Oracle is not screwing MySQL
People keep asking me “what is going to happen to MySQL now that Oracle has screwed MySQL?” I bluntly disagree that any such thing has happened. This blog post is just my personal view and does not reflect my employer’s opinion, but Oracle might have saved MySQL from what I can see. There is no evidence that supports the hysterical doomsday theories. (Witness MySQL 5.5, probably the best MySQL release in history. Not exactly what I’d call “screwing.”)
I believe that a product with such a large, diverse, and important market presence needs a variety of companies involved with it in many different ways. One of the absolutely key things is a company to make money from it. MySQL needs Oracle, because no one else involved is both capable and trying to make MySQL, the product, a large-scale commercial success. It looks like Oracle is doing what I wish Sun could have done.
Now, is Oracle going to be community friendly, and hold all our hands in a circle while singing songs and accepting our patches? No, of course not, and what an opportunity that creates for someone else. I have no issue with Oracle ignoring the community because they have decided it doesn’t fit into their plans. If you go to the hardware store to buy bread, you won’t find any. Bake a loaf if you want to eat.
You are right to disagree about the hysterical doomsday theories.
The MySQL server never needed saving. Some investors might have needed some help and they got plenty. So much, in fact that I guess many other investors woke up and realized that investing in open source is a good idea.
Oracle already have a reputation of not being soft on the teams that work under its umbrella so if the MySQL team had been weak in any way, Oracle would just have closed down the project. You don’t refer to Oracle as the soft and tender company now, do you? Much to the customers benefit none the less.
There isn’t of course any one homogeneous community so even if Oracle or any other multi billion corp, for some strange reason would like to “ignore the community”, they would fail. The community, the customers, the competition and the future of the product is all the same and is just impossible to ignore. This is more true for open source than closed source products, since the latter tend to lack a viable future as development marches on in exponentially growing pace.
Kristofer Pettersson
6 Apr 11 at 8:29 am
I think “ignoring the community”, and “not accepting patches” are unfounded, when comparing Oracle to the previous times – nobody is really testing Oracle with patches, because of the mess *pre-Oracle* with accepting patches..
We still have an OCA and process (http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Contributing_Code), and are willing to take patches where they make sense, and have been in recent times, either wholesale, or with some modification (http://bugs.mysql.com/saved/Closed-Contributions)..
Of course, we’ve moved on a long way in 5.5/5.6 since those times – so the older contributions may not make sense, or may need a serious re-work now. In some cases we obviously had different plans (i.e TABLE_STATISTICS, USER_STATISTICS et al vs PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA).
I think that most people involved with MySQL within Oracle still listen strongly to the community, we most certainly do not ignore it.
All my personal views and perceptions, and no reflection on what all of my colleagues and company may really feel as well of course (they have their own voices)..
If you want consistently good and fresh bread… Go to the bakery. ;)
Mark Leith
6 Apr 11 at 9:36 am
Mark, I fully agree, and in hindsight I’d phrase my last paragraph differently.
Xaprb
6 Apr 11 at 10:39 am
It is pity a that technical content disappears from this blog in favor of politics. Or is this your next experiment a la “MySQL saves seals”? Do you want to count loyal MySQL/Oracle employees using “thumbs up” count?
Wlad
6 Apr 11 at 6:01 pm
Try to search something on the MySQL documentation page…. and then think again this about oracle and MySQL
fsiordia
7 Apr 11 at 1:06 pm
Pointing to a technical problem with a relatively small part of the whole machinery that runs the MySQL product, and claiming that it represents a corporate policy of wholesale evil, is a great example of hysteria. Thank you for making my point clear.
Xaprb
7 Apr 11 at 4:00 pm
Clear all cookies from oracle.com and the search works fine without a login.
Xaprb
2 May 11 at 3:45 pm