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As soon as Oracle bought them, the writing was on the wall for an open-source MySQL. Look how quickly they murdered OpenSolaris. Oracle is anathema to open so

by beedogs 14y ago

As soon as Oracle bought them, the writing was on the wall for an open-source MySQL. Look how quickly they murdered OpenSolaris. Oracle is anathema to open software.

taligent 14y ago
OpenSolaris is still available for download including the source. http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/ http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/ It's just not supported or maintained any longer.
- 3amOpsGuy 14y ago
  I miss Sun. They made some seriously cool stuff, and in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. Jonathan Schwartz, for me anyway, kicked off the whole cool, open and chatty top exec thing that's so common now.
  - jmj42 14y ago
    > in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. This is a common misconception about Sun. In fact, they were quite progressive from the beginning. They embraced a hybrid open/closed model from day one, for instance. They opened up some key technologies, such as NFS and SPARC. They maintained huge, comparatively, research budgets, with relatively few strings attached to productization of that research. Through the late 90s and very early '00 (Dotcom era) they were under constant pressure from institutional investors to cut research funding, but didn't. In the end, though, I have to agre. I miss Sun (though my friends and co-workers probably do not miss me talking about how great Sun is) [edit: cut-n-paste quote error]
  - batista 14y ago
    >I miss Sun. They made some seriously cool stuff, and in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. Yes, and look how well it worked out for them...
    - _delirium 14y ago
      One of the problems with corporate R&D in general it seems: what's successful for businesses and what's good for technological advancement often seem not to be in sync. Some of the best stuff has come from notoriously unprofitable groups, like the old Xerox PARC, which benefitted the whole sector, but not its originators.
      - russell 14y ago
        Unlike most corporate R&D, PARC did good stuff. It was Xerox HQ that was exceptionally stupid. They had all the technology, but managed to do very little with it. Silicon Valley companies picked it up and ran with it.
        jmj42 14y ago
        Most big corporate research labs did good work. PARC, Bell Labs, IBM Research, Sun Labs, even Microsoft Research have all done "good stuff." Much of it critical to today's understanding of technology and computer science. Certainly PARC has been instrumental in many areas of technology, I don't think it's fair to dismiss most corporate research. In fact, at least in the land of technology, most corporate research has done good stuff.
      - einhverfr 14y ago
        Look at the amazing things that came from Bell Labs. The transistor, laser, cell phone (in the 40's!), UNIX......
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      Making cool stuff and being progressive actually kept them alive longer. When x86's starting eating away the profits of their SPARC business, it was abundantly clear they would have problems down the road. Computing platforms tend to move up and what's on your desktop now may be powering servers ten years from now (quite possibly because by then people will have spent ten years writing and learning how to write software for it). Sun tried to disrupt the desktop with the SunRay series, but they never got to the right price point. I'd have loved to have a Niagara-based desktop and I bet that had one been available for Unix enthusiasts, Firefox would be rendering pages and tabs on dozens of different threads. People often discount that, but I can say it from experience. Back in 1998, I had two machines on my desk at work: a 400 MHz Pentium II (or III) and a dual-processor 200 MHz Pentium (both running Windows NT 4). While the single processor was somewhat faster, the overall experience of the dual processor machine was much smoother, with very few pauses and hourglasses. A lot of software today is single-threaded for the sole reason processors have only recently become multi-threaded. And x86's only became multi-core/thread after the NT kernel became mainstream.
metachris 14y ago
Also same story with OpenOffice, and Jenkins/Hudson.
jacques_chester 14y ago
The writing has been on the wall ever since MySQL AB required copyright assignment. Monty doesn't come to this with clean hands.
- mrkurt 14y ago
  Copyright assignment is basically required if you're going to sell an open source project under a different license. It's not usually nefarious, all that contributed code is still available under GPL.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    The point is that if one entity owns the original copyright, they can wreak sufficient havoc that the project can splinter into individually anaemic forks. MySQL has splintered into at least 3 competing forks outside of the "real" MySQL: MariaDB, Percona and Drizzle.
    - fallenpegasus 14y ago
      I wouldn't say they "compete", at least, not harmfully. Maria and Percona swap patches with each other, and are drop-in replacements for MySQL. Drizzle is an exploration of the idea of paying off as much as possible of MySQL's technical debt and throwing away crufty backwards compatibility. The technical ecology of users and developers around MySQL is healthier than it has ever been.
  - davidw 14y ago
    > going to sell an open source project under a different license It's required where you want to sell a restrictively licensed (GPL, say) open source project under a commercial license. If it's licensed under something like the Apache license or BSD, you can do what you want with it. But then, so can everyone else, so you don't have the advantage you would with the dual license and require copyright assignment strategy.
    - rbanffy 14y ago

by beedogs 14y ago

As soon as Oracle bought them, the writing was on the wall for an open-source MySQL. Look how quickly they murdered OpenSolaris. Oracle is anathema to open software.

taligent 14y ago

OpenSolaris is still available for download including the source. http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/ http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/ It's just not supported or maintained any longer.

3amOpsGuy 14y ago
I miss Sun. They made some seriously cool stuff, and in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. Jonathan Schwartz, for me anyway, kicked off the whole cool, open and chatty top exec thing that's so common now.
- jmj42 14y ago
  > in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. This is a common misconception about Sun. In fact, they were quite progressive from the beginning. They embraced a hybrid open/closed model from day one, for instance. They opened up some key technologies, such as NFS and SPARC. They maintained huge, comparatively, research budgets, with relatively few strings attached to productization of that research. Through the late 90s and very early '00 (Dotcom era) they were under constant pressure from institutional investors to cut research funding, but didn't. In the end, though, I have to agre. I miss Sun (though my friends and co-workers probably do not miss me talking about how great Sun is) [edit: cut-n-paste quote error]
- batista 14y ago
  >I miss Sun. They made some seriously cool stuff, and in their later years they were really quite progressive in their outlook and approach. Yes, and look how well it worked out for them...
  - _delirium 14y ago
    One of the problems with corporate R&D in general it seems: what's successful for businesses and what's good for technological advancement often seem not to be in sync. Some of the best stuff has come from notoriously unprofitable groups, like the old Xerox PARC, which benefitted the whole sector, but not its originators.
    - russell 14y ago
      Unlike most corporate R&D, PARC did good stuff. It was Xerox HQ that was exceptionally stupid. They had all the technology, but managed to do very little with it. Silicon Valley companies picked it up and ran with it.
      - jmj42 14y ago
        Most big corporate research labs did good work. PARC, Bell Labs, IBM Research, Sun Labs, even Microsoft Research have all done "good stuff." Much of it critical to today's understanding of technology and computer science. Certainly PARC has been instrumental in many areas of technology, I don't think it's fair to dismiss most corporate research. In fact, at least in the land of technology, most corporate research has done good stuff.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      Look at the amazing things that came from Bell Labs. The transistor, laser, cell phone (in the 40's!), UNIX......
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    Making cool stuff and being progressive actually kept them alive longer. When x86's starting eating away the profits of their SPARC business, it was abundantly clear they would have problems down the road. Computing platforms tend to move up and what's on your desktop now may be powering servers ten years from now (quite possibly because by then people will have spent ten years writing and learning how to write software for it). Sun tried to disrupt the desktop with the SunRay series, but they never got to the right price point. I'd have loved to have a Niagara-based desktop and I bet that had one been available for Unix enthusiasts, Firefox would be rendering pages and tabs on dozens of different threads. People often discount that, but I can say it from experience. Back in 1998, I had two machines on my desk at work: a 400 MHz Pentium II (or III) and a dual-processor 200 MHz Pentium (both running Windows NT 4). While the single processor was somewhat faster, the overall experience of the dual processor machine was much smoother, with very few pauses and hourglasses. A lot of software today is single-threaded for the sole reason processors have only recently become multi-threaded. And x86's only became multi-core/thread after the NT kernel became mainstream.

metachris 14y ago

Also same story with OpenOffice, and Jenkins/Hudson.

jacques_chester 14y ago

The writing has been on the wall ever since MySQL AB required copyright assignment. Monty doesn't come to this with clean hands.

mrkurt 14y ago
Copyright assignment is basically required if you're going to sell an open source project under a different license. It's not usually nefarious, all that contributed code is still available under GPL.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  The point is that if one entity owns the original copyright, they can wreak sufficient havoc that the project can splinter into individually anaemic forks. MySQL has splintered into at least 3 competing forks outside of the "real" MySQL: MariaDB, Percona and Drizzle.
  - fallenpegasus 14y ago
    I wouldn't say they "compete", at least, not harmfully. Maria and Percona swap patches with each other, and are drop-in replacements for MySQL. Drizzle is an exploration of the idea of paying off as much as possible of MySQL's technical debt and throwing away crufty backwards compatibility. The technical ecology of users and developers around MySQL is healthier than it has ever been.
- davidw 14y ago
  > going to sell an open source project under a different license It's required where you want to sell a restrictively licensed (GPL, say) open source project under a commercial license. If it's licensed under something like the Apache license or BSD, you can do what you want with it. But then, so can everyone else, so you don't have the advantage you would with the dual license and require copyright assignment strategy.
  - rbanffy 14y ago