has one set of rules about what sorts of changes they're willing to accept in a stable release, the Linux kernel developers have another. Oracle is content to fork both and make changes, with their own policy for what is and isn't acceptable. Some of the ignored submissions are due to those policy differences, others ignored because Oracle wasn't willing to work within the community development process. Oracle doesn't considering aligning its work with other development communities to be as important as pushing them out in their own version; they'd rather brag about how they have the better answer.

In general I frown on projects that fork healthy code rather than working out how to integrate their changes into the upstream development model. No one company can develop code so great that it's worth abandoning the mainstream Linux kernel development for them, but Oracle believes they are such a company. I'm not impressed; I'll take every kernel developer in the world that worries about upstream integration instead.

Re:Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying RH uses 2.6.32 is a little over-simplistic.

There are lots of patches from 3.0+ backported to RH's kernel.

Re: Oracle Linux is identical to RHEL

[Anonymous Coward]

Still it's an utterly old kernel. I don't even want to mention the versions of the other package they install. Developing on a rh distribution it's like a nightmare with not a single package up to date.

Yes, it was a corporate decision

[Anonymous Coward]

A decision not to use corporate-controlled software.

MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[WaywardGeek]

Seriously, is anyone out there in geek land even considering MySQL for a brand spanking new project with no history attached to MySQL? I don't know of any. It's just a matter of time now for things to swing from MySQL to MariaDB, though I think a lot of geeks will take a good look at other options like PostgreSQL before switching. Unless Oracle does something really interesting with MySQL, it's dead... seriously... no one in the year 2120 will even remember MySQL except for unfortunate geeks working for the government and large banks who will continue doing new projects with MySQL until the end of time.

think I can petition my college to..

[nopainogain]

,,, refund the money they charged while teaching me LAMP? lol

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Anything you might have learnt applies just as much to MariaDB as it did to MySQL.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[ArcadeMan]

At least it isn't called EvanDB.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[arkane1234]

Sure, just as schools will refund the money charged to students while teaching them every other technology that evolved...

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[Gothmolly]

You know that MySQL and MariaDB both start with M, right?

Did you really go to college?

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[nopainogain]

yes I am, troll, are you aware that Unix classes don't (or at least didn't) teach LAMP without MySQL? The "P" is the variable. PHP, Perl, etc..Who didn't go to college?

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[nopainogain]

I'm starting a charity for those grads of that stagecoach-repair-program at CHI..haha. but you do have to work to remain current in IT.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[mwvdlee]

I recently upgraded to MariaDB. Took a whole of 5 minutes with just a few seconds downtime (just ~3GB of data, though); nothing changed except I occasionally see a different name in logfiles and tools.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[h4rr4r]

Teaching you LAMP?
Teaching any programs is foolish, they should teach that you need an OS, a webserver, a db and a language for your site. Knowing the basics will let you easily work on many stacks.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[KingMotley]

Sure, send me a copy so I can replace LAMP with COBOL and JCL.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[geminidomino]

Might want to be careful with throwing "troll" around, if you're going to miss/ignore rather important things like Maria being a drop-in replacement for MySQL, so nothing you learned about LAMP is lost by this change.

But what the hell university teaches LAMP anyway? UoP?

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[gl4ss]

what real college teaches "lamp".

the same kind that has "ford engines" as a course on their machinery side?

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[Hognoxious]

Stop it, you'll set Joe_Dragon off.

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[ArcadeMan]

What's wrong with LynxOS/AOLserver/MariaDB/Perl?

Re:think I can petition my college to..

[Xtifr]

Well, considering that AOLserver gives you TCL for free, adding Perl seems like a bit of an impedance mismatch. Aside from that, nothing.

(Note, I only know this because I was the Debian TCL maintainer for several years; which is why I know that AOLServer is A) free software and B) written in TCL. Otherwise, I would have assumed you were joking.)

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Tridus]

If it's really dead like Cobol, I could spend the rest of my life doing nothing but supporting stuff using it, and make a pretty good career out of it.

That's a kind of death I can live with.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

govt and large banks? on MySQL?

mod down

[Anonymous Coward]

Never Heeded

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[greg1104]

MySQL filled a niche for web application development, but not very much else. The large banks are all using old-school commercial databases: Oracle, DB2, Sybase, SQL Server. Government applications prefer PostgreSQL because of its permissive license. If they want to customize the source code for a project that isn't pubic, they can do that without having to worry about GPL compliance.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[arkane1234]

Yes.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Many hosting packages have MySQL installed as default, almost all of them in fact, and web devs are unlikely to have any interest in moving. I mean what are they going to tell their clients, someone in a far away office unconnected to anything has decided that the DB system is outdated, so you have pay us to migrate your data? Oh, says the client, will it offer me any benefits or will my site stop working? Why no, says the web dev. Please.

Inertia means a lot, and MySQL has a LOT of inertia.

I am bootyass process! Bow to me.

[stanIyb]

Don't read this... it is a curse...

In 1998, a little boy named Timmy was enjoying a relaxing day at the beach with his beloved family. Being the curious and adventurous young lad that he was, he managed to sneak away from his family and traveled far enough away from them that they could just barely see him from where they were located. Little Timmy, while walking, then noticed a small lizard beanie baby sitting in the sand, looking up towards him. They exchanged greetings, and then, feeling daring, Timmy said, "I betcha can't lick my buttcheeks!"

The lizard replied in a confident tone, "I bet I can!" Then, the lizard beanie baby's tongue stuck out a few centimeters in front of its face and stopped moving. Timmy, not understanding the situation, gazed at it in puzzlement. Suddenly, he heard and felt something slimy smack his precious cheek! He couldn't believe it! It was as if most of the lizard's tongue was invisible and that he could stretch it and make it move anywhere he wanted from any location!

Timmy, still feeling daring, then said, "I betcha can't lick my buttcrack!" In the same confident tone, the lizard replied, "I bet I can!" and the exact same event as before happened once again. The lizard stuck out its tongue a few centimeters, and mere moments later, something hit Timmy's bare buttcrack. This caused Timmy to jump in the air from surprise.

Timmy, angry that the lizard's tongue violated his precious snap, screamed, "I betcha can't lick my butthole!" This time, his voice didn't have the daring tone that it had before. The lizard almost immediately replied, in a confident tone that sounded as if he knew precisely what would happen, "I bet I can!" Regretting his decision to dare the lizard immensely, Timmy began begging and pleading for the lizard to stop. Despite this rather sad turn of events, an invisible, wet tongue smacked Timmy's bootysnapcheekcrackhole moments later! The lizard had slurped his most prized possession!

Infuriated that his most precious spot was violated by the dirty little lizard's tongue, Timmy attempted to kick the lizard. However, to his surprise, the lizard was somehow able to avoid the blow and crawl into his pant leg! Timmy could see a small lump on his pant leg slowly make its way towards his ass! Thinking quickly, Timmy used his hands to block its path. Feeling victorious, he smirked and began mocking the lizard. Seconds later, the lump somehow managed to effortlessly move right under the obstacles that were Timmy's hands and continued merrily on its way!

Timmy, frightened, tried desperately to take off his jeans, but it was as if they were glued to his body! The lizard finally made its way to Timmy's ass, crawled between his ass cheeks, climbed on top of his precious hole, and then stopped. As if it had stopped just to make Timmy even more frightened, the lizard began its mission as soon as Timmy's dread became apparent. The lizard crawled all over Timmy's bootysnapcheekcrackhole in a square pattern, stopped at each corner of the imaginary square for about a second, and then moved to the next corner.

Each time it crawled, each time it moved, a sinister rattling sound was heard, and tremendous amounts of tickle were inflicted upon Timmy's ass! He could do nothing but try to endure it, but there is no way that any being in existence could endure having such concentrated amounts of tickle inflicted upon their ass. He screamed and pleaded for it to stop, but to no avail. The lizard continued crawling, and Timmy heard it let out an ominous laugh...

Now that you have read even a single word of this, the very same lizard puppet will effortlessly make its way to your bootysnapcheekcrackhole, and crawl all over it to inflict preposterous amounts of tickle upon your ass! To prevent this from occurring, copy this entire story and post it as a comment three times.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure the government has any business doing pubic projects.
But seriously, why would GPL compliance enter into a government project?
If they're just running code and not distributing it, there's nothing to comply with.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[mwvdlee]

I've worked for several government deparments and large banks.
IBM mainframe uses DB2, everything else uses Oracle. No exceptions (atleast as far as databases supporting SQL goes).

MongoDB included at last

[Anonymous Coward]

We should all move to MongoDB it's web scale!!!

Re:MongoDB included at last

[aztracker1]

*sigh* I'm a really big fan of MongoDB... I will say that it isn't without issue, but depending on your workload and needs, it's a *VERY* good fit.. it's also a natural fit with NodeJS.

Re:MongoDB included at last

[Anonymous Coward]

MongoDB is great for desktop apps that need a little more than flat files, far better than Sqlite or that shitty embeddedable MySQL

Too big momentum to stop

[dejanc]

Seriously, is anyone out there in geek land even considering MySQL for a brand spanking new project with no history attached to MySQL? I don't know of any. It's just a matter of time now for things to swing from MySQL to MariaDB, though I think a lot of geeks will take a good look at other options like PostgreSQL before switching. Unless Oracle does something really interesting with MySQL, it's dead... seriously... no one in the year 2120 will even remember MySQL except for unfortunate geeks working for the government and large banks who will continue doing new projects with MySQL until the end of time.

MySQL has too big of a momentum to just disappear (and the people keeping it alive are not governments and large banks, but rather web developers).

I'm a full-time web developer and I am just starting a new project and tossing a coin between MySQL and Postgresql. The reason why I am even considering MySQL is that all my existing code and libraries are thoroughly tested with it. Even brand spanking new projects use old libraries :)

In theory, database abstraction layer should be good enough to make everything work with pgsql, but it hasn't been tested. There are other reasons too, like other developers being uncomfortable with pgsql (namely sequences vs. mysql's auto incremented primary keys) as well as the fact that all of them will have to look for new tools for the alternative. Also, Mysql replication is very well established and easy to do and system administrators are part of the equation.

We just updated all our servers to Debian Wheezy which comes stock with MySQL 5.5, which with Innodb is half-decent. From what I see, it's still actively developed and I don't see it just disappearing... Oracle may be a place where open source software goes to die, but MySQL may change the trend.

Re:Too big momentum to stop

[aztracker1]

Not sure which libraries you're referring to, but pgsql has a lot to offer.. A lot of libraries for more data types than mysql supports. As for sequences, you may want to consider a UUID/GUID field for your primary keys in non-log tables.. yes, the indexing is slightly slower, but more portable to other systems and support for replication, and distributed data is a *lot* better. You also get the benefit of being able to generate the ID in your code, instead of relying on a return value for the data record. You also get pretty decent support for XML and JSON (newly supported) encoded data types, which afaik no other database does as well with.

If I honestly had a choice (usually forced into Oracle or MS-SQL at work), I would much rather have PostgreSQL over others. Every time I've had to use/touch MySQL, it has been extremely frustrating, and far more so than any other DB I've worked with (Firebird, Oracle, MS-SQL, DB2, SQLite, etc), with the exception of SQLite they've all been far more capable as well. Sometimes it's good to start fresh.. also, if you have good unit tests for your utilities then "testing" should be easy.. if you don't, then are they really well tested?

Re:Too big momentum to stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Mysql replication is very well established and easy to do

MySQL replication is horrifically fragile.

Re:Too big momentum to stop

[BitZtream]

You also get the benefit of being able to generate the ID in your code, instead of relying on a return value for the data record.

And that my friend, is exactly how you end up with collisions.

GUIDs are theoretically unique, not real world unique. Collisions can and do happen, so you can not assume that you generated a unique GUID. Doing so is just sloppy and means you probably do that else where and someone who's sloppy and lazy working on websites just gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies about code quality.

Re:Too big momentum to stop

[dejanc]

Sometimes it's good to start fresh.. also, if you have good unit tests for your utilities then "testing" should be easy.. if you don't, then are they really well tested?

In theory, very true. In practice, it's an uneasy feeling of switching to a new tool, no matter what it is. Unit tests exist and are useful, but I still haven't mastered writing bug-free code despite all the testing :)

Every time I've had to use/touch MySQL, it has been extremely frustrating, and far more so than any other DB I've worked with (Firebird, Oracle, MS-SQL, DB2, SQLite, etc), with the exception of SQLite they've all been far more capable as well.

I don't doubt that's the case, but as usual with these things - you probably use MySQL the least and are least comfortable with it. In the last 5-6 years, I only ever deployed significant projects on top of MySQL or PostgreSQL, and while PGSQL was always more capable (and I personally enjoyed using it much more), it's not like MySQL is crippled - it is a decent tool which gets the job done.

My point is: PostgreSQL is exciting and nice and loveable, but MySQL is here to stay - web developers will keep it alive for years to come. We use much worse tools everyday, don't we?

Re: Too big momentum to stop

[aztracker1]

And if you are having real world collisions, you are likely running a cluster of many systems or using a flawed uuid generator with over a thousand inserts per second... I've never seen a production collision on a singular instance/machine.... The only time I have seen a collision was on a logging system that had tens of thousands of inserts per second... Of you have that kind of load you need to break things up some how and need some kind of distributed key or id pool... In the case of the logging system the pk was made to use a guid and the IP of the machine logging... In a similar case a ulong was used with a generator that would hand out 100k records at a time. For most use cases a uuid/guid is more than acceptable...

actual enterprise database

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been nice if they switched their enterprise distribution to an actual enterprise database.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[gmuslera]

In the other hand, in some countries there are a pledge for using open formats for government data, something that could give a chance to keep using, or take the information from it, even after the company behind it closes or just decide to switch direction, maybe many years after. The code that is behind don't need to be open source, but usually if is, then the format of the data is open too (or at least, the way to access it).

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[h4rr4r]

There is nothing you tell the client. You dump the DB out of mysql and load it in maria.

Not like they are switching to something not compatible.

Fucking old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and your stupid bullshit outdated posts.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[dave420]

It's not even that complicated for most users - simply shut down MySQL, point MariaDB to the MySQL configuration, start MariaDB, and that's it.

Oracle Doesn't Care

[organgtool]

but I'm pretty sure this move won't make Oracle any happier

I'm pretty sure Oracle couldn't care less if RedHat uses MySQL or MariaDB since it doesn't benefit greatly from either. Oracle would much rather have everyone using Oracle DB since that is where they put most of their development and support efforts and that is what makes them their money. I don't think Oracle would even continue to offer MySQL support if they weren't ordered to do so under the conditions of their buyout of Sun.

Re:Oracle Doesn't Care

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody ordered Oracle to double the number of dev staff working on MySQL. They did that on their own.

Great in theory

[houbou]

Seems like MariaDB is the greatest thing after sliced bread, but, unless you are running your own server, many hosting services are still offering mySQL as the DB to use. I was going to check out MariaDB, but for now, unless I have a requirement from a client, it doesn't seem like its worth my time to use. It is still a WAMP and LAMP world out there for the most part.

Re:Great in theory

[gl4ss]

you might still check it out.
it's the same thing, with some new stuff / new stuff coming that you might need.

but "not worth my time" attitude is kinda strange since it takes no time at all to use it?

Re:Great in theory

[hweimer]

That's why this announcement by Red Hat is so important, it means that RHEL/CentOS-based hosters are likely to make the switch to MariaDB when they upgrade their systems.

Re:Great in theory

[aztracker1]

MariaDB is a drop in replacement for mySQL... the difference being is more development is going into MariaDB than mySQL's remains.

Re:Great in theory

[pak9rabid]

but "not worth my time" attitude is kinda strange since it takes no time at all to use it?

What I'd imagine he's saying is it's "not worth my time" to develop and test an application against a database that's ultimately not going to be used when pushed into the production environment (ie, cheap hosting providers that only offer MySQL). I can't say I really blame him.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Who's going to pay for this effort again?

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Hognoxious]

If they want to customize the source code for a project that isn't pubic, they can do that without having to worry about GPL compliance.

I worked on one of those and man, it was hairy. In the end we pulled it off, but it was a close shave.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[h4rr4r]

The customers, via their normal bill.

The servers have to be upgraded at some point, EOL and all. The service provider will at that point move to mariaDB and not even tell the customer.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You clearly have no experience with web development. Most of the sites on the internet are in shared hosting packages, anything that gets less than a few hundred thousand hits a month. The only thing these sites are charged for are hosting and domain names. Anything that involves any kind of effort on the part of the developer gets charged for seperately. Hosting companies are quite capable of keeping the same software on new servers indefinetely.

Honestly I'm not seeing anyone flocking to the flag of the guy who's already sold MySQL for a vast sum of money unless someone's paying them for it. If it works, don't fix it.

Oracull

[Tablizer]

A company called Computer Associates used to be where formerly successful commercial apps went to die a slow, painful death.

Now Oracle is where OSS branches goes to die a slow, painful death.

Re:Oracull

[Shados]

Not just OSS. Commercial products too. Oracle is pretty good at paying billion(s) for a company then alienating all its developers until the product is only a shell of what it used to be.

That's it for me

[holophrastic]

I've been looking for an excuse to make the switch. And this does it for me. I'll be switched by the end of the year.

MariaDB

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to mention that Mageia 3 also switched from mysql to mariadb

cheers all

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Frosty Piss]

Government applications prefer PostgreSQL because of its permissive license. If they want to customize the source code for a project that isn't pubic, they can do that without having to worry about GPL compliance.

Why would they care if they are not *distributing* the application ouside GOV?

Why not PostgreSQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

????????

Love MariaDB with only one complaint

[EmperorOfCanada]

I made the switch and couldn't be happier. I haven't done an official speed comparison but it seems that MariaDB is much more responsive. That tiny little ms counter in Sequel Pro is showing much shorter times for routine tasks.

But the fulltext indexing is not available to the default table engine. That is my one complaint.

I would be curious to know what the insider thinking is at Oracle. I suspect they thought they had the free database crowd by the balls. No doubt they had all kinds of interesting long term strategies to switch companies over from MySQL to overpriced Oracle products. Now those strategies are going to fade into nothingness.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[h4rr4r]

You are clearly full of it.

New servers will not run old versions of MySQL at some point. This means they will have to decide if they want to install new MySQL or MariaDB. That is when the latter will go into place since it is the redhat standard.

I have to say

[AdmV0rl0n]

MariaBD is something of a lame name. Its gonna be harder to pitch/sell than the well named 'MySQL'..

Re:I have to say

[TeknoHog]

It makes sense in Scandinavia, because MySQL was named after the female name My (Monty's daughter along with Maria), not the English possessive pronoun. As for the pronunciation, think about how New Yorkers pronounce "New York" -- there's the Scandinavian "Ny" (meaning "new").

Re:I have to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I think it should have been called OurSQL

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[greg1104]

In any large organization, guaranteeing that something you do will not get distributed outside of its original domain adds a compliance cost. The idea that compliance with a license is overhead that really does cost something has already been beaten into larger organization's heads by the terms of commercial software like Microsoft's, where audits and possible violations are a real cost of doing business.

Companies familiar with open source licenses know that if they touch GPL code but keep it private, they're on the hook for continuing the comply with the related license terms. Who can say if five years from now, today's internal application will move outside its original boundaries? Having restrictive license terms paperwork that has to follow the application around forever is exactly the kind of crap governments adopting open source software are trying to get rid of.

If you just use something with a BSD or MIT license from day one, you don't even have to worry about it. All of the paperwork and license review CYA compliance audit costs are up-front.

oracle doesnt care much....why?

[nimbius]

one word: DB2. They own it lock, stock and barrel. the number of applications, legacy and existing, that rely on it habitually or out of laziness number in the thousands.

dont believe me? Try getting a working copy of Postfix to compile without DB2 support. Goodbye hashes and Btrees. your only alternative past mysql is going to be LDAP, which might not be so bad but isnt always an option...let alone the best one.

we're going to have to get away from *sql. its just a matter of time until oracle does to, however.

Re:oracle doesnt care much....why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought IBM owned DB2?

Re:oracle doesnt care much....why?

[BitZtream]

Uhm, my copy doesn't have 'db2' in it. Never has to my knowledge. I know db2 doesn't run on half the platforms postfix supports.

Postfix does use berkley db, perhaps you think just because it has db in its name that its the same?

Re:oracle doesnt care much....why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? WTF???

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/

Dumbasses

Re:oracle doesnt care much....why?

[Xtifr]

Yes, and IBM also originally wrote Postfix. Of course, using Postfix with Postgres is easy: http://www.postfix.org/PGSQL_README.html. Or apt-get install postfix-pgsql. I can't address whether than includes support for "hashes and Btrees", since I haven't tried, but seems implausible that it wouldn't. Postfix has been developed as open-source for a long time! OP does seem remarkably confused. But I'm not completely sure whether he's simply blaming the wrong company, or just plain wrong. I suspect the latter, but can't prove it.

Re:oracle doesnt care much....why?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Stop. Making. Shit. Up.

Who the fuck modded this Insightful??

Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley

[Gothmolly]

towards the end, Steve says to Bill "Bill, our stuff is better." To which Gates replies "You just don't get it Steve" and walks away.

Better is not always better.
Postgres may be better, but it's "hard", whether because of a lack of mindshare, or because MySQL has a cuter name, or whatever reason - so people don't use it.
Because people don't use Postgres, people don't use Postgres.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle was heard saying "Fine, do whatever you want. We didn't like you anyways. We'll build our own OS. With BlackJack. And Hookers. In fact, forget the OS and the BlackJack.".

February 30

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, Postgres sucks. Doesn't even have a decent REPAIR TABLE command or support for Februaries which have more than 29 days.

Funnily enought February 30 actually existed in specific situations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_30

MySQL is not a database

[Anonymous Coward]

PostgreSQL actually functions like a real database (MySQL does a lot of crap it shouldn't),

This is the key mistake that people make: thinking of MySQL as a database. It's not (except, perhaps, for very recently).

MySQL is a datastore for web applications. It was basically designed so that only one application would access a particular data set. Once another code base needed to use the data (and keep it coherent), then all bets are off.

Postgres on the other hand was designed to be a proper database, which is often overkill for most (simple) web apps that simply want a store cookie session IDs and such.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[aztracker1]

I've seen a fair bit of MS-SQL in those fields as well..

I'm glad I'm with MS!

[joshuao3]

So, I paid a couple thousand dollars for my SQL Server license, but I get a more feature complete, more stable product that does exactly what I need it to do. I'm a bit glad I didn't adapt the apparently unstable MySQL. As a business person, and not as a developer, MySQL (and it's forks) seems to be turning into a train wreck that is best to avoid.

Re:I'm glad I'm with MS!

[Anonymous Coward]

And when you need to upgrade hardware that runs your database, have fun with the big bill for the new MS OS and SQL Server licenses(not too mention all the work required to make sure your apps can play nice with the new DB).

I did some consulting for a small SaaS shop that was running their database on hardware built in 1999, for 1 single database the bill for everything, except the new hardware would have been $45000 and since they are a small shop migrating would have taken a long time. They have 3 programmers.

Needless to say since they had to refactor a good chunk of their code anyway, they are running on PostgreSQL now and have $0 licensing costs forever. All desktops moved to Linux also.

Be happy you tied yourself to that bullshit, but don't complain when it comes time again to pay the piper.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Except Red Hat covers a grand total of 2.8% of the market and dropping rapidly. http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-redhat/all/all

I don't feel obligated in any way to support MariaDB. I don't see how any self respecting dev would, especially since the founder made himself richer than Croseus by selling MySQL.

So good luck with that.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[h4rr4r]

What do you think the majority of those unknown UNIX sites are running on?

Think really hard, now.
It is going to be RHEL, Centos or Debian. All of them will be on MariaDB fairly soon.

Having the webserver not report the OS is pretty simple to do.

EnterpriseDB Oracle Compatibility

[emil]

For entertainment value, RedHat ought to buy EnterpriseDB, open the source code for the Oracle compatibility layer, then shove free PL/SQL compatibility for Postgres into Oracle Linux.

I'm sure that's why Oracle hasn't bought out EnterpriseDB - the moment they tried, the source would start flowing.

In a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

They are switching from one shitty database(using the term very loosely) to a shitty one forked from shit.

PostgreSQL is a far better solution, especially in Redhat's supposed market: enterprise.

And on top of what you said..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've made millions of dollars using Mysql. How much have you made personally with Postgres?

Ohhh I see.. not even close to me?

What were we talking about again? That's right some elitist shit no one cares about.

"My Corvette will beat your Ford mustang in a race!! But it looks like your Ford Mustang hauls gold for the gold factory... hmmm"

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[BitZtream]

Why would you choose MariaDB over MySQL? Do you expect something different to happen? Do you like changing the name of your database everytime some Swede makes a billion dollars off it and then turns around basically do it all over again.

If you switch to MariaDB without planning to get off it, you're just an ignorant chump.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[linuxgurugamer]

Well, there is more to life than web servers. In fact, databases shouldn't run on web servers if they have serious amounts of data, they should be on their own hardware. Speaking of Redhat, you need to include CentOS with Redhat, since it's essentially the free version.

Usage statistics and market share of Linux for websites

using this page, RedHat + CentOS = 35.6% of websites using various subcategories of Linux. You should also include Scientific Linux, but it's only less than 0.1%.

Drilling down,

• CentOS has 8.3% of all websites
• RedHat has 2.8% of all websites,
• Debian is 10.2%
• Ubuntu is 7.6%

So CentOS plus RedHat is11.1% vs Debian which is 10.2% And of course, this is without knowing anything about all those "unknown UNIX" sites.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[BitZtream]

Really? Cause I can think of a couple large banks and a couple government organizations that advertise the fact that they use PostgreSQL and others.

Hell Bank of America has all sorts of different databases in house, MySQL and PostgreSQL are certainly among them. This is public information, so you must have been in some super secret banks and govs that don't interact with those of us in the real world.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Intrepid imaginaut]

It's okay to lose.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

And you will be able to install and run MySQL on RHEL, Centos and Debian, so what is your point?

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[TeknoHog]

I hereby release myself into the pubic domain.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[h4rr4r]

My point is people will stick with the one the distribution has as a default. MariaDB will be that default.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Zontar The Mindless]

If you're referring to Monty, he's from Finland.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Frosty Piss]

Companies familiar with open source licenses know that if they touch GPL code but keep it private, they're on the hook for continuing the comply with the related license terms.

But we are not talking about "companies", we are talking about governmebnt use, where the liklyhood of spinning it off is nil.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

So CentOS plus RedHat is11.1% vs Debian which is 10.2%

So CentOS plus RedHat is11.1% vs Debian plus Ubuntu which is 17.8%

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[greg1104]

Government projects are spun off into contractors or other commercial entities all the time.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant the year 2020, not 2120. No one will remember Oracle or Microsoft in 2120.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Art3x]

I never liked MySQL's name anyway. It reminds me of Windows XP, with its My Documents, My Pictures, My Computer. Vain wordiness.

Okay, maybe it's more like AT&T U-verse and other advertising strategies that play to My Narcissism.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

Government applications prefer PostgreSQL because of its permissive license

Bold claim with nothing to back it up.

Re:MySQL is Dead! Just like Cobol

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not like the switch is 100% flawless 100% of the time.

M is for...

[DarthVain]

So is that the reason why they picked the name "Maria" so they wouldn't have to change the acronym? :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle)

Linux, Apache, MARIA, Python/Perl/PHP