In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
I love this "call to action" from Michael Widenius amusing - here he decries Oracle acquiring MySQL:
It's not in the Internet users interest that one key piece of the net would be owned by an entity that has more to gain by severely limiting and in the long run even killing it as an open source product than by keeping it alive. If Oracle were allowed to acquire MySQL, we would be looking at less competition among databases, which will mean higher license and support prices. In the end it's always the consumers and the small businesses that have to pay the bills, in this case to Oracle.
Simple question for Mr. Widenius: just who sold MySQL to Sun in the first place? Once you did that (and took the huge payday, I might add) - what did you expect was going to happen? A future filled with happy Unicorns?
Comments
Re: In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
[anonymous] January 4, 2010 12:56:02.262
Actually, if you read his Q&A section he covers this. At the time of the Sun sale he wasn't on the board and had no role in the decision to sell.
Re: In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
[W^L+] January 4, 2010 17:40:57.539
I always wondered why his new startup is only concentrating on building an enhanced MySQL-based product. After all these years, surely he's got some insight into where decisions taken along the way turned out to have negative effects. It seems to me that he could have taken his MySQL knowledge and used it to try and start a new codebase.
On the other hand, I *do* agree with him about the implications of copyright assignment and MySQL/Sun/Oracle's ability to issue commercial licenses. And, no, PostgreSQL isn't the answer. Fork and rewrite would be a tragic mistake (as you well know), but without a complete from-scratch rewrite, no one else could offer commercial licenses.
Re: In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
[James Robertson] January 4, 2010 20:35:07.017
Why would a fork involve a rewrite? You fork the latest GPL'd version, call it something like "Real MySQL", and off you go - you aren't forking so much as driving your own future direction from a shared starting point...
Re: In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
[W^L+] January 6, 2010 2:54:16.596
Because their model isn't just GPL. A number of customers buy closed source licenses, either for faster access to patches, or so they can deploy products based on MySQL code without it affecting their own code.. That's why code contributions require giving ownership to Sun / MySQL AB.
No one else has the right to sell such licenses without explicit permission--only the owner, currently Sun. This was one reason why MySQL suddenly dropped Berkeley DB support when Oracle bought Sleepycat. It is also a reason why so much effort went into the Falcon engine when Oracle bought InnoBase. Because with Oracle owning the two transaction-safe engines, MySQL's ability to commercially license their product with those engines embedded was becoming dependent on Oracle's good will.
Re: In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn
[James Robertson] January 6, 2010 6:23:39.099
I'd still call that something of a failure to learn, just further back in time. Building a business model that relies on the kindness of strangers is not exactly a bright move, IMHO :)