41–50 of 51 posts
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Great. Ellison owns a piece of software anybody can fork and use as GPL!
He owns the ability to say "no" to anyone who wants a closed source license.
I don't know of anything that embeds a relational database that has the requirements of a MySQL.
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He owns the ability to say "no" to anyone who wants a closed source license.
Yes, but those folks will quickly jump ship to other RDBMS. I suspect most will simply go with SQLite. I don't know of anything that embeds a relational database that has the requirements of a MySQL.
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Perl programmer Tim Bunce (DBI/DBD) has been sending mass emails to support this cause, and I didn't understand it either. There's some mumbling about how you can't really fork mysql but no clear explanation as to why. GPL is GPL, and the whole codebase is under GPL. You can do what you want. If they need to come up with a new name, because Oracle starts asserting a trademark issue, so be it. Mandriva survives, doesn…
You'd think a DBI programmer would know how awful MySQL is and how it would be better left to die.
The simple fact that it has a very low barrier to entry alone is one of its major selling points.
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Which means nothing really. If Monty announces that MarisDB is "the real MySQL" everyone who's ever heard of MySQL will go with him. Everyone else probably doesn't even know what database is under their company's data. All Sun got for their $1Bn was the domain name mysql.com...
I really don't think that's true. The "average" MySQL user has never heard of Monty -- I used MySQL for more than a decade before I heard the name of its inventor. MySQL's battle for the last decade has mostly been getting enough brand recognition that corporate environments consider it a serious, practical alternative. The brand IS the value of MySQL: it is a promise that the technology has been worked on by serious…
Losing the mysql brand would mean less than nothing, in the corporate world a brand has value in the open source world the name changes and everybody moves on.
See joomla vs mambo and a ton of other examples.
The only person that really seems to have a problem with this is Monty himself since he can't let go of his baby even after selling it down the river. Which plenty of people spoke up about when he sold it to SUN in the first place.
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He owns the ability to say "no" to anyone who wants a closed source license.
Yes, but those folks will quickly jump ship to other RDBMS. I suspect most will simply go with SQLite. I don't know of anything that embeds a relational database that has the requirements of a MySQL.
Supposing he actually is being Machiavellian, he wants MySQL not to be so strong a competitor for the middle and high end of commercial installations. He can afford to concede the very low end - Oracle doesn't play there, except perhaps with BDB (a minor sideline).
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You'd think a DBI programmer would know how awful MySQL is and how it would be better left to die.
If it was that awful it wouldn't have the installed base it's got. The simple fact that it has a very low barrier to entry alone is one of its major selling points.
Postgres and SQL are great products and should fill any gaps should you consider switching from MySQL (or Oracle).
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So they didn't buy Sun to get the largest OSS database in the world? Sun's storage products are top notch but I doubt Oracle specifically wanted to move into the field. Selling replacement SPARCs to the banks that still have Solaris won't last long, Oracle know that.
Sun has a very good range of hardware that goes far beyond SPARC, and Oracle is marketing it aggressively[1] They specifically cited Java and hardware in the acquisition announcement, and I have a really hard time seeing the strategic value of the MySQL asset. Oracle has much more to gain from a "come to us when you're ready to sit at the grown-ups table" position. 1: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/29/oracle-sco…
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Sun has a very good range of hardware that goes far beyond SPARC, and Oracle is marketing it aggressively[1] They specifically cited Java and hardware in the acquisition announcement, and I have a really hard time seeing the strategic value of the MySQL asset. Oracle has much more to gain from a "come to us when you're ready to sit at the grown-ups table" position. 1: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/29/oracle-sco…
FYI your citation is a link to an ad for SPARC.