5 ms·

Why Save MySQL Now?

64 points by jp_sc 17y ago

euroclydon 17y ago
A commenter says that no fork will be able to offer a dual license, and that a fork is only for the GPL portion of the license. Even so, what's the big deal there? Any sizable company can offer to sell a support contract for an open source license of the DB. What am I missing here?
- sabat 17y ago
  Perl programmer Tim Bunce (DBI/DBD) has been sending mass emails to support this cause, and I didn't understand it either. There's some mumbling about how you can't really fork mysql but no clear explanation as to why. GPL is GPL, and the whole codebase is under GPL. You can do what you want. If they need to come up with a new name, because Oracle starts asserting a trademark issue, so be it. Mandriva survives, doesn't it? I had to think for a second to remember that it used to be called Mandrake.
  - james2vegas 17y ago
    You'd think a DBI programmer would know how awful MySQL is and how it would be better left to die.
    - NathanKP 17y ago
      MySQL does the job pretty well for applications in which stored procedures and other advanced features are not needed. It is really fast and very effective at doing what is absolutely needed: INSERTS, UPDATES, and SELECTS. I don't think it is "awful" or ready to die.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      If it was that awful it wouldn't have the installed base it's got. The simple fact that it has a very low barrier to entry alone is one of its major selling points.
      - prodigal_erik 17y ago
        Quality rarely drives market share in software. In this case I blame nearly all of the 5.2 million PHP and MySQL tutorials out there for exemplifying shoddy practices that inevitably lead to quietly truncated fields, phantom reads, and SQL injection attacks.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- there 17y ago
  because companies weren't just paying for support, some were paying for non-gpl'd versions of the code to integrate/resell in their products. only mysql ab (now sun, soon oracle) was able to sell those licenses. this is the same situation with asterisk. digium forces all users that contribute patches to hand over copyright so they can sell a private version of their open-source product to companies. whether this is fair is up for debate (and is partly why many users hate gpl software, preferring more "open" licenses like bsd/isc). a company open sources an initial version of their product with the gpl, giving everyone access to it, its users contribute many bug fixes, new features, and free support (through forums, mailing lists, bug trackers, etc.) but are unable to sell their own versions of that software. the company that retains copyright and distribution rights is of course able to bundle up everything contributed and make a profit directly from it without having to give anything back to those users.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    "some were paying for non-gpl'd versions of the code to integrate/resell in their products" If that's what they need, perhaps to migrate their products to a BSD-licensed RDBMS like PostgreSQL. Or to a public-domain one like SQLite. Or a fully proprietary one. It's their software and, since, they have already licensed it as proprietary, their users were already robbed the freedoms GPL'ed MySQL would provide. As it is now, those companies have licenses for specific versions. If they didn't get permanent unrevokable licenses and were happy with the cheaper ones they got, well... Phineas Barnum would be happy to use them as examples. "whether this is fair is up for debate" If handing over copyright is too expensive, companies are always free not to contribute or not to use Asterisk at all. They will, however, have to compete with other companies who do. Economics will dictate who wins. "(and is partly why many users hate gpl software, preferring more "open" licenses like bsd/isc)" The only freedom GPL denies a developer is to close up software that was once free. The only freedom the allegedly "more open" licenses give developers is to deny freedoms to their users. For the users (and software freedom is about them), those licenses give nothing. But we are drifting from the original topic. The topic is that MySQL is Oracle-proof and doesn't need saving the same way other GPL'ed products don't need saving. They are either good - and thus worthy of surviving - or bad - and thus will die natural deaths. Many people have emotional attachment to their software. I must confess I am thinking and rethinking moving from Linux to OpenSolaris for much too long to explain it in strictly rational terms. I will miss it when Linux dies, but, by then, I expect GNU/HURD to run nicely on my 64-core ARM-based netbook. Or, at least, ZFS to be under GPLv3.
- tentonova 17y ago
  I'm firmly disagree with Monty's duplicity, but I'll try to shed some light on it. The "big deal" is that only two things provide a revenue stream around MySQL sufficient to support the heavy R&D costs associated with building a database product: - The name ("MySQL") - The copyright. If you own the name, you can sell branded binaries and services. If you own the copyright, you can sell non-GPL licenses to commercial interests. Without these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult. I think this ties into this discussion, as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028638 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028638 -- I Love the GPL (Except When it Applies to Me)
  - gaius 17y ago
    Without these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult. Yes, and Monty knew that when he chose to structure MySQL the product that way. Everything is proceeding exactly as he foresaw and intended.
    - tentonova 17y ago
      I agree -- and I think Monty has no business taking umbrage with the bed he's made -- but it's worth exploring why this is the case.
      - euroclydon 17y ago
        Would it be fair to speculate that he never foresaw the largest proprietary DB vendor eventually buying MySql?
        IgorPartola 17y ago
        The only thing we can speculate about is what we would have done in his shoes, unless he provides a convincing insight. If it was me, and I cared about a project of mine for the sake of the project and thought it was a vital project (as opposed to one of my tinker toys), I would have open sources the whole thing, no dual license. That way nobody can "steal" it from the community, by buying some company. I would also have tried to give it to someone like the Apache Foundation, so that when I die, my project does not. On the other hand, if I thought my project was going to be a cash cow, I would have done exactly what Monty did, except the whining after the fact. I think if I buy a car, then sell it to someone and that person sells it later to my arch nemesis for a discount and he plans on wrecking the heck out of it, my screaming about how this is not right is not going to attract many supporters, is it?
gaius 17y ago
I can guarantee that for the $1Bn Sun's shareholder's paid him for it - 14% of the total price Oracle is paying for all of Sun - Monty could buy MySQL back from Oracle and do with it as he pleased. So why doesn't he?
- staunch 17y ago
  You have no way of knowing that. Ellison could view even $2 billion as a small price to pay for owning MySQL. MySQL has been a thorn in his side for years, and now he owns it.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Great. Ellison owns a piece of software anybody can fork and use as GPL!
    - nailer 17y ago
      He owns the brand, and controls the direction of the product bearing that brand.
      - gaius 17y ago
        Which means nothing really. If Monty announces that MarisDB is "the real MySQL" everyone who's ever heard of MySQL will go with him. Everyone else probably doesn't even know what database is under their company's data. All Sun got for their $1Bn was the domain name mysql.com...
        seldo 17y ago
        I really don't think that's true. The "average" MySQL user has never heard of Monty -- I used MySQL for more than a decade before I heard the name of its inventor. MySQL's battle for the last decade has mostly been getting enough brand recognition that corporate environments consider it a serious, practical alternative. The brand IS the value of MySQL: it is a promise that the technology has been worked on by serious people, and will continue to be patched and improved for the forseeable future (however realistic that promise turns out to be). Starting again with a new brand is possible, but by definition it would be a new company which would have to prove its chops and its longevity all over again. Losing the MySQL brand would be a serious setback to MySQL adoption in corporate environments, and thereby a setback to the amount of money that gets invested in improving it. It is in the interests of all users of MySQL that the brand remain trusted.
elblanco 17y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994584 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994584
mellis 17y ago
An open-source project is more than the code. It also includes the community and the resources for continuing development. Although the code is under the GPL, Sun (and now possibly Oracle) has control of the brand and many of the potential revenue streams. A fork would lack the benefit of a clear, centralized community and many resources to fund development. Both of these things threaten the future of MySQL as an open-source project.
- senko 17y ago
  Forking + rebranding is perfectly viable option. A similar thing happened to the popular Mambo CMS, which had a big community and user base. Over time, everyone switched to Joomla, the rebranded free version - I don't see Mambo mentioned anywhere anymore. If the same zeal and effort being spent to oppose Oracle were being spent to create a community around a fork, helped by the controversy it'd be a widely known thing already. Couple that with OS vendors choosing the fork over the "mainline", and in a few years the fork would be "the" MySQL, albeit with a different name.
jacquesm 17y ago
Moral of the story: you can't sell your cake and have it too.
figital 17y ago
This is the perfect example of why I will continue to hedge my bets on permissively-licensed open source (X/MIT/BSD). Postgres and SQL are great products and should fill any gaps should you consider switching from MySQL (or Oracle).

64 points by jp_sc 17y ago

A commenter says that no fork will be able to offer a dual license, and that a fork is only for the GPL portion of the license. Even so, what's the big deal there? Any sizable company can offer to sell a support contract for an open source license of the DB. What am I missing here?

sabat 17y ago
Perl programmer Tim Bunce (DBI/DBD) has been sending mass emails to support this cause, and I didn't understand it either. There's some mumbling about how you can't really fork mysql but no clear explanation as to why. GPL is GPL, and the whole codebase is under GPL. You can do what you want. If they need to come up with a new name, because Oracle starts asserting a trademark issue, so be it. Mandriva survives, doesn't it? I had to think for a second to remember that it used to be called Mandrake.
- james2vegas 17y ago
  You'd think a DBI programmer would know how awful MySQL is and how it would be better left to die.
  - NathanKP 17y ago
    MySQL does the job pretty well for applications in which stored procedures and other advanced features are not needed. It is really fast and very effective at doing what is absolutely needed: INSERTS, UPDATES, and SELECTS. I don't think it is "awful" or ready to die.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    If it was that awful it wouldn't have the installed base it's got. The simple fact that it has a very low barrier to entry alone is one of its major selling points.
    - prodigal_erik 17y ago
      Quality rarely drives market share in software. In this case I blame nearly all of the 5.2 million PHP and MySQL tutorials out there for exemplifying shoddy practices that inevitably lead to quietly truncated fields, phantom reads, and SQL injection attacks.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
there 17y ago
because companies weren't just paying for support, some were paying for non-gpl'd versions of the code to integrate/resell in their products. only mysql ab (now sun, soon oracle) was able to sell those licenses. this is the same situation with asterisk. digium forces all users that contribute patches to hand over copyright so they can sell a private version of their open-source product to companies. whether this is fair is up for debate (and is partly why many users hate gpl software, preferring more "open" licenses like bsd/isc). a company open sources an initial version of their product with the gpl, giving everyone access to it, its users contribute many bug fixes, new features, and free support (through forums, mailing lists, bug trackers, etc.) but are unable to sell their own versions of that software. the company that retains copyright and distribution rights is of course able to bundle up everything contributed and make a profit directly from it without having to give anything back to those users.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  "some were paying for non-gpl'd versions of the code to integrate/resell in their products" If that's what they need, perhaps to migrate their products to a BSD-licensed RDBMS like PostgreSQL. Or to a public-domain one like SQLite. Or a fully proprietary one. It's their software and, since, they have already licensed it as proprietary, their users were already robbed the freedoms GPL'ed MySQL would provide. As it is now, those companies have licenses for specific versions. If they didn't get permanent unrevokable licenses and were happy with the cheaper ones they got, well... Phineas Barnum would be happy to use them as examples. "whether this is fair is up for debate" If handing over copyright is too expensive, companies are always free not to contribute or not to use Asterisk at all. They will, however, have to compete with other companies who do. Economics will dictate who wins. "(and is partly why many users hate gpl software, preferring more "open" licenses like bsd/isc)" The only freedom GPL denies a developer is to close up software that was once free. The only freedom the allegedly "more open" licenses give developers is to deny freedoms to their users. For the users (and software freedom is about them), those licenses give nothing. But we are drifting from the original topic. The topic is that MySQL is Oracle-proof and doesn't need saving the same way other GPL'ed products don't need saving. They are either good - and thus worthy of surviving - or bad - and thus will die natural deaths. Many people have emotional attachment to their software. I must confess I am thinking and rethinking moving from Linux to OpenSolaris for much too long to explain it in strictly rational terms. I will miss it when Linux dies, but, by then, I expect GNU/HURD to run nicely on my 64-core ARM-based netbook. Or, at least, ZFS to be under GPLv3.
tentonova 17y ago
I'm firmly disagree with Monty's duplicity, but I'll try to shed some light on it. The "big deal" is that only two things provide a revenue stream around MySQL sufficient to support the heavy R&D costs associated with building a database product: - The name ("MySQL") - The copyright. If you own the name, you can sell branded binaries and services. If you own the copyright, you can sell non-GPL licenses to commercial interests. Without these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult. I think this ties into this discussion, as well: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028638 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028638 -- I Love the GPL (Except When it Applies to Me)
- gaius 17y ago
  Without these, creating a viable revenue stream is incredibly difficult. Yes, and Monty knew that when he chose to structure MySQL the product that way. Everything is proceeding exactly as he foresaw and intended.
  - tentonova 17y ago
    I agree -- and I think Monty has no business taking umbrage with the bed he's made -- but it's worth exploring why this is the case.
    - euroclydon 17y ago
      Would it be fair to speculate that he never foresaw the largest proprietary DB vendor eventually buying MySql?
      - IgorPartola 17y ago
        The only thing we can speculate about is what we would have done in his shoes, unless he provides a convincing insight. If it was me, and I cared about a project of mine for the sake of the project and thought it was a vital project (as opposed to one of my tinker toys), I would have open sources the whole thing, no dual license. That way nobody can "steal" it from the community, by buying some company. I would also have tried to give it to someone like the Apache Foundation, so that when I die, my project does not. On the other hand, if I thought my project was going to be a cash cow, I would have done exactly what Monty did, except the whining after the fact. I think if I buy a car, then sell it to someone and that person sells it later to my arch nemesis for a discount and he plans on wrecking the heck out of it, my screaming about how this is not right is not going to attract many supporters, is it?

gaius 17y ago

I can guarantee that for the $1Bn Sun's shareholder's paid him for it - 14% of the total price Oracle is paying for all of Sun - Monty could buy MySQL back from Oracle and do with it as he pleased. So why doesn't he?

staunch 17y ago
You have no way of knowing that. Ellison could view even $2 billion as a small price to pay for owning MySQL. MySQL has been a thorn in his side for years, and now he owns it.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Great. Ellison owns a piece of software anybody can fork and use as GPL!
  - nailer 17y ago
    He owns the brand, and controls the direction of the product bearing that brand.
    - gaius 17y ago
      Which means nothing really. If Monty announces that MarisDB is "the real MySQL" everyone who's ever heard of MySQL will go with him. Everyone else probably doesn't even know what database is under their company's data. All Sun got for their $1Bn was the domain name mysql.com...
      - seldo 17y ago
        I really don't think that's true. The "average" MySQL user has never heard of Monty -- I used MySQL for more than a decade before I heard the name of its inventor. MySQL's battle for the last decade has mostly been getting enough brand recognition that corporate environments consider it a serious, practical alternative. The brand IS the value of MySQL: it is a promise that the technology has been worked on by serious people, and will continue to be patched and improved for the forseeable future (however realistic that promise turns out to be). Starting again with a new brand is possible, but by definition it would be a new company which would have to prove its chops and its longevity all over again. Losing the MySQL brand would be a serious setback to MySQL adoption in corporate environments, and thereby a setback to the amount of money that gets invested in improving it. It is in the interests of all users of MySQL that the brand remain trusted.

elblanco 17y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994584 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994584

mellis 17y ago

An open-source project is more than the code. It also includes the community and the resources for continuing development. Although the code is under the GPL, Sun (and now possibly Oracle) has control of the brand and many of the potential revenue streams. A fork would lack the benefit of a clear, centralized community and many resources to fund development. Both of these things threaten the future of MySQL as an open-source project.

senko 17y ago
Forking + rebranding is perfectly viable option. A similar thing happened to the popular Mambo CMS, which had a big community and user base. Over time, everyone switched to Joomla, the rebranded free version - I don't see Mambo mentioned anywhere anymore. If the same zeal and effort being spent to oppose Oracle were being spent to create a community around a fork, helped by the controversy it'd be a widely known thing already. Couple that with OS vendors choosing the fork over the "mainline", and in a few years the fork would be "the" MySQL, albeit with a different name.

jacquesm 17y ago

Moral of the story: you can't sell your cake and have it too.

figital 17y ago

This is the perfect example of why I will continue to hedge my bets on permissively-licensed open source (X/MIT/BSD). Postgres and SQL are great products and should fill any gaps should you consider switching from MySQL (or Oracle).