

The Future of MySQL - datums
http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/07/helping-us-department-of-justice.html

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blasdel
Oracle owns a bit more than the name -- they have full copyright over the
mainline source!

They are the only party that can sell commercial licenses to the mainline GPL
code. All community forks will have to be GPL-only.

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rbanffy
It's free software, right? Why would Oracle be in any obligation to support
and put money in it? And why would Oracle not supporting it be any kind of
problem anyway?

~~~
jasonkester
Imagine any large software product, open source or otherwise, with 10+ years
of history and a large team behind it. Now imagine that large team disbanded
and assigned to other projects. That's the problem of Oracle not supporting
it.

There is this myth of large open source projects being built collectively by
thousands of individual developers in their bedrooms. It doesn't actually work
that way. MySQL has a large onsite development team that until recently drew
their salary from Sun. If their new bosses decided to pull the plug, that
would be a big deal.

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mahmud
If you're a U.S. company dependant on MySQL to run your business, tell the DOJ
about it so they "have a talk" with Oracle about not killing it.

 _For those that are worried about the future of OSS software as part of the
Oracle / Sun deal, and the affect (both good and bad) it may have on their
business, the US Department of Justice is encouraging companies that are
dependent on MySQL / Java to contact them and tell them how the deal may
affect their business. The more information the department gets, the better
equipped they will be in deciding what their recommendation for the deal will
be._

~~~
rbanffy
"If you're a U.S. company dependant on MySQL to run your business, tell the
DOJ about it so they "have a talk" with Oracle about not killing it."

MySQL is free software (free as in freedom). Oracle can't kill it. They can
try all they want, the codebase belongs to all its users.

~~~
garnet7
"MySQL could be killed, but for Open Source that just means it would branch
and be reborn a day or a week later mostly intact and protected by nerds who
would by then be very, very angry." -- Cringely
<http://www.cringely.com/2009/04/sunset/>

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bcl
Monty talked a little about Oracle at his talk at LinuxFest Northwest. Video
can be found here - <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1431407>

Basically, he said Oracle owns MySQL in name only. Most of the brains behind
it are already working with him on MariaDB or Brian Aker on Drizzle. He
promised that MariaDB would remain binary compatible with MySQL.

~~~
jdbeast00
i guess this is why i don't get the whole ruckus surrounding the oracle
purchase of sun. Can't some other entity just takeover the responsibilities
(under different branding) if oracle decides to let mysql flounder?

~~~
spudlyo
Yes. Although there would be some setbacks, the MySQL documentation for
example is not under an open source license.

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hvs
I suppose that you should care if you use it and rely on it for production
applications. But if you use a commercial database (or one of the other OSS
databases -- is Postgres any good?) then this doesn't really affect you at
all.

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davidw
Postgres is _very_ good. So much so that many of us use it instead of Mysql in
any case:-)

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mahmud
"$FOO is _very_ good. So much so that many of us use it instead of $BAR in any
case."

Your usage of FOO for _some_ purposes is not a sufficient proof of its
superiority to other solutions for _all_ purposes.

~~~
davidw
I think you have a parse error. I didn't write "Mysql sucks" or that Postgres
is better for everything always.

Google for Postgres vs Mysql if you're interested in pursuing the topic
further - it's been done to death here and elsewhere. I just wanted to say
that Postgres is a very valid alternative.

~~~
spudlyo
Congratulations. In every discussion thread about MySQL there is always one
guy who has to mention that PostgreSQL is a superior alternative to MySQL,
thus reigniting yet another off-topic discussion of the relative merits of
each. Today you are that guy. Today is your day to shine.

~~~
randallsquared
It was in response to a direct question. Sheesh.

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james2vegas
but actually, I don't. Or rather, I do, in the negative sense.

I'd like it to die from a combination of owner neglect or malice from Oracle
and death by a thousand forks.

~~~
mahmud
Good on you having an alternative database for your business use-case. But
just because _you_ don't use it doesn't mean you should wish for its demise
and deny it to others.

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TweedHeads
No, I shouldn't care. If mysql dissappears there is postgresql and many other
open source options.

All you should do is have an easy way to port all your data/code to the new
database, which you should already have such backup plan, right?

Hosting providers should be aware and prepared to switch databases too.

