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The Future of MySQL

monty-says.blogspot.com

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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.

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?

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.

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.

"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.

"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/

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.

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?

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

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.

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

It may well be very good, but it's much more painful to set up and get running than MySQL.

No it isn't:

    apt-get install postgresql

Then a few commands to create databases and users and things, and you're good.

Have the shipped configs improved to the point that you get a production database out of the gate? I've been using (and loving) psql for years, but I've never once trusted the default postgresql.conf.

Under Gentoo, at least, the default postgresql.conf is still garbage. limit of 100 connections, hardly any shared memory, really nothing about it is good. I don't think shipping a good config file is possible though; we need a good config file generator, that looks at kernel configuration and hardware configuration and makes a good config based off that. It doesn't look like such a thing exists though.

Doesn't the Enterprise DB distribution of PostgreSQL include a tuning wizard? http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/postgres_plus/overview....

Last time I checked on Debian, no. But it was more or less painless - just edit a couple settings on the config files and you are good to go. IIRC, I had to adjust memory footprint (telling PostgreSQL to feel at home and use all it wanted to use) and tell it to trust the disk subsystem and the UPS (turning synchronous writes off). From that point on, it withstood a huge beating.

Well, it got really frustrating after that.

It dropped stuff in at least three different directories, and then I had to track down where its config files live, which config happens to contain what, and so on.

I changed the data directory, but the new data directory was not "formatted" or something, so I got a hand-wavy error message that naturally said nothing about formatting the new data directory, and so on.

All in all, it was a painful experience.

That's likely only a result of your unfamiliarity with Postgres relative to MySQL.

Also, installing via apt on any Debian-based Linux is pretty much just as easy with Postgres as it is for MySQL.

One problem with moving to postgres is replication. It's not a drop in replacement. Enterprise DB was working on having the pain of replication scripted.

> That's likely only a result of your unfamiliarity with Postgres relative to MySQL.

True, but the first time I ever did anything with MySQL was far less painful than with PostgreSQL.

Besides, setting up a database should be easy because it's easy, not because you remember exactly what to do.

"$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.

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.

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.

It was in response to a direct question. Sheesh.

PostgreSQL isn't superior to other solutions (in this case MySQL) for all purposes, but it's superior for enough purposes to make it a smart recommendation to those looking for alternatives to MySQL.

I've used them both for roughly the same amount of time to varying degrees (5 years or so each) and since switching I've never used MySQL, except where required (hello, Wordpress).

It might not affect you directly, but what about your partners? Apis you might take for granted. Do you sit back and hope they have the expertise to move to a new solution. I think Oracle should embrace the community and benefit from it's contributions.

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.

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.

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.

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