[kwlug-disc] any thoughts on the current mysql brouhaha?

[Chris Irwin]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:15, Dave Cramer <davec at visibleassets.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>
> wrote:
> >
> > http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/2010/01/wht-save-mysql-now.html
> >
> > is it time to shift to postgresql?
>
> Yeah,
>
> He should have thought of this before he took their money....
>

While Monty definitely got money for MySQL AB from Sun, he couldn't exactly
stop the deal either. Regardless, he was fine with Sun, and he didn't leave
the MySQL landscape. He doesn't get any money from Oracle.

he's a whiner.
>

I should start out by indicating that I don't think the sky is falling on
MySQL.

The issue Monty has with Oracle is the possible (strong) conflict of
interest in their owning of a major free competitor to their own (expensive)
product. I can somewhat understand his cause.

>From what I understand, all commits to MySQL gave MySQL AB (then Sun, soon
Oracle) the ability to sell that code as part of a commercial MySQL
offering. But while the copyright ownership will be transferred to Oracle,
it is still out there under a non-revocable Free license. So As far as us
open-source folks are concerned, it doesn't mattery who owns MySQL as the
code is Free. Even if Oracle were to discontinue MySQL, we'd see a few
OurSQL forks right away I'm sure. Monty can still sell support for MySQL
and/or Mariadb (his already-existing fork), just not closed 'commercial'
versions of such.

I can see a legitimate fear in that rather than killing MySQL completely,
Oracle dilutes the brand release crippled "community" editions, but pour all
of their effort into a closed version, creating a serious functionality gap.
Or start selling some Oracle licenses under the brand, causing confusion.
Either way, it isn't exactly a nail in the coffin for the code or community.

I think the concern is for the PHB side of the fence. We can understand that
Mariadb/whatever >= MySQL, but a PHB may still see MySQL as an established
stable player, and Mariadb as some untested new kid on the block.

He also talked about patents, but you don't need to own any code to be a
jerk with the current patent system, and I'm sure Oracle already has patents
covering core RDB functionality.

It's always been time to shift to postgresql.
>

Right. So what makes you think that now it will actually happen? Dropping in
mariadb is substantially easier. We didn't jump ship from XFree86 to an
alternative implementation, we dropped in a completely compatible fork and
moved on.

i dropped in mariadb and haven't looked back.

-- 
Chris Irwin
<chris at chrisirwin.ca>
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