14 ms·

MySQL man pages silently relicensed away from GPL

398 points by endijs 13y ago

marme 13y ago
Is this even legal? they released the previous documentation under GPL v2 which has a clause stating any modified versions have to be released under the same license. This new documentation is clearly just a modification of the previous documentation. It would be interesting if it came of they did not have the right to do this. If even even one line of the documentation was written by someone else and they did not get a transfer of copyright they could get sued for doing this.
- josephlord 13y ago
  The copyright owner can license under whatever license they like. As many have said even before it was sold to Sun all contributions needed a copyright assignment before they were accepted (so they could sell the option to make closed source modifications amongst other things) so Oracle can now license as they wish. What they can't do is revoke the existing GPL licenses so you can still develop and modify the old docs. Having said that this is Oracle and you should probably just run for the hills (MariaDB) before Oracle make it hard to make it fully compatible with future version of MySQL by doing something else.
frost_knight 13y ago
And just in case they hadn't made their point, section 38 from the pastebin is particularly friendly: "This documentation is NOT distributed under a GPL license."
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Well they are Oracle. Perhaps they will rename it to 'TheirSQL' :-)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- _ak 13y ago
  I know, I'm kind of a party pooper, but My, Maria and Max are the names of Monty's children. Do you see the pattern? MySQL, MariaDB, MaxDB.
  - cLeEOGPw 13y ago
    So... Monty kind of sold his firstborn child to Oracle?
  - paul_f 13y ago
    Are you sure Mongo wasn't one of them? :-)
    - eksith 13y ago
      No, he rode off into the sunset after sheriff Bart freed him from Hedley Lamarr
      - kaonashi 13y ago
        That poor horse.
        eksith 13y ago
        It was a donkey! ;) Speaking of beasts of burden, I've been atop my elephant (Postgres) for about 3+ years now and I feel it's harder and harder to deal with idiosyncrasies of MySQL. MariaDB is better, much better. And at work, when we do have clients already on InnoDB, the first choice for upgrades is to move them off MySQL onto MariaDB. All fresh work starts with Postgres. Being BSD licensed, docs and all, it's the least painful legally and technically. http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/ http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/
  - belorn 13y ago
    Thank you, I wasn't aware of that fact. I guess one should then pronounce the my part as the name is actually pronounced rather than the word my.
jurre 13y ago
It's kind of sad seeing something digging it's own grave like that.
- Legion 13y ago
  I've long moved to Postgres and never want to go back, but I am glad to see just how thoroughly the MySQL community up and moved on to MariaDB. Linux distros are now shipping with it as the default "MySQL". That represents a very good effort to take an open project and keep it open. Two thumbs up for the community. Now, if we can just talk about silently munging data instead of giving proper errors...
gesman 13y ago
Viva Maria!
wheaties 13y ago
Hmm, so there's a bunch of hosted MySQL providers. How long before they become MariaDB hosted providers? Oracle, your engineers know exactly what will happen. Why don't you?
- hexis 13y ago
  > Oracle, your engineers know exactly what will happen. Why don't you? I think Oracle knows what they're doing. Oracle likes paying customers and I suspect that they don't make much, if anything, on MySQL users. I've been using MySQL for years and I've never knowingly paid Oracle a dime.
  - arkitaip 13y ago
    Why do you think they acquired MySQL in the first place?
    - jamespo 13y ago
      A nice side effect of acquiring Sun, nothing more
      - dyno12345 13y ago
        Why did they buy MySQL engine providers Innobase and Sleepycat a few years earlier?
        ams6110 13y ago
        AFAIK Oracle didn't really have an offering in the embedded DB market before that. So at least that sort of makes sense. MySQL doesn't compete with Oracle's database, so buying it to kill it doesn't make sense.
        dyno12345 13y ago
        That could explain Sleepycat, but not Innobase which was platform-specific to MySQL
foobarbazqux 13y ago
If they hold all the copyright on the documentation, they're free to do as they please. It was always expected that Oracle would kill the project. MariaDB is a fork of MySQL started by the founder of MySQL after the Oracle acquisition. This is good news for them because it gives people more reason to use the fork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MariaDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MariaDB
- Afforess 13y ago
  I just switched from MySQL to MariaDB on a ubuntu image and it was completely painless. Took the 30 seconds to enter the commands. No config editing, and it imported my old databases. Props to the MariaDB team.
- LukeShu 13y ago
  Probably why this article is on the MariaDB blog.
- quadrangle 13y ago
  Someone having the freedom to do something doesn't mean they get to be free from criticism.
- _pmf_ 13y ago
  > It was always expected that Oracle would kill the project. Oh, Oracle does. Very, very slowly.
- belorn 13y ago
  I wonder if that statement is actually true. Has not a single distro made fixes to the man pages throughout the years? Not a single Debian patch with spell fixes or corrections gone upstream?
  - cbr 13y ago
    Many projects require copyright assignment in case they want to relicense. I wonder if they did that here?
duskwuff 13y ago
I wouldn't grab the torches and pitchforks unless/until it's clear they're relicensing to a non-free license. The GPL is written to apply to code; it doesn't make much sense to apply it to documentation.
- tedivm 13y ago
  The license they moved to is right there in the blog post, with a relevant snippet from the text- >This software and related documentation are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate, broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish, or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for interoperability, is prohibited. I'm not sure how much clearer they could be that it's not a free license.
  - gcr 13y ago
    > ...are provided under a license agreement... How do you know that specific license isn't the GPL? That blurb restates common law. It does not interfere with the specific license that the documentation was covered under, it's just there to remind people.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - rlpb 13y ago
      Indeed. But there's a further blurb below that which specifically states that the manpage is not under the GPL and that restricts redistribution and modification.
NelsonMinar 13y ago
So who holds the copyright on these man pages? Did MySQL get copyright assignments from all contributers before Oracle bought them? If not, how do they have the authority to relicense the content?
- andyroid 13y ago
  If memory serves right, anyone contributing to MySQL (before the acquisition, probably still so) had to sign a contract giving up any copyright to them or it wouldn't even get considered. This is rather common in corporate open source projects, but I think the Free Software Foundation has similar rules for contributing, so it's not necessarily a corporate thing. Still kinda dodgy though.
  - rodw 13y ago
    It seems kind of impractical to do it any other way. If the maintainer (whether an individual, for-profit company or a not-for-profit foundation like the ASF or FSF) doesn't hold a copyright to all of the contributed code and documentation, they couldn't release it under an updated license (like the ASL2 or GPL3) or dual-license it for compatibility with other projects without getting clearance from each and every contributor. If this seems "dodgy", bear in mind a couple of points: 1. You're not "giving up" the rights to your contribution, you are sharing the copyright with the organization. That is, your work is your work and you're still free to do whatever you want with it. You're just giving the organization the same rights, so that work that was once "copyright andyroid" is now (independently) "copyright andyroid" and "copyright whatever-project-you-contributed-to". You don't give up any rights, you're just giving some rights to others. 2. Re-licensing a project doesn't change the license for the already released work. I.e., if Oracle decides to only use a proprietary license for all future MySQL releases, that doesn't post-facto change the license on the previous releases. You (or anyone else) remain free to take the last GPL'ed version and run with it (under the terms of the license under which it was released). As crappy as that re-licensing decision might be, it really only impacts the stuff you use from them or contribute to them after the re-licensing occurs.
    - 13y ago
tehwalrus 13y ago
I'm already using LibreOffice. Is there a fork of VirtualBox that I should be aware of too? If I actually used any databases, I'd be switching MySQL for MariaDB right now.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  There's no free fork of VirtualBox, though various Linux distributions do clean up the upstream source themselves. However, KVM has gotten quite good these days; you might give it a try.
  - scott_karana 13y ago
    Unfortunately, I can't run KVM on my Windows workstation... :(
    - bskap 13y ago
      Windows 8 comes with Hyper-V.
      - astrodust 13y ago
        The nice thing about VirtualBox and VMWare is they're both cross-platform, meaning images for them will boot on different types of systems. That's what makes Vagrant (http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/) so flexible and useful on teams with mixed environments.
  - tehwalrus 13y ago
    sadly, it looks (from the website) as if KVM is host-Linux only, and I need to run VMs inside OS X. (I know Mac OS has all sorts of proprietary VM systems like parallels and so on, but I'm a poor student to just needs to run basic Linux boxes for development purposes, not windows for games.)
- jcdagostino 13y ago
  Openoffice was transferred to the Apache foundation in 2011. http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-donates-openoffice-org-to-apache-foundation-4010022593/ http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-donates-openoffice-org-to-apache...
nivla 13y ago
I have been really thinking about switching my DBs from MySQL to MariaDB. Wondering if someone could help me out with a few questions.. Is it a really a drop-in replacement? Any gotchas I need to be aware off? How does MariaDB compare with MySQL performance and memory wise? Did anyone face any issues with replication? Thank you in advance.
- JeremyMorgan 13y ago
  I haven't done any really extensive work, but I have replaced it, and it is "drop in" because it's a fork of MySQL. None of my applications had any problems interfacing and the performance is reported to be better, though honestly I don't push it to the limits to say whether that's the case for me.
- voidlogic 13y ago
  > How does MariaDB compare with MySQL performance Slower last time I tested with my app on my HW. But you should test now with your app now on your HW of course to be sure :) What I have heard is if you have lots of CPUs MariaDB doesn't scale up as well. If you scale out, that might not matter.
  - gcr 13y ago
    Why would this be so? MariaDB started from the same source tree that MySQL had. In order for performance to drop, a Maria developer would have to intentionally commit changes that lower performance.
    - lordgilman 13y ago
      Regressions can be accidental. Did you see how the parent stressed testing on your specific hardware with your specific code?
    - wging 13y ago
      We're not talking about performance loss but a relative performance difference. It's at least possible that MySQL might've introduced performance gains that MariaDB didn't get. I have no idea whether this is the case.
JeremyMorgan 13y ago
Oracle is killing MySQL. On purpose. This has been going on for a while, and they're not doing it because they're stupid, it's in their best interests. Thankfully Maria is such a nice clean replacement.
- mjhea0 13y ago
  So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. However, by blatantly damaging the product, more and more users moved (and continue to move) to better alternatives. Thus damaging the company's reputation. However, MySQL is hardly a competitor to Oracle. Oracle 11g is meant for use at completely different type of company. I don't get it. Time to donate to Apache. Sound familiar?
  - snowwrestler 13y ago
    Most likely explanation is that they acquired Sun for their hardware line to directly compete against system integrators like HP. MySQL, Java, etc. just came as part of the package.
    - vorbote 13y ago
      Fact is that Oracle bought Sun to have control of Java. As many know, all the middleware and development tools that Oracle sells for its database are written in Java. They even tried to replace with some success Pro*C with some sort of Java from hell in the late 90's.
      - snowwrestler 13y ago
        Interesting, thanks.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. Which is pretty silly, because MySQL doesn't really hold a candle to Oracle's RDBMS.
praguebakerr 13y ago
Switch to MariaDB but don't even think you will remove MySQL experience from your CV. As most of the CV is processed automatically you could lost few point simple because lazy HR people don't care about what's happening in the IT world.
- gdulli 13y ago
  On the other hand, taking things like MySQL and PHP off your resume will lead to working with the kind of people who don't like to use MySQL or PHP. Not a bad thing. Avoiding working for a company where an HR department screens your resume instead of a hiring manager is another plus.
drostie 13y ago
Given the environment, you probably already know that there's a great talk called 'Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos' at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc . The reason why it's relevant here is that this is not the first time that Oracle has closed-sourced an open-source project bought up from Sun. Oracle seems almost paraconsistent towards open-source in a very interesting way: they seem to view the GPL as a good way to get other companies to help them out without cheating (e.g. OpenJDK), but if they're going to do most of the development in-house anyway it seems they're much more willing to close the source (OpenSolaris, now apparently MySQL). Could anyone comment on whether there's a larger pattern that I'm missing there? And are there other open-source technologies which were obtained from the Sun buyout which are also in danger which we should know about?
- m-r-a-m 13y ago
  VirtualBox...
  - chatmasta 13y ago
    Hopefully DotCloud isn't following the same pattern
- michaelhoffman 13y ago
  Sun Grid Engine used to be open source, but now Oracle Grid Engine isn't. But what's far worse, in my opinion as a user, is that Oracle made many of the existing documentation and community support resources hosted by Sun disappear.
  - chii 13y ago
    because these sorts of resources are worth money, especially if instead of self-help, you had to pay a "professional services company" to help you. By removing it, Oracle can lay claim to more professional services clients. Or, it could just be incompentance on their end in maintaining the server...
  - beedogs 13y ago
atoponce 13y ago
What is Wordpress going to do if MySQL goes closed source? Switch to MariaDB, or finally start supporting more databases, such as PostgreSQL?
- __david__ 13y ago
  MariaDB certainly seems like the path of least resistance in this case.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    Which means Monty has screwed everyone again. He should have let MySQL die in Oracle's cradle so the open source world could move over to a better database: PostgreSQL.
- spudlyo 13y ago
  Wordpress doesn't have to do anything, when they people say MariaDB is a drop-in-replacement for MySQL they mean it. On the functionality front, except for details that only gearheads and MySQL DBAs care about you can view them as identical.
mdesq 13y ago
I used to work for Oracle. Something I heard several times around different parts of the company was that Larry believed that open source was a good way to build products, not businesses. He was more than happy to take advantage of open source, but not willing to contribute to it. Oracle's attitude toward open source was one of many reasons I left, and one of the reasons I gave for why I was leaving.
- gcb0 13y ago
  It would be ironic if you typed that on a mac or iphone.
  - jacobparker 13y ago
    That's... not very fair. Apple contributes a fair amount to many random open source projects and also runs a number of important ones (Webkit, Clang, LLVM, ...) The kernel to OS X/iOS is open source but this is not of any serious utility as far as I know :P
    - oblio 13y ago
      Aaaand the AppStore basically destroys Open Source since it doesn't allow distribution of GPL programs. If that's not FOSS hostile, I don't know what is...
      - chii 13y ago
        i dont understand the rationale for not allowing GPL'ed apps. Can someone explain it to me?
        nevir 13y ago
        The TL;DR is that the app store EULA is incompatible with the GPL. The main issue is that the GPL stipulates that the licensor cannot restrict distribution above and beyond the GPL's terms. Because apps must also be distributed under Apple's ToS, the app author would violate the GPL (e.g. due to DRM and regional restrictions). Basically, this is Apple protecting their asses as well as the developer. Any downstream dev could sue you for using their GPL library (or at least force you off the app store). This is why build of VLC was yanked. The FSF has a good article on it: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...
VALLEJOSJUTUG 13y ago
PRISMA – PRISM . ------------------------------------------ NEWS: HACKER SEND NWES C: PRISMA PROYECT BRAIN WASHING AND BRAIN ACTIVITY INFORMATION SENT TO SATELITES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRISM USED, CHINESE EUROPE AND NORTH KOREA JAPAN. TRYING TO BE LOVELYG MIND CONTROLER WHEN KILL MILLIONS FROM SATELITES AND BUSINESS PROJECTS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE DEMAND FOR ALL PRESIDENTS. VENEZUELAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES SELLING GENETIC INFORMATION VENEZUELAN JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS CASE. ------------------------------------------------------- 1,000,000 FOR EACH IRRADIATION TELOMERE LOST SATELLITE PRESIDENTS WHO CHARGE MONEY FOR STUDIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. 600,000 MILLION TELOMERE EXIST IN EACH CELL NUCLEUS. COLLAPSE THEORY FOR ACCUMULATION BITS 0 BITS PER SECOND. HUMAN CLONATION. SEMEN SALES FOOD POLITICAL PRISONERS OF POLITICAL PRODUCTS. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHICH ARE LOST BY STUDIES OF THE HUMAN RACE, IN METHODS OF CAUTERIZATION, IRRADIATION AND BRAIN WASHING. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU EAT BECAUSE CORPORATIONS INCLUDE COMPUTERS NANO DRINKS FOOD AND MEDICINE. PROVEN HAVE VIDEOS OF NANO COMPUTERS, VIDEOS AS MANUFACTURED, AND SOFTWARE TRANSMITTED FROM SATELLITES. EACH NEURON CELL AND YOUR BODY. SEND IT TO ALL HACKERS. THIS IS ONLY FOR BANK BUSINESS MODEL PERFECTED. THE METHOD IS TO DENOUNCE EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE UNIVERISDADES, NGOS, ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS, WITH DEANS GOVERNING LAWYERS. SINCE ALL COUNTRIES COURTS, JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS. BEFORE DIETS REVIEW JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS. DIETS. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WKsU8pYPTkHgAVBuMOPFvxR7DqLMZewDw5SxjcyVeTI/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WKsU8pYPTkHgAVBuMOPFvxR7... CELL DUPLICATION, COMPANIES AND RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS OF THE HUMAN RACE, PAY MONEY TO BURN, NERVE CELLS, NEURONS. THE METHODOLOGY USED TO GROW THEM ARE HERE. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwOTL_K6Sm8NQ7FCx330h484Nx_dxlTcURoI4W1M7ow/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwOTL_K6Sm8NQ7FCx330h484... -------------------------------------------------- - SUPPORTING CRIME VICTIMS WITH USE OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. CREATE GENOCIDE RESEARCH PROJECT. WE ASK LAWYERS NETWORK BE OUR SPONSOR. 1. - STUDY THE INTERNATIONAL DEMAND LEGAL PROPOSAL TO BE SENT TO 14,000 MEMBERS AND THE MEDIA, UNIVERSITIES, NGOS, ORGANISATIONS THAT PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS. TWO. - STUDY THE BUSINESS PROPOSAL, PAYMENT FOR ADVERTISING ACTIVITIES, PUBLICATION AND SENT THE CASE TO THE MEMBER, 10% OF TOTAL DEMAND. THE COMPLAINT SHALL BE SUBMITTED BY PROFESSIONALS LIBERAL LAWYERS AND COMPANY REDABOGADOS.NET, TO THE COMPETENT COURTS, THE COMPLAINANT, JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS, CHILEAN, RESIDING IN VENEZUELA, CARABOBO, VALENCIA, CAMORUCO VALLEYS, STREET 133, LOPEZ LATOUCHE, (THIS IS THE RED CROSS STREET), BLDG 1-B SUITABLE ALTAMIRA. THREE. - THE SERVICES ARE REQUESTED TO JUDGES, PROSECUTORS, LAWYERS, JURISTS. A PROFESSIONAL JUDGES AND LAWYERS WORKING IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW DRAFTING THE COMPLAINT IS REQUESTED, THE DOCUMENTS WILL BE SUBMITTED TO THE COURTS. THE COMPLAINT INCLUDES; 1. RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, IRRADIATION, GENETIC DAMAGE, ROBBERY. TWO. PERFECTIBLE BANK WHICH HAVE VIDEO AND IS THE MAIN REASON WHY THESE AGENCIES PERFORM THE CAUTERIZATION, RADIATION AND TORTURE. CREATED BY JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CARABOBO, FACES, SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, PROF PAUL POLO. THREE. WELLS EXTRACTION SYSTEM TERMINALS, DESIGNED FOR EXTRACTING HEAVY HYDRO CARBIDE. URL: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rdd1w6dkcSZFRTZW9hTFV1eEk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rdd1w6dkcSZFRTZW9hTFV1eEk/...
maxharris 13y ago
I am more interested in using MySQL for my next project now. I know that this is not a popular opinion, but I disagree with the philosophy behind the GPL. While I think that sharing is fine (and for that there are the BSD and MIT licenses, among many others), I believe that it is very often better for both developers (and users) if users pay for the software they use. (And yes, I have heard the pro-GPL argument about how you can charge for support, but I know that's bogus in practice.) I am not saying the GPL should be outlawed or anything like that. I'm just saying that it's not a moral ideal (the actual moral ideal is you making a sustainable living off of the code you write), and it's practically speaking a bad idea in many cases.
- snowpalmer 13y ago
  The GPL and paying for a product are completely different things and they can exist together (i.e. paying for a product that is itself GPL)
- tjr 13y ago
  What do you find preferable about BSD and MIT licenses in this respect?
  - trippy_biscuits 13y ago
    My employer's legal department loves BSD and MIT licenses because it's easier to sell software that way. When we need to update or add a new library or application, BSD/MIT licensed software get approved much more quickly. For example, we need to update the snmp package but we can't get it through legal because the license for many of the modules changed to GPLv3. A new python module would really make some things easier, but we can't get it through legal (GPL again).
    - belorn 13y ago
      I must ask, have your employer ever purchased a proprietary application/module to use in any product? In a logical world, those kind of deals should have a ever worse time going through the legal department than GPL.
jbpadgett 13y ago
Has Oracle has eroded credibility for being a good steward for any open source technology at this point? My question is how long before @Mitchellh leads an effort to fork VirtualBox to allow Vagrant to have a reliable future?
flyinRyan 13y ago
If you're going to switch away from MySQL anyway, I would suggest taking the hit and moving to PostgreSQL.
brkcmd 13y ago
According to mysql bug 69512 [1] this particular issue was the result of a build process error and was not intentional. [1]: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512 http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512
- tnorthcutt 13y ago
  This is indeed the given explanation, but why on earth was there a separate set of man pages with incorrect copyright headers?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
benstein 13y ago
It was a bug. Corrected. http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512 http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512
kevinanchi 13y ago
Gr8 video

398 points by endijs 13y ago

marme 13y ago

Is this even legal? they released the previous documentation under GPL v2 which has a clause stating any modified versions have to be released under the same license. This new documentation is clearly just a modification of the previous documentation. It would be interesting if it came of they did not have the right to do this. If even even one line of the documentation was written by someone else and they did not get a transfer of copyright they could get sued for doing this.

josephlord 13y ago
The copyright owner can license under whatever license they like. As many have said even before it was sold to Sun all contributions needed a copyright assignment before they were accepted (so they could sell the option to make closed source modifications amongst other things) so Oracle can now license as they wish. What they can't do is revoke the existing GPL licenses so you can still develop and modify the old docs. Having said that this is Oracle and you should probably just run for the hills (MariaDB) before Oracle make it hard to make it fully compatible with future version of MySQL by doing something else.

frost_knight 13y ago

And just in case they hadn't made their point, section 38 from the pastebin is particularly friendly: "This documentation is NOT distributed under a GPL license."

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Well they are Oracle. Perhaps they will rename it to 'TheirSQL' :-)

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
_ak 13y ago
I know, I'm kind of a party pooper, but My, Maria and Max are the names of Monty's children. Do you see the pattern? MySQL, MariaDB, MaxDB.
- cLeEOGPw 13y ago
  So... Monty kind of sold his firstborn child to Oracle?
- paul_f 13y ago
  Are you sure Mongo wasn't one of them? :-)
  - eksith 13y ago
    No, he rode off into the sunset after sheriff Bart freed him from Hedley Lamarr
    - kaonashi 13y ago
      That poor horse.
      - eksith 13y ago
        It was a donkey! ;) Speaking of beasts of burden, I've been atop my elephant (Postgres) for about 3+ years now and I feel it's harder and harder to deal with idiosyncrasies of MySQL. MariaDB is better, much better. And at work, when we do have clients already on InnoDB, the first choice for upgrades is to move them off MySQL onto MariaDB. All fresh work starts with Postgres. Being BSD licensed, docs and all, it's the least painful legally and technically. http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/ http://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/
- belorn 13y ago
  Thank you, I wasn't aware of that fact. I guess one should then pronounce the my part as the name is actually pronounced rather than the word my.

jurre 13y ago

It's kind of sad seeing something digging it's own grave like that.

Legion 13y ago
I've long moved to Postgres and never want to go back, but I am glad to see just how thoroughly the MySQL community up and moved on to MariaDB. Linux distros are now shipping with it as the default "MySQL". That represents a very good effort to take an open project and keep it open. Two thumbs up for the community. Now, if we can just talk about silently munging data instead of giving proper errors...

gesman 13y ago

Viva Maria!

wheaties 13y ago

Hmm, so there's a bunch of hosted MySQL providers. How long before they become MariaDB hosted providers? Oracle, your engineers know exactly what will happen. Why don't you?

hexis 13y ago
> Oracle, your engineers know exactly what will happen. Why don't you? I think Oracle knows what they're doing. Oracle likes paying customers and I suspect that they don't make much, if anything, on MySQL users. I've been using MySQL for years and I've never knowingly paid Oracle a dime.
- arkitaip 13y ago
  Why do you think they acquired MySQL in the first place?
  - jamespo 13y ago
    A nice side effect of acquiring Sun, nothing more
    - dyno12345 13y ago
      Why did they buy MySQL engine providers Innobase and Sleepycat a few years earlier?
      - ams6110 13y ago
        AFAIK Oracle didn't really have an offering in the embedded DB market before that. So at least that sort of makes sense. MySQL doesn't compete with Oracle's database, so buying it to kill it doesn't make sense.
        dyno12345 13y ago
        That could explain Sleepycat, but not Innobase which was platform-specific to MySQL

foobarbazqux 13y ago

If they hold all the copyright on the documentation, they're free to do as they please. It was always expected that Oracle would kill the project. MariaDB is a fork of MySQL started by the founder of MySQL after the Oracle acquisition. This is good news for them because it gives people more reason to use the fork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MariaDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MariaDB

Afforess 13y ago
I just switched from MySQL to MariaDB on a ubuntu image and it was completely painless. Took the 30 seconds to enter the commands. No config editing, and it imported my old databases. Props to the MariaDB team.
LukeShu 13y ago
Probably why this article is on the MariaDB blog.
quadrangle 13y ago
Someone having the freedom to do something doesn't mean they get to be free from criticism.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> It was always expected that Oracle would kill the project. Oh, Oracle does. Very, very slowly.
belorn 13y ago
I wonder if that statement is actually true. Has not a single distro made fixes to the man pages throughout the years? Not a single Debian patch with spell fixes or corrections gone upstream?
- cbr 13y ago
  Many projects require copyright assignment in case they want to relicense. I wonder if they did that here?

duskwuff 13y ago

I wouldn't grab the torches and pitchforks unless/until it's clear they're relicensing to a non-free license. The GPL is written to apply to code; it doesn't make much sense to apply it to documentation.

tedivm 13y ago
The license they moved to is right there in the blog post, with a relevant snippet from the text- >This software and related documentation are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are protected by intellectual property laws. Except as expressly permitted in your license agreement or allowed by law, you may not use, copy, reproduce, translate, broadcast, modify, license, transmit, distribute, exhibit, perform, publish, or display any part, in any form, or by any means. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of this software, unless required by law for interoperability, is prohibited. I'm not sure how much clearer they could be that it's not a free license.
- gcr 13y ago
  > ...are provided under a license agreement... How do you know that specific license isn't the GPL? That blurb restates common law. It does not interfere with the specific license that the documentation was covered under, it's just there to remind people.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rlpb 13y ago
    Indeed. But there's a further blurb below that which specifically states that the manpage is not under the GPL and that restricts redistribution and modification.

NelsonMinar 13y ago

So who holds the copyright on these man pages? Did MySQL get copyright assignments from all contributers before Oracle bought them? If not, how do they have the authority to relicense the content?

andyroid 13y ago
If memory serves right, anyone contributing to MySQL (before the acquisition, probably still so) had to sign a contract giving up any copyright to them or it wouldn't even get considered. This is rather common in corporate open source projects, but I think the Free Software Foundation has similar rules for contributing, so it's not necessarily a corporate thing. Still kinda dodgy though.
- rodw 13y ago
  It seems kind of impractical to do it any other way. If the maintainer (whether an individual, for-profit company or a not-for-profit foundation like the ASF or FSF) doesn't hold a copyright to all of the contributed code and documentation, they couldn't release it under an updated license (like the ASL2 or GPL3) or dual-license it for compatibility with other projects without getting clearance from each and every contributor. If this seems "dodgy", bear in mind a couple of points: 1. You're not "giving up" the rights to your contribution, you are sharing the copyright with the organization. That is, your work is your work and you're still free to do whatever you want with it. You're just giving the organization the same rights, so that work that was once "copyright andyroid" is now (independently) "copyright andyroid" and "copyright whatever-project-you-contributed-to". You don't give up any rights, you're just giving some rights to others. 2. Re-licensing a project doesn't change the license for the already released work. I.e., if Oracle decides to only use a proprietary license for all future MySQL releases, that doesn't post-facto change the license on the previous releases. You (or anyone else) remain free to take the last GPL'ed version and run with it (under the terms of the license under which it was released). As crappy as that re-licensing decision might be, it really only impacts the stuff you use from them or contribute to them after the re-licensing occurs.
  - 13y ago

tehwalrus 13y ago

I'm already using LibreOffice. Is there a fork of VirtualBox that I should be aware of too? If I actually used any databases, I'd be switching MySQL for MariaDB right now.

JoshTriplett 13y ago
There's no free fork of VirtualBox, though various Linux distributions do clean up the upstream source themselves. However, KVM has gotten quite good these days; you might give it a try.
- scott_karana 13y ago
  Unfortunately, I can't run KVM on my Windows workstation... :(
  - bskap 13y ago
    Windows 8 comes with Hyper-V.
    - astrodust 13y ago
      The nice thing about VirtualBox and VMWare is they're both cross-platform, meaning images for them will boot on different types of systems. That's what makes Vagrant (http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/) so flexible and useful on teams with mixed environments.
- tehwalrus 13y ago
  sadly, it looks (from the website) as if KVM is host-Linux only, and I need to run VMs inside OS X. (I know Mac OS has all sorts of proprietary VM systems like parallels and so on, but I'm a poor student to just needs to run basic Linux boxes for development purposes, not windows for games.)
jcdagostino 13y ago
Openoffice was transferred to the Apache foundation in 2011. http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-donates-openoffice-org-to-apache-foundation-4010022593/ http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-donates-openoffice-org-to-apache...

nivla 13y ago

I have been really thinking about switching my DBs from MySQL to MariaDB. Wondering if someone could help me out with a few questions.. Is it a really a drop-in replacement? Any gotchas I need to be aware off? How does MariaDB compare with MySQL performance and memory wise? Did anyone face any issues with replication? Thank you in advance.

JeremyMorgan 13y ago
I haven't done any really extensive work, but I have replaced it, and it is "drop in" because it's a fork of MySQL. None of my applications had any problems interfacing and the performance is reported to be better, though honestly I don't push it to the limits to say whether that's the case for me.
voidlogic 13y ago
> How does MariaDB compare with MySQL performance Slower last time I tested with my app on my HW. But you should test now with your app now on your HW of course to be sure :) What I have heard is if you have lots of CPUs MariaDB doesn't scale up as well. If you scale out, that might not matter.
- gcr 13y ago
  Why would this be so? MariaDB started from the same source tree that MySQL had. In order for performance to drop, a Maria developer would have to intentionally commit changes that lower performance.
  - lordgilman 13y ago
    Regressions can be accidental. Did you see how the parent stressed testing on your specific hardware with your specific code?
  - wging 13y ago
    We're not talking about performance loss but a relative performance difference. It's at least possible that MySQL might've introduced performance gains that MariaDB didn't get. I have no idea whether this is the case.

JeremyMorgan 13y ago

Oracle is killing MySQL. On purpose. This has been going on for a while, and they're not doing it because they're stupid, it's in their best interests. Thankfully Maria is such a nice clean replacement.

mjhea0 13y ago
So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. However, by blatantly damaging the product, more and more users moved (and continue to move) to better alternatives. Thus damaging the company's reputation. However, MySQL is hardly a competitor to Oracle. Oracle 11g is meant for use at completely different type of company. I don't get it. Time to donate to Apache. Sound familiar?
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  Most likely explanation is that they acquired Sun for their hardware line to directly compete against system integrators like HP. MySQL, Java, etc. just came as part of the package.
  - vorbote 13y ago
    Fact is that Oracle bought Sun to have control of Java. As many know, all the middleware and development tools that Oracle sells for its database are written in Java. They even tried to replace with some success Pro*C with some sort of Java from hell in the late 90's.
    - snowwrestler 13y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
- ams6110 13y ago
  So Oracle acquired Sun to stifle MySQL develop for fear that it would encroach on their own DB. Which is pretty silly, because MySQL doesn't really hold a candle to Oracle's RDBMS.

praguebakerr 13y ago

Switch to MariaDB but don't even think you will remove MySQL experience from your CV. As most of the CV is processed automatically you could lost few point simple because lazy HR people don't care about what's happening in the IT world.

gdulli 13y ago
On the other hand, taking things like MySQL and PHP off your resume will lead to working with the kind of people who don't like to use MySQL or PHP. Not a bad thing. Avoiding working for a company where an HR department screens your resume instead of a hiring manager is another plus.

drostie 13y ago

Given the environment, you probably already know that there's a great talk called 'Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos' at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc . The reason why it's relevant here is that this is not the first time that Oracle has closed-sourced an open-source project bought up from Sun. Oracle seems almost paraconsistent towards open-source in a very interesting way: they seem to view the GPL as a good way to get other companies to help them out without cheating (e.g. OpenJDK), but if they're going to do most of the development in-house anyway it seems they're much more willing to close the source (OpenSolaris, now apparently MySQL). Could anyone comment on whether there's a larger pattern that I'm missing there? And are there other open-source technologies which were obtained from the Sun buyout which are also in danger which we should know about?

m-r-a-m 13y ago
VirtualBox...
- chatmasta 13y ago
  Hopefully DotCloud isn't following the same pattern
michaelhoffman 13y ago
Sun Grid Engine used to be open source, but now Oracle Grid Engine isn't. But what's far worse, in my opinion as a user, is that Oracle made many of the existing documentation and community support resources hosted by Sun disappear.
- chii 13y ago
  because these sorts of resources are worth money, especially if instead of self-help, you had to pay a "professional services company" to help you. By removing it, Oracle can lay claim to more professional services clients. Or, it could just be incompentance on their end in maintaining the server...
- beedogs 13y ago

atoponce 13y ago

What is Wordpress going to do if MySQL goes closed source? Switch to MariaDB, or finally start supporting more databases, such as PostgreSQL?

__david__ 13y ago
MariaDB certainly seems like the path of least resistance in this case.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  Which means Monty has screwed everyone again. He should have let MySQL die in Oracle's cradle so the open source world could move over to a better database: PostgreSQL.
spudlyo 13y ago
Wordpress doesn't have to do anything, when they people say MariaDB is a drop-in-replacement for MySQL they mean it. On the functionality front, except for details that only gearheads and MySQL DBAs care about you can view them as identical.

mdesq 13y ago

I used to work for Oracle. Something I heard several times around different parts of the company was that Larry believed that open source was a good way to build products, not businesses. He was more than happy to take advantage of open source, but not willing to contribute to it. Oracle's attitude toward open source was one of many reasons I left, and one of the reasons I gave for why I was leaving.

gcb0 13y ago
It would be ironic if you typed that on a mac or iphone.
- jacobparker 13y ago
  That's... not very fair. Apple contributes a fair amount to many random open source projects and also runs a number of important ones (Webkit, Clang, LLVM, ...) The kernel to OS X/iOS is open source but this is not of any serious utility as far as I know :P
  - oblio 13y ago
    Aaaand the AppStore basically destroys Open Source since it doesn't allow distribution of GPL programs. If that's not FOSS hostile, I don't know what is...
    - chii 13y ago
      i dont understand the rationale for not allowing GPL'ed apps. Can someone explain it to me?
      - nevir 13y ago
        The TL;DR is that the app store EULA is incompatible with the GPL. The main issue is that the GPL stipulates that the licensor cannot restrict distribution above and beyond the GPL's terms. Because apps must also be distributed under Apple's ToS, the app author would violate the GPL (e.g. due to DRM and regional restrictions). Basically, this is Apple protecting their asses as well as the developer. Any downstream dev could sue you for using their GPL library (or at least force you off the app store). This is why build of VLC was yanked. The FSF has a good article on it: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...

VALLEJOSJUTUG 13y ago

PRISMA – PRISM . ------------------------------------------ NEWS: HACKER SEND NWES C: PRISMA PROYECT BRAIN WASHING AND BRAIN ACTIVITY INFORMATION SENT TO SATELITES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRISM USED, CHINESE EUROPE AND NORTH KOREA JAPAN. TRYING TO BE LOVELYG MIND CONTROLER WHEN KILL MILLIONS FROM SATELITES AND BUSINESS PROJECTS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE DEMAND FOR ALL PRESIDENTS. VENEZUELAN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES SELLING GENETIC INFORMATION VENEZUELAN JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS CASE. ------------------------------------------------------- 1,000,000 FOR EACH IRRADIATION TELOMERE LOST SATELLITE PRESIDENTS WHO CHARGE MONEY FOR STUDIES OF THE HUMAN RACE. 600,000 MILLION TELOMERE EXIST IN EACH CELL NUCLEUS. COLLAPSE THEORY FOR ACCUMULATION BITS 0 BITS PER SECOND. HUMAN CLONATION. SEMEN SALES FOOD POLITICAL PRISONERS OF POLITICAL PRODUCTS. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHICH ARE LOST BY STUDIES OF THE HUMAN RACE, IN METHODS OF CAUTERIZATION, IRRADIATION AND BRAIN WASHING. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU EAT BECAUSE CORPORATIONS INCLUDE COMPUTERS NANO DRINKS FOOD AND MEDICINE. PROVEN HAVE VIDEOS OF NANO COMPUTERS, VIDEOS AS MANUFACTURED, AND SOFTWARE TRANSMITTED FROM SATELLITES. EACH NEURON CELL AND YOUR BODY. SEND IT TO ALL HACKERS. THIS IS ONLY FOR BANK BUSINESS MODEL PERFECTED. THE METHOD IS TO DENOUNCE EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE UNIVERISDADES, NGOS, ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS, WITH DEANS GOVERNING LAWYERS. SINCE ALL COUNTRIES COURTS, JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS. BEFORE DIETS REVIEW JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS. DIETS. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WKsU8pYPTkHgAVBuMOPFvxR7DqLMZewDw5SxjcyVeTI/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WKsU8pYPTkHgAVBuMOPFvxR7... CELL DUPLICATION, COMPANIES AND RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS OF THE HUMAN RACE, PAY MONEY TO BURN, NERVE CELLS, NEURONS. THE METHODOLOGY USED TO GROW THEM ARE HERE. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwOTL_K6Sm8NQ7FCx330h484Nx_dxlTcURoI4W1M7ow/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwOTL_K6Sm8NQ7FCx330h484... -------------------------------------------------- - SUPPORTING CRIME VICTIMS WITH USE OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. CREATE GENOCIDE RESEARCH PROJECT. WE ASK LAWYERS NETWORK BE OUR SPONSOR. 1. - STUDY THE INTERNATIONAL DEMAND LEGAL PROPOSAL TO BE SENT TO 14,000 MEMBERS AND THE MEDIA, UNIVERSITIES, NGOS, ORGANISATIONS THAT PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS. TWO. - STUDY THE BUSINESS PROPOSAL, PAYMENT FOR ADVERTISING ACTIVITIES, PUBLICATION AND SENT THE CASE TO THE MEMBER, 10% OF TOTAL DEMAND. THE COMPLAINT SHALL BE SUBMITTED BY PROFESSIONALS LIBERAL LAWYERS AND COMPANY REDABOGADOS.NET, TO THE COMPETENT COURTS, THE COMPLAINANT, JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS, CHILEAN, RESIDING IN VENEZUELA, CARABOBO, VALENCIA, CAMORUCO VALLEYS, STREET 133, LOPEZ LATOUCHE, (THIS IS THE RED CROSS STREET), BLDG 1-B SUITABLE ALTAMIRA. THREE. - THE SERVICES ARE REQUESTED TO JUDGES, PROSECUTORS, LAWYERS, JURISTS. A PROFESSIONAL JUDGES AND LAWYERS WORKING IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW DRAFTING THE COMPLAINT IS REQUESTED, THE DOCUMENTS WILL BE SUBMITTED TO THE COURTS. THE COMPLAINT INCLUDES; 1. RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, IRRADIATION, GENETIC DAMAGE, ROBBERY. TWO. PERFECTIBLE BANK WHICH HAVE VIDEO AND IS THE MAIN REASON WHY THESE AGENCIES PERFORM THE CAUTERIZATION, RADIATION AND TORTURE. CREATED BY JUAN CARLOS VALLEJOS, AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CARABOBO, FACES, SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, PROF PAUL POLO. THREE. WELLS EXTRACTION SYSTEM TERMINALS, DESIGNED FOR EXTRACTING HEAVY HYDRO CARBIDE. URL: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rdd1w6dkcSZFRTZW9hTFV1eEk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7rdd1w6dkcSZFRTZW9hTFV1eEk/...

maxharris 13y ago

I am more interested in using MySQL for my next project now. I know that this is not a popular opinion, but I disagree with the philosophy behind the GPL. While I think that sharing is fine (and for that there are the BSD and MIT licenses, among many others), I believe that it is very often better for both developers (and users) if users pay for the software they use. (And yes, I have heard the pro-GPL argument about how you can charge for support, but I know that's bogus in practice.) I am not saying the GPL should be outlawed or anything like that. I'm just saying that it's not a moral ideal (the actual moral ideal is you making a sustainable living off of the code you write), and it's practically speaking a bad idea in many cases.

snowpalmer 13y ago
The GPL and paying for a product are completely different things and they can exist together (i.e. paying for a product that is itself GPL)
tjr 13y ago
What do you find preferable about BSD and MIT licenses in this respect?
- trippy_biscuits 13y ago
  My employer's legal department loves BSD and MIT licenses because it's easier to sell software that way. When we need to update or add a new library or application, BSD/MIT licensed software get approved much more quickly. For example, we need to update the snmp package but we can't get it through legal because the license for many of the modules changed to GPLv3. A new python module would really make some things easier, but we can't get it through legal (GPL again).
  - belorn 13y ago
    I must ask, have your employer ever purchased a proprietary application/module to use in any product? In a logical world, those kind of deals should have a ever worse time going through the legal department than GPL.

jbpadgett 13y ago

Has Oracle has eroded credibility for being a good steward for any open source technology at this point? My question is how long before @Mitchellh leads an effort to fork VirtualBox to allow Vagrant to have a reliable future?

flyinRyan 13y ago

If you're going to switch away from MySQL anyway, I would suggest taking the hit and moving to PostgreSQL.

brkcmd 13y ago

According to mysql bug 69512 [1] this particular issue was the result of a build process error and was not intentional. [1]: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512 http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512

tnorthcutt 13y ago
This is indeed the given explanation, but why on earth was there a separate set of man pages with incorrect copyright headers?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

benstein 13y ago

It was a bug. Corrected. http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512 http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=69512

kevinanchi 13y ago

Gr8 video