The mixture of sessions was interesting. There were some really good ones. I think the best session I attended was an OpenSolaris/NetBeans/Glassfish/Virtualbox/ZFS session, given by a Sun employee. He was an excellent presenter, and really showed off the strengths of the technologies in a nice way. He started up enough VMs to make his OpenSolaris laptop chew into swap, and I thought it was fun to see how it dealt with that. I’ve heard Solaris and OpenSolaris do a lot better at avoiding and managing swapping than GNU/Linux, but I couldn’t make any opinion from watching. I did think it was odd to have this session at a “Linux” (yes, they left off the GNU) conference. But I thought the session was a good addition to the conference. In other sessions, and in the hallways and expo, there was a lot more slant towards open-source software and gadgetry in general than there was towards GNU/Linux. The sessions that were about Linux or GNU/Linux were top-heavy towards topics like educational initiatives.

The Free Software Foundation had a booth in the expo hall. It was funny that they didn’t boycott the event, because I know RMS won’t speak at so-called “Linux User Groups” and insists they be called “GNU/Linux User Groups.” I guess the FSF is not unified behind that banner. Regardless, I used the opportunity to renew my membership perpetually. I’m so lazy that I need something like this to stay involved!

The expo hall was dominated by Red Hat, Fedora, and SUSE; PostgreSQL was there, but not MySQL. There was a good variety and number of vendors. It was great to see the healthy support of the event, which was free, by the way.

Clemson, SC is not easy to get to, and while the Clemson campus was attractive and functioned fine, it’s nothing you can’t find elsewhere. I ended up driving over 9 hours to get to it. I’d have preferred the technology triangle, which if nothing else is close to major airports, bus and train stops, and Red Hat.

Richard Hipp talked about the great fsync() bug, a similar talk to the one he gave at the first OpenSQL Camp. Someone asked about Tokyo Cabinet and he responded that he hasn’t found any fsync() calls in its source code. *cough* Something worth thinking about for on-disk usage (I haven’t looked at its source much myself). TC can also be used in-memory-only, and a while back I suggested that usage of it for Drizzle to replace the Memory engine; I don’t know what became of that.

Further Reading:

• Southeast Linux Fest is around the corner
• Recap of Portland OpenSQL Camp 2009
• Recap of CPOSC 2009, plus slides
• Recap of Enterprise LAMP Summit and Camp
• Surge 2011 slides, recap

I happen to believe this is FUD, and that the reverse might actually be true. (This is one reason why we’re competing head-on with MySQL.) Having a “mother ship” is in the long run, a very complex scenario to fully understand. There are all sorts of causes and effects that play out in subtle ways. I honestly doubt anyone can really know what the true effect is.

So what can we say about the presence or absence of a single controlling organization, then? Simply this: we can look for examples of where power is decentralized, and see how it fares. Let’s see some names:

• The Linux kernel.
• The GNU/Linux operating system in all its variations.
• PostgreSQL.
• Apache.

There are more that I could mention. But these are good enough examples to show that a thriving ecosystem is possible when power is not completely concentrated. In many ways, these projects have been far more successful than MySQL. I invite you to simply take a look at the Postgres hackers mailing list to see the PostgreSQL project’s success first-hand.

I can mention a few effects I’ve seen in the MySQL world that I don’t see elsewhere, and which I attribute to the presence of MySQL the corporation. The single biggest one I see is how the community around MySQL differs from, say, the community around PostgreSQL. As I said in my recent keynote address at the Percona Performance Conference, I think the best way to describe it is “MySQL has a community. PostgreSQL is a community.” (That’s a quote from a PostgreSQL community member.)

PostgreSQL isn’t the only project I can point to — Drizzle, for example, is taking a very good approach in my opinion. But any of these will do as an example. The key point is that there is a fundamentally different outlook on the relationship, both inside and outside MySQL, than there might be. On the outside, I have observed a lot of passivity and negativity. On the inside, I sometimes detect something that might be called paternalism.

Unflattering — yes, I’m being rather unflattering. But let’s be honest. The status quo between MySQL and “the community” is not good, not good at all. It resembles nothing so much as the relationship between users and producers of a proprietary product. That’s not bad for a proprietary product — but really bad for an open-source one. Just the fact that we talk about MySQL and “the community” as though they’re separate reveals a lot.

And I attribute this to the presence of a mother ship, however you might choose to label it. It creates a power relationship that I believe is a roadblock to a lot of good things. I know of examples in the last few weeks where the power relationship caused appalling problems with some of the foremost community members — situations that would never have happened in a relationship of equals. (I’m being discreet for a reason; I don’t want to cause any more heartache for those involved. Let’s just leave it at “the entire community suffered as a result.”) This kind of thing has been happening for years.

I firmly believe those who would truly participate in open source must recognize that there is no true meeting of the minds, unless everyone is an equal. Not just “treated as an equal” — if you hold the power, then you can’t be an equal, no matter how you try to treat others. Anyone who tries to be “more equal” than others is poisoning the well. The only solution I see is to divest oneself of power.

I think there are a lot of opportunities here for everyone involved. And those who are best placed to take those opportunities, but don’t, merely create a vacuum that draws others in to do it in their stead. And that’s why I think that ultimately, the mother ship structure is not only unnecessary and sometimes detrimental, but may even become irrelevant.

I will be very curious to see how things change in the future. MySQL has a lot going for it: an incredible team of talented, dedicated employees; visionary leaders; unprecedented technology landscape; economic conditions — it’s an enviable position. What I’m most interested in is to see how they will nurture the open-source nature of the product, which is its greatest strength — if it is teased out of the closed-source models that have bound it so tightly in recent years. The good news is, I think it’s theirs to lose; they can win if they play it right, but the rest of us win no matter what.

The day we see an announcement like this one for MySQL will be a great day indeed.

Further Reading:

• Does MySQL really have an open-source business model?
• Like it or not, it is the MySQL Conference and Expo
• Why is MySQL more popular than PostgreSQL?
• Oracle is not screwing MySQL
• MySQL: Free Software but not Open Source

Further Reading:

• Drizzle stops the rain
• Why MySQL might not benefit from having a mother ship
• Collaborate versus the MySQL UC
• Sessions of interest at MySQL Conference and Expo 2009
• Schedule for MySQL-and-beyond conference is live

• The Drizzle list is talking about test coverage and completeness, and schedulers.
• The MySQL internals list has recently been dominated with talk about coding standards.
• The PostgreSQL hackers list is talking about a ton of stuff. I don’t even try to keep up.
• The Percona launchpad list is talking about bugs, xtrabackup, and more bugs and patches for them. There’s also a Percona Google Group that is not very active. In fact there are several Percona lists; it looks a little confused.

Further Reading:

• Making Maatkit more Open Source one step at a time
• What does an open source sales model look like?
• Does MySQL really have an open-source business model?
• Measuring open-source success by jobs
• MySQL: Free Software but not Open Source

No dual licensing. Just plain GPL, version 2.

I personally think this is the foundation for why people are empowered, why there is excitement, why there is progress, why people are contributing.

I asked Brian Aker where the name Drizzle came from. It comes from Clouds, because Cloud Computing is all the rage these days (I kinda avoid the term, myself). And because he lives in Seattle. I’m sure you see the connections.

But my strongest association with Drizzle is with the words of one of the greatest songwriters of all time:

Five-year plans and New Deals
Wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?

What’s MySQL’s five-year plan? Didn’t they just have a New Deal with Sun? Doesn’t dual-licensing wrap the MySQL server in golden chains?

Are there too many coincidences here to just be coincidence, or is it that I’m short on sleep?

Will Drizzle really stop the rain?

CCR has another song about rain and Sun, but I’ll stop at that. It’s getting spooky in here. It makes me feel like they were having premonitions.

Further Reading:

• Drizzle is a MySQL Technology Incubator?
• When are you required to have a commercial MySQL license?
• Making Maatkit more Open Source one step at a time
• Ignoring, laughing, fighting, winning
• Ubuntu 8.10 rocks my Inspiron 1501