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Not surprising since MariaDB is a drop in replacement for MySQL; daemon names don't even change. Not sure how the original developers can create a fork of a pr

Not surprising since MariaDB is a drop in replacement for MySQL; daemon names don't even change. Not sure how the original developers can create a fork of a product they sold for 1 billion? Oh well, better in their hands than Oracle's.

glurgh 13y ago
Not sure how the original developers can create a fork of a product they sold for 1 billion? Product was GPL licensed. For many years before Oracle bought it.
- pestaa 13y ago
  So they kept the money and the legacy of the product. Surely Oracle considered this option? Could have they done anything to prevent such forks?
  - fooey 13y ago
    he had to stay on at oracle for a year
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      "He" who? Monty was already gone when Oracle bought Sun.
      - fooey 13y ago
        yeah, I meant Sun same thing ;p
  - DoubleMalt 13y ago
    Putting real effort into developing an awesome product. Then nobody would have seen the need for a fork. Of course they are afraid of cannibalizing their other overpriced stuff. So they wanted to let it die a slow and painful death. In he grand scheme of things getting rid of the pesky competitor MySQL was only an afterthought in the decision to buy Sun, that was probably driven by the legal department. Also Oracle is pretty strong in the corporate Java space and has some great products there. So MySQL did never get the attention it deserved and needed to thrive.
    - gboudrias 13y ago
      > Also Oracle is pretty strong in the corporate Java space and has some great products there. And by great do you mean "fucking awful albeit reliable"? That's always how I saw Oracle products. A pain at every turn, but it works. Last I heard, that's why Oracle developers earn more than most: No one wants to do it.
  - glurgh 13y ago
    The original purchaser was Sun and they presumably bought it, in part, to compete with Oracle in the lower-end market, to ensure MySQL runs well on Sun hardware (which, in turn, sells more hardware), to sell MySQL related support and professional services and so on. Not long after this, Oracle acquired Sun and along with it, MySQL. One of the MySQL founders didn't like this and started a fork of MySQL, based on the GPL'ed source. There's not a great deal Oracle could have done about this. But they weren't just buying MySQL, they were buying all of Sun. Additionally, the fork wasn't exactly a commercial threat for years - it's only now that we're starting to see movement towards adoption of MariaDB by high-profile, large users.
    - justin66 13y ago
      > Not long after this, Oracle acquired Sun and along with it, MySQL. One of the MySQL founders didn't like this and started a fork of MySQL, based on the GPL'ed source. Based on his constant whining BEFORE the Oracle purchase, that guy would have ended up starting a fork anyhow.
  - mdmarra 13y ago
    Oracle didn't buy Sun for a database engine, they bought them for Java and Solaris.
  - gaius 13y ago
    Business decisions like that are why Sun went bankrupt. For their $1bn they bought only the domain name mysql.com, and Monty was all over the Intermet slagging them off too. FWIW the only way MySQL was usable for real work was InnoDB, which was an Oracle product too.
  - noelherrick 13y ago
    Oracle also has a commercial license for MySQL, which customers can buy to enable them to embed MySQL into their closed-source product. The Monty Program cannot license MariaDB as anything other than the GPL.
eksith 13y ago
Oracle didn't buy the product. They bought the name and the product was a nice extra. Likewise Oracle didn't really buy Java; they bought Sun and Java just happened to be a nice extra. I've heard people say this was like what Cisco tried to do with Linksys by trying to get into consumer and SMB. Plus we know from Cisco what happens when you buy a brand and let it stagnate. Buying MySQL for Oracle, I think, wasn't really a matter of creating a new foothold in the hobby/SMB market or the like. Bringing it under their name was about adding value to their own brand. "Look, we cater to the 'small' guys too!" (And that's however arbitrarily people define 'small' since Adwords clearly doesn't fit the label.) If it was somehow about gaining a foothold, I think that was secondary. And maybe it was their way of somehow muscling in on Postgres in that aspect. Of course people will only continue to use a product if you show it some love. Freshly harvested fruit has a limited shelf life after all.
Aqueous 13y ago
They have a shot at the ole' open source hat trick: Sell the same company to the same company twice for $1 billion.
leef 13y ago
> Oh well, better in their hands than Oracle's. One might think that but it has surprisingly not been true. Oracle, already the owner of InnoDB, now owning the entirety of mysql has been able to stop fighting with Sun and push out awesome features at a high rate. Just to name a few since Oracle took over: * Big performance improvements for multi-core. * Performance Schema * Full-text engine for InnoDB * Thread pools * Improved support for SSD * Online schema updates MariaDB forked at 5.5 and is going to be missing lots of really nice features. They can back port some of it but they aren't going to be able to keep up very well. They have their own implementation of some of these features which, given their small user base, I do not trust as much as the versions implemented in MySQL proper. Also given that MariaDB was forced to merge with SkySQL to survive I just don't see a bright future for MariaDB as long as Oracle continues to improve MySQL like it has been.
- kryptiskt 13y ago
  > given their small user base All the distros are switching to MariaDB.
  - gaius 13y ago
    ... Which means nothing in and of itself. Where's the money coming from? If you say nothing else for Oracle, say that they know where their bread's buttered.

glurgh 13y ago

Not sure how the original developers can create a fork of a product they sold for 1 billion? Product was GPL licensed. For many years before Oracle bought it.

pestaa 13y ago
So they kept the money and the legacy of the product. Surely Oracle considered this option? Could have they done anything to prevent such forks?
- fooey 13y ago
  he had to stay on at oracle for a year
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    "He" who? Monty was already gone when Oracle bought Sun.
    - fooey 13y ago
      yeah, I meant Sun same thing ;p
- DoubleMalt 13y ago
  Putting real effort into developing an awesome product. Then nobody would have seen the need for a fork. Of course they are afraid of cannibalizing their other overpriced stuff. So they wanted to let it die a slow and painful death. In he grand scheme of things getting rid of the pesky competitor MySQL was only an afterthought in the decision to buy Sun, that was probably driven by the legal department. Also Oracle is pretty strong in the corporate Java space and has some great products there. So MySQL did never get the attention it deserved and needed to thrive.
  - gboudrias 13y ago
    > Also Oracle is pretty strong in the corporate Java space and has some great products there. And by great do you mean "fucking awful albeit reliable"? That's always how I saw Oracle products. A pain at every turn, but it works. Last I heard, that's why Oracle developers earn more than most: No one wants to do it.
- glurgh 13y ago
  The original purchaser was Sun and they presumably bought it, in part, to compete with Oracle in the lower-end market, to ensure MySQL runs well on Sun hardware (which, in turn, sells more hardware), to sell MySQL related support and professional services and so on. Not long after this, Oracle acquired Sun and along with it, MySQL. One of the MySQL founders didn't like this and started a fork of MySQL, based on the GPL'ed source. There's not a great deal Oracle could have done about this. But they weren't just buying MySQL, they were buying all of Sun. Additionally, the fork wasn't exactly a commercial threat for years - it's only now that we're starting to see movement towards adoption of MariaDB by high-profile, large users.
  - justin66 13y ago
    > Not long after this, Oracle acquired Sun and along with it, MySQL. One of the MySQL founders didn't like this and started a fork of MySQL, based on the GPL'ed source. Based on his constant whining BEFORE the Oracle purchase, that guy would have ended up starting a fork anyhow.
- mdmarra 13y ago
  Oracle didn't buy Sun for a database engine, they bought them for Java and Solaris.
- gaius 13y ago
  Business decisions like that are why Sun went bankrupt. For their $1bn they bought only the domain name mysql.com, and Monty was all over the Intermet slagging them off too. FWIW the only way MySQL was usable for real work was InnoDB, which was an Oracle product too.
- noelherrick 13y ago
  Oracle also has a commercial license for MySQL, which customers can buy to enable them to embed MySQL into their closed-source product. The Monty Program cannot license MariaDB as anything other than the GPL.

eksith 13y ago

Oracle didn't buy the product. They bought the name and the product was a nice extra. Likewise Oracle didn't really buy Java; they bought Sun and Java just happened to be a nice extra. I've heard people say this was like what Cisco tried to do with Linksys by trying to get into consumer and SMB. Plus we know from Cisco what happens when you buy a brand and let it stagnate. Buying MySQL for Oracle, I think, wasn't really a matter of creating a new foothold in the hobby/SMB market or the like. Bringing it under their name was about adding value to their own brand. "Look, we cater to the 'small' guys too!" (And that's however arbitrarily people define 'small' since Adwords clearly doesn't fit the label.) If it was somehow about gaining a foothold, I think that was secondary. And maybe it was their way of somehow muscling in on Postgres in that aspect. Of course people will only continue to use a product if you show it some love. Freshly harvested fruit has a limited shelf life after all.

Aqueous 13y ago

They have a shot at the ole' open source hat trick: Sell the same company to the same company twice for $1 billion.

leef 13y ago

> Oh well, better in their hands than Oracle's. One might think that but it has surprisingly not been true. Oracle, already the owner of InnoDB, now owning the entirety of mysql has been able to stop fighting with Sun and push out awesome features at a high rate. Just to name a few since Oracle took over: * Big performance improvements for multi-core. * Performance Schema * Full-text engine for InnoDB * Thread pools * Improved support for SSD * Online schema updates MariaDB forked at 5.5 and is going to be missing lots of really nice features. They can back port some of it but they aren't going to be able to keep up very well. They have their own implementation of some of these features which, given their small user base, I do not trust as much as the versions implemented in MySQL proper. Also given that MariaDB was forced to merge with SkySQL to survive I just don't see a bright future for MariaDB as long as Oracle continues to improve MySQL like it has been.

kryptiskt 13y ago
> given their small user base All the distros are switching to MariaDB.
- gaius 13y ago
  ... Which means nothing in and of itself. Where's the money coming from? If you say nothing else for Oracle, say that they know where their bread's buttered.