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Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

kirkwylie.blogspot.com

1–10 of 10 posts

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#2
Mostly well argued (in favor of Oracle acquiring MySQL), with a couple of weak spots. For one, overlooking Apple as a potential acquirer; it is unlikely, but they do have the cash, and already own CUPS (Unix printing) and invest heavily in Webkit/KHTML (the KDE HTML engine - not sure what's the exact status there nowadays).

The "never even worked for a profitable commercial enterprise" (thus cannot know how it would affect the market) bit actually weakens the piece. Yeah, right, it's a prerequisite and no one credible does that kind of thing, from analyst to critic to regulator ...

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#3
post #2

Mostly well argued (in favor of Oracle acquiring MySQL), with a couple of weak spots. For one, overlooking Apple as a potential acquirer; it is unlikely, but they do have the cash, and already own CUPS (Unix printing) and invest heavily in Webkit/KHTML (the KDE HTML engine - not sure what's the exact status there nowadays). The "never even worked for a profitable commercial enterprise" (thus cannot know how it would…

I intentionally left Apple out, actually. While Apple definitely has done work in some back-end technologies, a $1Bn acquisition for something so clearly outside their current strategy (which is far more consumer and mobile focused than server focused) wouldn't make much sense. They invest in Webkit and CUPS because they feel they're necessary (in the case of CUPS so that printing actually works) or strategic (in the case of Webkit); MySQL? Not so much.

My point on RMS was that he's actively and completely rejected the commercial world in every form. A stronger argument is that he's been talking about there being MULTIPLE paths to financial riches using the GPL, but then whining because if OraSun stops selling commercially licensed versions of MySQL, nobody else can. While I agree with a stance that F/OSS is superior for consumers, RMS has been completely useless at figuring out how to make successful business models, and should be ignored.

Quite frankly, why RMS didn't speak up when Sun acquired MySQL, but is now, is just another one of the mysteries about what in the world actually goes on in his mind.

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#5
I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back.

MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#6
post #5

I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back. MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

The NoSQLs need a unified a data-interchange format ASAP. Do something based on JSON or XML.

Without interchangeable data you need a unified API, and I am not sure they're willing to collaborate on that.

RDBMSes win because of ANSI SQL, ODBC and ORMs. If it wasn't for backend independent code bases the RDBMSes would have no leg to stand on.

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#7
post #6
post #5

I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back. MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

The NoSQLs need a unified a data-interchange format ASAP. Do something based on JSON or XML. Without interchangeable data you need a unified API, and I am not sure they're willing to collaborate on that. RDBMSes win because of ANSI SQL, ODBC and ORMs. If it wasn't for backend independent code bases the RDBMSes would have no leg to stand on.

[deleted]

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#8
post #6
post #5

I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back. MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

The NoSQLs need a unified a data-interchange format ASAP. Do something based on JSON or XML. Without interchangeable data you need a unified API, and I am not sure they're willing to collaborate on that. RDBMSes win because of ANSI SQL, ODBC and ORMs. If it wasn't for backend independent code bases the RDBMSes would have no leg to stand on.

That's a good idea. This could even be the start of a viable product catagory.

While in many cases it's trivial, I think it would also make sense for NoSQL's to add some kind of way to support common INSERT or COPY FROM .csv file commands. That would make it easy for organizations with existing SQL databases to see if a NoSQL could better solve some of their needs.

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#9
post #6
post #5

I predict the new data stores like Redis, CouchDb and MongoDb will soon replace MySql as the default standard for new development. Once people start downloading and getting comfortable with these data stores, there will be no turning back. MySql will be less important two years from now, regardless of what Oracle does.

The NoSQLs need a unified a data-interchange format ASAP. Do something based on JSON or XML. Without interchangeable data you need a unified API, and I am not sure they're willing to collaborate on that. RDBMSes win because of ANSI SQL, ODBC and ORMs. If it wasn't for backend independent code bases the RDBMSes would have no leg to stand on.

RDBMs have an edge with many kinds of data. I'm an HSM reporting engine which aggregates logs and filesystem info into a Postgres instance. Because the DB is 'aware' of the structure and relationships of the data, I can add many implicit checks and behaviors that would have to be hand-coded in a hash-key store.

Re: Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

#10
post #2

Mostly well argued (in favor of Oracle acquiring MySQL), with a couple of weak spots. For one, overlooking Apple as a potential acquirer; it is unlikely, but they do have the cash, and already own CUPS (Unix printing) and invest heavily in Webkit/KHTML (the KDE HTML engine - not sure what's the exact status there nowadays). The "never even worked for a profitable commercial enterprise" (thus cannot know how it would…

I intentionally left Apple out, actually. While Apple definitely has done work in some back-end technologies, a $1Bn acquisition for something so clearly outside their current strategy (which is far more consumer and mobile focused than server focused) wouldn't make much sense. They invest in Webkit and CUPS because they feel they're necessary (in the case of CUPS so that printing actually works) or strategic (in the…

RMS is not again commercial software http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/selling.html