6 ms·

TBH oracle have been better stewards of MySQL since they bought Sun than Redis the company has been of Redis for the last five or so years.

jchw 2y ago
I personally have wondered if Oracle's behavior with MySQL is partly motivated by the fact that if they try to rug-pull it will most likely just push all of the cloud providers over to MariaDB anyways, which has been doing just fine, and I think is already supported by Amazon RDS anyways. Ultimately I am totally fine with a fork-heavy ecosystem, the only thing I would erase if I could is the normalization of signing CLAs, as I think they make the normally-symmetrical prospect of contributing to open source projects highly asymmetrical, and the consequences are not always so obvious to people.
- stephenr 2y ago
  MariaDB is one of the biggest ironies to me: it was started because people claimed Oracle was going to do Oracle things with it, and somehow make it not open any more. What actually happened is: - Oracle has just made MySQL better, and continues to release new tooling (e.g. mysql router) for it under the same license (gpl2). - MariaDB releases the bare minimum database engine under the GPL, and uses closed licenses for the tooling which is, to quote them: "an essential element to any production database environment".
  - jchw 2y ago
    I wouldn't really put too much weight into the marketing speak, MariaDB feels like the same MySQL offering that always existed, at least to me (and I do run it in production, albeit only on a small scale.) And MariaDB has done plenty of work that is available in the open source product: performance improvements, new storage engines and so on. The only thing that's surprising is that MySQL continued to do the same. I don't think what MariaDB is doing today is what everyone was really worried about Oracle doing. Rather, Oracle simply never did what everyone thought they would. Personally, I think MariaDB keeps them honest, and if MariaDB ceased to exist as a serious alternative there is a good chance the lawnmower would fire back up. Though who knows. Maybe Oracle is different. However, I would prefer not to waste the openness of my mind. I reckon if they thought they could pull the rug they would do so.
    - stephenr 2y ago
      I wasn't suggesting it's the exact same scenario, but it definitely seems a little disingenuous to create a fork of something that you chose to sell, and complain (https://web.archive.org/web/20201003111459/https://www2.computerworld.com.au/article/457551/dead_database_walking_mysql_creator_why_future_belongs_mariadb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201003111459/https://www2.comp...) about it becoming "open core", only to then make everything you do a paid product with the one exception. That's before we get into his claims about maintaining drop-in compatibility "as long as MySQL has a larger user base than MariaDB".
- evanelias 2y ago
  MySQL and MariaDB have diverged over the years. They each have some interesting major features that the other one lacks, and there's an ever-growing list of incompatibilities between them. Amazon RDS does offer a MariaDB option, but Amazon Aurora does not. And other clouds often don't offer it. As far as I can tell from a quick search, Google CloudSQL does not offer a managed MariaDB product. Azure offers one, but they're officially retiring it next year. This discussion is also a bit ironic because MariaDB created the BSL (for use in their proxy product), which is typically attacked alongside SSPL in these types of threads. Not taking sides here, to be clear. I use both MySQL and MariaDB and am glad they both exist. And personally I have no problems with BSL (or SSPL etc) software, since I am not a cloud hosting provider.
  - jchw 2y ago
    I would like to clarify since I am one of the people who is always present in these threads debating these licenses: I think these licenses suck compared to even kind-of-bad open source licenses, like AGPL, though some suck more than others. For example, the SSPL is a poorly-conceived liability nightmare. BUSL, on the other hand, may not be much better, but it is pretty interesting. Software that is BUSL today is theoretically open source eventually. As long as this holds up in court, it is an intriguing alternative to other "business" licenses. However: it was never about this. My complaints always center squarely around two things: - One, deception. If you release a product and you call it "open source" or otherwise try to imply it is open, but actually it is not open source, this is bad. This is bad because like it or not, people have a perception of what open source is that has been shaped by the careful guarding of the definition of the term, and when people misuse it, it dilutes this while also deceiving people into thinking it's the same thing they've come to know. - Two, violation of expectations. I get that the contributions made by open source contributors rarely compares much to the contributions made by those employed at companies, but even still, the CLA breaks the fundamental mutually beneficial relationship that open source contributors have with the projects they're contributing to, and I think that this aspect of CLAs is troublesome. That aside, I personally evangelized Redis within organizations with the understanding that it would always be open source, because why wouldn't it be? And I reckon that big open source users like MediaWiki also never envisioned that Redis would cease to be open source some day. Don't get it twisted, I think Redis is great software that can stand on its own, but it doesn't matter: it didn't. It got a healthy boost from participating in the open source community, and then one day, it suddenly left said community in the dust, which is why we have to fork. However, despite that... I am not ideologically opposed to closed-source, source-available, or any other kind of software. It's fine. I use software that is "non-free". I pay for software. I pay for JetBrains Toolbox. This does not bother me and is not my issue. It's literally just those two things that bother me. So why don't I care about MaxScale? Honestly, it's pretty simple: It's outside of my purview. It may very well be an important project used by a lot of people, but it just doesn't seem like it was ever a huge open source project: according to GitHub, it has a total of 39 all-time contributors, most of which seemingly after the relicensing, versus Redis's 729. I've never used MaxScale and I'm not sure what depends on it. If someone else is mad about this relicensing, I do not necessarily blame them, but I just simply have no dog in the race. MySQL and MariaDB themselves remain as open as ever, and that's really all most people are concerned with IMO.

jchw 2y ago

I personally have wondered if Oracle's behavior with MySQL is partly motivated by the fact that if they try to rug-pull it will most likely just push all of the cloud providers over to MariaDB anyways, which has been doing just fine, and I think is already supported by Amazon RDS anyways. Ultimately I am totally fine with a fork-heavy ecosystem, the only thing I would erase if I could is the normalization of signing CLAs, as I think they make the normally-symmetrical prospect of contributing to open source projects highly asymmetrical, and the consequences are not always so obvious to people.

stephenr 2y ago
MariaDB is one of the biggest ironies to me: it was started because people claimed Oracle was going to do Oracle things with it, and somehow make it not open any more. What actually happened is: - Oracle has just made MySQL better, and continues to release new tooling (e.g. mysql router) for it under the same license (gpl2). - MariaDB releases the bare minimum database engine under the GPL, and uses closed licenses for the tooling which is, to quote them: "an essential element to any production database environment".
- jchw 2y ago
  I wouldn't really put too much weight into the marketing speak, MariaDB feels like the same MySQL offering that always existed, at least to me (and I do run it in production, albeit only on a small scale.) And MariaDB has done plenty of work that is available in the open source product: performance improvements, new storage engines and so on. The only thing that's surprising is that MySQL continued to do the same. I don't think what MariaDB is doing today is what everyone was really worried about Oracle doing. Rather, Oracle simply never did what everyone thought they would. Personally, I think MariaDB keeps them honest, and if MariaDB ceased to exist as a serious alternative there is a good chance the lawnmower would fire back up. Though who knows. Maybe Oracle is different. However, I would prefer not to waste the openness of my mind. I reckon if they thought they could pull the rug they would do so.
  - stephenr 2y ago
    I wasn't suggesting it's the exact same scenario, but it definitely seems a little disingenuous to create a fork of something that you chose to sell, and complain (https://web.archive.org/web/20201003111459/https://www2.computerworld.com.au/article/457551/dead_database_walking_mysql_creator_why_future_belongs_mariadb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201003111459/https://www2.comp...) about it becoming "open core", only to then make everything you do a paid product with the one exception. That's before we get into his claims about maintaining drop-in compatibility "as long as MySQL has a larger user base than MariaDB".
evanelias 2y ago
MySQL and MariaDB have diverged over the years. They each have some interesting major features that the other one lacks, and there's an ever-growing list of incompatibilities between them. Amazon RDS does offer a MariaDB option, but Amazon Aurora does not. And other clouds often don't offer it. As far as I can tell from a quick search, Google CloudSQL does not offer a managed MariaDB product. Azure offers one, but they're officially retiring it next year. This discussion is also a bit ironic because MariaDB created the BSL (for use in their proxy product), which is typically attacked alongside SSPL in these types of threads. Not taking sides here, to be clear. I use both MySQL and MariaDB and am glad they both exist. And personally I have no problems with BSL (or SSPL etc) software, since I am not a cloud hosting provider.
- jchw 2y ago
  I would like to clarify since I am one of the people who is always present in these threads debating these licenses: I think these licenses suck compared to even kind-of-bad open source licenses, like AGPL, though some suck more than others. For example, the SSPL is a poorly-conceived liability nightmare. BUSL, on the other hand, may not be much better, but it is pretty interesting. Software that is BUSL today is theoretically open source eventually. As long as this holds up in court, it is an intriguing alternative to other "business" licenses. However: it was never about this. My complaints always center squarely around two things: - One, deception. If you release a product and you call it "open source" or otherwise try to imply it is open, but actually it is not open source, this is bad. This is bad because like it or not, people have a perception of what open source is that has been shaped by the careful guarding of the definition of the term, and when people misuse it, it dilutes this while also deceiving people into thinking it's the same thing they've come to know. - Two, violation of expectations. I get that the contributions made by open source contributors rarely compares much to the contributions made by those employed at companies, but even still, the CLA breaks the fundamental mutually beneficial relationship that open source contributors have with the projects they're contributing to, and I think that this aspect of CLAs is troublesome. That aside, I personally evangelized Redis within organizations with the understanding that it would always be open source, because why wouldn't it be? And I reckon that big open source users like MediaWiki also never envisioned that Redis would cease to be open source some day. Don't get it twisted, I think Redis is great software that can stand on its own, but it doesn't matter: it didn't. It got a healthy boost from participating in the open source community, and then one day, it suddenly left said community in the dust, which is why we have to fork. However, despite that... I am not ideologically opposed to closed-source, source-available, or any other kind of software. It's fine. I use software that is "non-free". I pay for software. I pay for JetBrains Toolbox. This does not bother me and is not my issue. It's literally just those two things that bother me. So why don't I care about MaxScale? Honestly, it's pretty simple: It's outside of my purview. It may very well be an important project used by a lot of people, but it just doesn't seem like it was ever a huge open source project: according to GitHub, it has a total of 39 all-time contributors, most of which seemingly after the relicensing, versus Redis's 729. I've never used MaxScale and I'm not sure what depends on it. If someone else is mad about this relicensing, I do not necessarily blame them, but I just simply have no dog in the race. MySQL and MariaDB themselves remain as open as ever, and that's really all most people are concerned with IMO.