I pronounce my name in whatever language I am speaking. So in English, it is something close to "Martin". In my native Swedish language, it is pronounced like "Morten" with a rolling R. You may have noticed that in Norway, that's how they spell that name too ("Morten"). And in Denmark they used to write "Maarten", which at the same time is the most official way of transcribing my name. But I like simple solutions, so feel free to spell it Mårten or Marten and feel free to pronounce it any way convenient for you.
Thanks for the kind words! It is always stimulating to hear from others what they think of us. (Of course it is most stimulating when it is positive, as in your case, but if not stimulating it is at least useful when it is negative.)
Yes, you of course have the right to stop using MySQL just as you have a right to start using it. I am sorry if we have lost a customer in you. I respect you for taking the time to tell us about it.
You may not be interested in any further details, but if you are, feel free to send me an email and I would be happy to set up a time to discuss this over the phone.
Thanks for the proposal on sequence support. In our company I am not the one to decide on features or present timetables or roadmaps on them. But I am very happy to take your suggestion to our engineers. We get tons of suggestions for new features, and it is difficult to decide which ones to do and in what order. The more people want a specific feature, the more likely we are to implement it.
And perhaps you could help us? If you can design it for us, or even contribute code, that goes a long way.
In some ways, the question is by now nearly ten years old, but here is my story: At Solid I was in charge of a campaign to make it popular on Linux which was a novel thing at the time. For a very short time Solid indeed was the most popular Linux database (in 1996 or so). So when Solid's board decided to focus on big opportunities in telco and telematics rather than on popularity on Linux, I decided to leave.
That's one of the reasons why I a few years later so gladly accepted the offer to become CEO of MySQL - I could take up the idea where I had left off att Solid, and with a momentum a hundred or thousand times stronger.
Interestingly, when we fast forward to today, Solid is back in this game and has just released their open source version which integrates as a storage engine for MySQL!
I should leave the technical questions to our technical experts.
But quickly, the benefits of the storage engine architecture is very tangible for advanced users with heavy loads and different loads on different sets of data. Over time, we will work on streamlining the api's and the syntax so that you don't have to be concerned about this issue. But, typically, those who need to use multiple storage engines typically also will be happy to make use of their specific features although they slightly differ from each other.
Great question and I am happy to address it. I'd say there are three main responses to your question:
First, you can't kill a GPL product by just acquiring it. If you as the owner continue to maintain it (as Oracle has done so far), nothing bad has happened. If you stop maintaining it, the community will quickly take over and make sure the software stays uptodate.
Secondly, I believe that the open source world has a self-healing mechanism built in. When something disappears or is at risk at disappearning, replacements quickly emerge. Completely on his own, Paul McCullagh developed the transactional PBXT storage engine for MySQL. And our partner Solid did the same. Check out their website http://www.solidtech.com./ There are other storage engines in development and under design.
Thirdly, as a company we are ensuring that there are strong transactional storage engines available for MySQL. MySQL Cluster is one and the Falcon project is another one. Falcon is a modern transactional storage engine built by Jim Starkey (known as the inventor of MVCC and the one who coined the term blob) on basis of technology he had developed and that we acquired. Falcon will soon come out as alfa.
The acquisition by Oracle of InnoDB (i.e. Innobase Oy) sent some shock vibes through the open source community a year ago, and perhaps rightly so, but I think we can be proud of what has transpired since then. As for Sleepycat (and their engine BerkeleyDB), it never was in any real use inside MySQL and after looking at the technology we decided a long time ago not to pursue that alternative.
Overall, there is another learning from all of this. It is a step towards increased modularity of MySQL, which in itself makes it easier for others to contribute code. We have taken an "architecture of participation" as a priority for us, and making the product modular is one important step in enabling participation. If you have good ideas on how to achieve higher modularity and enable more contributions, let us know!
OK, sorry for not understanding the question. Here is what we do about the future:
Thanks to its popularity, MySQL has become a platform for innovation. By this I mean that increasingly, other innovators are attaching their leading-edge technology to ours, thus enhancing the overall competitivess of the product.
We did it ourselves with MySQL Cluster. That's technology originally developed by Ericsson - and today it is an absolute category leader in telco and networking. Nokia, Alcatel and Nortel are all building real-time network nodes on top of MySQL Cluster. No one else has a main-memory based shared-nothing cluster with that high throughput and availability. Or take the new Monitoring and Advisory Service that we are launching as part of MySQL Enterprise - this is a novel innovatoin built on the feedback from our most advanced users and customers.
As for partners, there are companies developing special-purpose storage engines for MySQL, with the help of which we will be able to lead in new markets. Others develop encryption technologies, data synchronisation, or something else. Whether it is produced by the community, by partners or by ourselves, these innovations will help provide the new solutions that the world needs.
I think you are saying that software business is essentially an innovation battle, and I agree with you. We innovate in production models, organisational models, business models and most definitely in software technology. But, of course, we must not get complacent.
Thanks for the question. A detail: the partnership is a regular one, not a strategic one (where "strategic" would mean that it is a top priority for the company and we have a whole team working on it, like we do with HP or SAP for instance).
We certainly have been criticised for striking a deal with SCO, but I think we also have explained our reasoning and motivations well (especially on Groklaw a year ago). Financially we have gained from it because there are payments from SCO to us. To reiterate our main motivations: there are end-users on SCOs platform that we think deserve the best database they can get, so we think it is right to serve them. We do not agree with SCO on what they are doing in the lawsuits, but then we also think we should not be the judge of that. The customers of SCO can vote with their feet, and the courts of law are there to pass the verdicts. Please read the full Groklaw discussions for more on this.
What I hope the world sees is that MySQL AB makes up its own mind (even when it may not be the most popular decision), stands for its decisions, and is ready to openly debate the pros and cons of any decision. In the long run, that's in my mind the only path to success. We may make wrong decisions at times, but at least we are making decisions and at least we are moving forward.
I enjoy most of them! Somebody gave me a can of "Martens Lager" from Belgium (a famous beer country) so that's a favourite. I am a great fan of Guinness, especially when I visit London and Dublin. I've come to like Samuel Adams and Anchor Steam in USA. In my native Finland I enjoy Karhu ("bear"). The list is longer but I'll stop here.
In free software and open source communities it is often believed that MySQL's competition is Firebird, Postgres, and SQLite. But I see it differently. Those products are of great quality and they will definitely continue to have strong followings (that may very well grow). Taken as a group, we compete with each other for the hearts and minds of open source developers, and thereby we also (each one of us) become better over time.
But elsewere it is MySQL that creates the competition. We are successfully scoring victories over the "big three": Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. That's where the main battle is being fought. We draw strength from our enormous user base in the FOSS community and use that to compete in the commercial world. That market is estimated to be 15 billion USD. Many of you may not care about business and dollars or euros, but as CEO I do, and I know that by winning in the commercial market, we get money for which we can develop more FOSS software that you then can use and modify and re-distribute and so on.
Make sense?
You also have a comment on our licensing scheme. My view is that it is unfavourable only for the ones who are trying to close-source their apps without giving anything back. If you are all FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), you can use our software completely freely. If you wan't to close something, we will be happy to sell you a closed licence. In summary, we have a business model that works, which is what allows us to grow the organisation, support FSF, fight software patents. etc. But I continue to be interested in your suggestions on how we can improve our model. Have a look at the MySQL Forge and our new program for encouraging congtributions, for instance. Does that make sense to you and is it a change to the better? If not, what would be? Thanks!
In my experience, success is always a result of a number of things that are done right, plus an amount of luck. In other words, many stars must be aligned.
I believe that for MySQL it was vital that the founders were so customer-focused from day one. They responded to every single email. They listened carefully and they took care not to be arrogant. They wrote a good reference manual. They made sure the product could be downloaded and installed in no more than 15 minutes (and you may have noticed that the best programmers are usually also impatient, and you lose them unless you provide value to them quickly).
Thanks for the question. I don't know what kind of CEO I am. I am just following the instincts I have developed over the years - from being a boyscout when I was young to engaging in all kinds of business and non-business activities in my late teens and twenties, and later. Most of the time I have chosen to do what is fun rather than what could have brought fortunes, so perhaps I am different in that sense. But as CEO my task absolutely *is* to create fortunes. Perhaps you should ask people who have worked with me or work with me. They may have a better perspective.
The whole idea behind the distributed organisation is an interesting one, and we are very proud to be featured in Fortune Magazine. And we wouldn't be there where it not for the support from our community - so thank you!
As for the quote that was attributed to me, it is not correct word by word. My point was that if you work from your home, it is important that you have some other devotion too, in addition to the company you work for (MySQL in this case). Otherwise you may lose perspective. That other devotion can be nearly anything. For Erik Granström in Sweden it is his family, his sheep farm (yes, he is also a farmer), and writing books.
I would be keen to hear how others deal with this. What tricks and techniques do you have for enjoying working from home, for being productive, for being social with colleagues who are thousands of kilometers/miles away? Let us know!
Is this yet another sign that the DBMS vendors are going open source? This reaffirms our thinking of where open source is going. Great to see Oracle legitimise the open source database space as they did with Linux.
Yes, please examine the licence carefully, and you will notice that MySQL is friendly to all major open source licences.
Thanks to the GPL and our own FOSS Exception, you can mix and match MySQL with other open source software even when the licence texts would otherwise be legally incompatible.
The only time you need to be aware of our licensing is when you blend some closed source code into the FOSS stew. And for those situations we can offer a commercial licence.
I think it is fair to say that MySQL AB has listened carefully to the feedback from the community and made adjustments to licensing and other practices with the aim to promote the freedom of software. Would you agree? I am keen to hear your viewpoints.
That's the great thing with open source. If you have concluded that some product really sucks, you can:
* build a better product yourself * contribute to the product that you feel sucks so that it stops sucking * use another product * or, even, post your opinion as Anonymous Coward on/.
The book "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman eloquently describes this (on an abstract level). I warmly recommend it. More info here: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HIREXX.html
We don't actually mind if some conservative opinion leaders fail to see the power of open source databases.
Our intent is to demonstrate to the world (and ourselves) that open source can indeed produce databases that become strategic for enterprise customers. We are also here to show that open source can produce profitable, healthy businesses. It's a crusade, and there will always be sceptics when you do something new.
The logic for us is "We have opened up our software to the whole world by licensing it under the GPL. We hope you reciprocate by doing the same with your software."
Right, you don't have to send any code back specifically to the copyright holder (MySQL AB in this case). What I mean by "reciprocity requirement" is section 2b of the GPL. This is what it says:
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
The GPL does not require you to pay anyone, and it does not require you not to charge a fee for your application. But it does require you to license distributed derivative work under the same licence, i.e. under the GPL.
If for any reason that is a requirement you don't want to live up to, you can in our case choose to purchase a commercial licence for the same software.
First, if your application is under the GPL or another OSI compliant open source licence, you will not need a commercial licence for MySQL. MySQL AB has issued a "FLOSS Exception" which uniquely makes the GPL licence as used for MySQL compatible with OSI approved open source licences. See our website for more information.
Secondly, if you use GPL software in-house, i.e. you do not distribute, then the reciprocity requirement of the GPL does not kick in so you are free to use MySQL under GPL. (Some call the reciprocity requirement the "viral effect". I call it the reciprocity requirement, or simply the "blessing".)
The two scenarios above cover the vast majority of all cases.
If you distribute a commercially licensed application, then by the same logic that your application is commercially licensed, we think the database should be. This is the Quid pro Quo principle of MySQL AB and of a host of other open source companies.
Unfortunately I don't think there is any mechanism for challenging *all* software patents in one go, although I would welcome one.
But there is plenty of good work done behind the scenes (and on the scenes) with the purpose of limiting or completely abolishing the patentability of software.
These things change slowly, and all of us need to be prepared to live WITH software patents until the present malfunctioning software patent system has been changed.
Slashdot Mirror
Carillo, Carillo, Carillo - siinä maistuupi mansikkahillo!
Marten
I pronounce my name in whatever language I am speaking. So in English, it is something close to "Martin". In my native Swedish language, it is pronounced like "Morten" with a rolling R. You may have noticed that in Norway, that's how they spell that name too ("Morten"). And in Denmark they used to write "Maarten", which at the same time is the most official way of transcribing my name. But I like simple solutions, so feel free to spell it Mårten or Marten and feel free to pronounce it any way convenient for you.
Marten
Thanks for the kind words! It is always stimulating to hear from others what they think of us. (Of course it is most stimulating when it is positive, as in your case, but if not stimulating it is at least useful when it is negative.)
Marten
Yes, you of course have the right to stop using MySQL just as you have a right to start using it. I am sorry if we have lost a customer in you. I respect you for taking the time to tell us about it.
You may not be interested in any further details, but if you are, feel free to send me an email and I would be happy to set up a time to discuss this over the phone.
Marten
I am reading you.
Thanks for the proposal on sequence support. In our company I am not the one to decide on features or present timetables or roadmaps on them. But I am very happy to take your suggestion to our engineers. We get tons of suggestions for new features, and it is difficult to decide which ones to do and in what order. The more people want a specific feature, the more likely we are to implement it.
And perhaps you could help us? If you can design it for us, or even contribute code, that goes a long way.
Marten
In some ways, the question is by now nearly ten years old, but here is my story: At Solid I was in charge of a campaign to make it popular on Linux which was a novel thing at the time. For a very short time Solid indeed was the most popular Linux database (in 1996 or so). So when Solid's board decided to focus on big opportunities in telco and telematics rather than on popularity on Linux, I decided to leave.
That's one of the reasons why I a few years later so gladly accepted the offer to become CEO of MySQL - I could take up the idea where I had left off att Solid, and with a momentum a hundred or thousand times stronger.
Interestingly, when we fast forward to today, Solid is back in this game and has just released their open source version which integrates as a storage engine for MySQL!
Marten
I should leave the technical questions to our technical experts.
But quickly, the benefits of the storage engine architecture is very tangible for advanced users with heavy loads and different loads on different sets of data. Over time, we will work on streamlining the api's and the syntax so that you don't have to be concerned about this issue. But, typically, those who need to use multiple storage engines typically also will be happy to make use of their specific features although they slightly differ from each other.
Marten
Great question and I am happy to address it. I'd say there are three main responses to your question:
First, you can't kill a GPL product by just acquiring it. If you as the owner continue to maintain it (as Oracle has done so far), nothing bad has happened. If you stop maintaining it, the community will quickly take over and make sure the software stays uptodate.
Secondly, I believe that the open source world has a self-healing mechanism built in. When something disappears or is at risk at disappearning, replacements quickly emerge. Completely on his own, Paul McCullagh developed the transactional PBXT storage engine for MySQL. And our partner Solid did the same. Check out their website http://www.solidtech.com./ There are other storage engines in development and under design.
Thirdly, as a company we are ensuring that there are strong transactional storage engines available for MySQL. MySQL Cluster is one and the Falcon project is another one. Falcon is a modern transactional storage engine built by Jim Starkey (known as the inventor of MVCC and the one who coined the term blob) on basis of technology he had developed and that we acquired. Falcon will soon come out as alfa.
The acquisition by Oracle of InnoDB (i.e. Innobase Oy) sent some shock vibes through the open source community a year ago, and perhaps rightly so, but I think we can be proud of what has transpired since then. As for Sleepycat (and their engine BerkeleyDB), it never was in any real use inside MySQL and after looking at the technology we decided a long time ago not to pursue that alternative.
Overall, there is another learning from all of this. It is a step towards increased modularity of MySQL, which in itself makes it easier for others to contribute code. We have taken an "architecture of participation" as a priority for us, and making the product modular is one important step in enabling participation. If you have good ideas on how to achieve higher modularity and enable more contributions, let us know!
Marten
OK, sorry for not understanding the question. Here is what we do about the future:
Thanks to its popularity, MySQL has become a platform for innovation. By this I mean that increasingly, other innovators are attaching their leading-edge technology to ours, thus enhancing the overall competitivess of the product.
We did it ourselves with MySQL Cluster. That's technology originally developed by Ericsson - and today it is an absolute category leader in telco and networking. Nokia, Alcatel and Nortel are all building real-time network nodes on top of MySQL Cluster. No one else has a main-memory based shared-nothing cluster with that high throughput and availability. Or take the new Monitoring and Advisory Service that we are launching as part of MySQL Enterprise - this is a novel innovatoin built on the feedback from our most advanced users and customers.
As for partners, there are companies developing special-purpose storage engines for MySQL, with the help of which we will be able to lead in new markets. Others develop encryption technologies, data synchronisation, or something else. Whether it is produced by the community, by partners or by ourselves, these innovations will help provide the new solutions that the world needs.
I think you are saying that software business is essentially an innovation battle, and I agree with you. We innovate in production models, organisational models, business models and most definitely in software technology. But, of course, we must not get complacent.
Marten
Thanks for the question. A detail: the partnership is a regular one, not a strategic one (where "strategic" would mean that it is a top priority for the company and we have a whole team working on it, like we do with HP or SAP for instance).
We certainly have been criticised for striking a deal with SCO, but I think we also have explained our reasoning and motivations well (especially on Groklaw a year ago). Financially we have gained from it because there are payments from SCO to us. To reiterate our main motivations: there are end-users on SCOs platform that we think deserve the best database they can get, so we think it is right to serve them. We do not agree with SCO on what they are doing in the lawsuits, but then we also think we should not be the judge of that. The customers of SCO can vote with their feet, and the courts of law are there to pass the verdicts. Please read the full Groklaw discussions for more on this.
What I hope the world sees is that MySQL AB makes up its own mind (even when it may not be the most popular decision), stands for its decisions, and is ready to openly debate the pros and cons of any decision. In the long run, that's in my mind the only path to success. We may make wrong decisions at times, but at least we are making decisions and at least we are moving forward.
Marten
I enjoy most of them! Somebody gave me a can of "Martens Lager" from Belgium (a famous beer country) so that's a favourite. I am a great fan of Guinness, especially when I visit London and Dublin. I've come to like Samuel Adams and Anchor Steam in USA. In my native Finland I enjoy Karhu ("bear"). The list is longer but I'll stop here.
Marten
In free software and open source communities it is often believed that MySQL's competition is Firebird, Postgres, and SQLite. But I see it differently. Those products are of great quality and they will definitely continue to have strong followings (that may very well grow). Taken as a group, we compete with each other for the hearts and minds of open source developers, and thereby we also (each one of us) become better over time.
But elsewere it is MySQL that creates the competition. We are successfully scoring victories over the "big three": Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM. That's where the main battle is being fought. We draw strength from our enormous user base in the FOSS community and use that to compete in the commercial world. That market is estimated to be 15 billion USD. Many of you may not care about business and dollars or euros, but as CEO I do, and I know that by winning in the commercial market, we get money for which we can develop more FOSS software that you then can use and modify and re-distribute and so on.
Make sense?
You also have a comment on our licensing scheme. My view is that it is unfavourable only for the ones who are trying to close-source their apps without giving anything back. If you are all FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), you can use our software completely freely. If you wan't to close something, we will be happy to sell you a closed licence. In summary, we have a business model that works, which is what allows us to grow the organisation, support FSF, fight software patents. etc. But I continue to be interested in your suggestions on how we can improve our model. Have a look at the MySQL Forge and our new program for encouraging congtributions, for instance. Does that make sense to you and is it a change to the better? If not, what would be? Thanks!
Marten
In my experience, success is always a result of a number of things that are done right, plus an amount of luck. In other words, many stars must be aligned.
I believe that for MySQL it was vital that the founders were so customer-focused from day one. They responded to every single email. They listened carefully and they took care not to be arrogant. They wrote a good reference manual. They made sure the product could be downloaded and installed in no more than 15 minutes (and you may have noticed that the best programmers are usually also impatient, and you lose them unless you provide value to them quickly).
Marten
Thanks for the question. I don't know what kind of CEO I am. I am just following the instincts I have developed over the years - from being a boyscout when I was young to engaging in all kinds of business and non-business activities in my late teens and twenties, and later. Most of the time I have chosen to do what is fun rather than what could have brought fortunes, so perhaps I am different in that sense. But as CEO my task absolutely *is* to create fortunes. Perhaps you should ask people who have worked with me or work with me. They may have a better perspective.
Marten
Thanks. I am ready for both easy and tough questions and look forward to a healthy debate.
Marten
/. readers,
The whole idea behind the distributed organisation is an interesting one, and we are very proud to be featured in Fortune Magazine. And we wouldn't be there where it not for the support from our community - so thank you!
As for the quote that was attributed to me, it is not correct word by word. My point was that if you work from your home, it is important that you have some other devotion too, in addition to the company you work for (MySQL in this case). Otherwise you may lose perspective. That other devotion can be nearly anything. For Erik Granström in Sweden it is his family, his sheep farm (yes, he is also a farmer), and writing books.
I would be keen to hear how others deal with this. What tricks and techniques do you have for enjoying working from home, for being productive, for being social with colleagues who are thousands of kilometers/miles away? Let us know!
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
Is this yet another sign that the DBMS vendors are going open source? This reaffirms our thinking of where open source is going. Great to see Oracle legitimise the open source database space as they did with Linux.
Marten Mickos, MySQL AB
Yes, please examine the licence carefully, and you will notice that MySQL is friendly to all major open source licences.
Thanks to the GPL and our own FOSS Exception, you can mix and match MySQL with other open source software even when the licence texts would otherwise be legally incompatible.
The only time you need to be aware of our licensing is when you blend some closed source code into the FOSS stew. And for those situations we can offer a commercial licence.
I think it is fair to say that MySQL AB has listened carefully to the feedback from the community and made adjustments to licensing and other practices with the aim to promote the freedom of software. Would you agree? I am keen to hear your viewpoints.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
P.S. FOSS = Free and Open Source Software
That's the great thing with open source. If you have concluded that some product really sucks, you can:
* build a better product yourself
* contribute to the product that you feel sucks so that it stops sucking
* use another product
* or, even, post your opinion as Anonymous Coward on
The book "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman eloquently describes this (on an abstract level). I warmly recommend it. More info here: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HIREXX.html
Marten
We don't actually mind if some conservative opinion leaders fail to see the power of open source databases.
Our intent is to demonstrate to the world (and ourselves) that open source can indeed produce databases that become strategic for enterprise customers. We are also here to show that open source can produce profitable, healthy businesses. It's a crusade, and there will always be sceptics when you do something new.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
The logic for us is "We have opened up our software to the whole world by licensing it under the GPL. We hope you reciprocate by doing the same with your software."
Right, you don't have to send any code back specifically to the copyright holder (MySQL AB in this case).
What I mean by "reciprocity requirement" is section 2b of the GPL. This is what it says:
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
The GPL does not require you to pay anyone, and it does not require you not to charge a fee for your application. But it does require you to license distributed derivative work under the same licence, i.e. under the GPL.
If for any reason that is a requirement you don't want to live up to, you can in our case choose to purchase a commercial licence for the same software.
Let me clarify the licensing.
First, if your application is under the GPL or another OSI compliant open source licence, you will not need a commercial licence for MySQL. MySQL AB has issued a "FLOSS Exception" which uniquely makes the GPL licence as used for MySQL compatible with OSI approved open source licences. See our website for more information.
Secondly, if you use GPL software in-house, i.e. you do not distribute, then the reciprocity requirement of the GPL does not kick in so you are free to use MySQL under GPL. (Some call the reciprocity requirement the "viral effect". I call it the reciprocity requirement, or simply the "blessing".)
The two scenarios above cover the vast majority of all cases.
If you distribute a commercially licensed application, then by the same logic that your application is commercially licensed, we think the database should be. This is the Quid pro Quo principle of MySQL AB and of a host of other open source companies.
I hope this info is useful!
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
Unfortunately I don't think there is any mechanism for challenging *all* software patents in one go, although I would welcome one.
But there is plenty of good work done behind the scenes (and on the scenes) with the purpose of limiting or completely abolishing the patentability of software.
These things change slowly, and all of us need to be prepared to live WITH software patents until the present malfunctioning software patent system has been changed.
I agree with this assessment. There are a number of serious problems with software patents, and this is one.