Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables. http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/0018241 Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB. This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions. MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news. Here is my take on it. http://baheyeldin.com/technology/software/oracle-is-becoming-too-powerful-af...
Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables. Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
No Drupal site needs a 'commercial' MySQL license. jh
Hi, On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 05:50 +0000, John Handelaar wrote:
Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables. Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
No Drupal site needs a 'commercial' MySQL license.
Yes this is true, but without MySQL AB, MySQL development will not be as active as it is currently is, and any new advancements will not be as dramatic, and will most likely fall behind other database systems. This will affect Drupal. On the other hand this will mean that we will need to use another database. Gordon.
On 14-Feb-2006, at 11:11 PM, Gordon Heydon wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 05:50 +0000, John Handelaar wrote:
Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables. Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
No Drupal site needs a 'commercial' MySQL license.
Yes this is true, but without MySQL AB, MySQL development will not be as active as it is currently is, and any new advancements will not be as dramatic, and will most likely fall behind other database systems.
This will affect Drupal.
On the other hand this will mean that we will need to use another database.
Oracle? ;)
Gordon.
If MySQL is open source (It is already, no?), then hopefully the community will take it back and develop it. Robin On 2/15/06, puregin <puregin@puregin.org> wrote:
On 14-Feb-2006, at 11:11 PM, Gordon Heydon wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 05:50 +0000, John Handelaar wrote:
Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables. Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
No Drupal site needs a 'commercial' MySQL license.
Yes this is true, but without MySQL AB, MySQL development will not be as active as it is currently is, and any new advancements will not be as dramatic, and will most likely fall behind other database systems.
This will affect Drupal.
On the other hand this will mean that we will need to use another database.
Oracle? ;)
Gordon.
-- Robin Monks, CSL Web Administrator robin@civicspacelabs.org Public Key: http://shurl.org/key/devlinks@gmail.com ( http://gmking.org, a gamers dream, looking for admins )
Gordon hit the nail on the head for what I mean. It is true that there are open source versions of everythings that makes MySQL today (MySQL proper, InnoDB and BDB). If MySQL AB suffers, then it will be a struggle to maintain the database, since not too many people know its innards, and they cannot easily self organize. (This one danger of using open source software that is controlled by a company, but that is another thread). One of the reasons why MySQL is in wide use is that virtually every hosting company has it for low end plans. If MySQL development stalls, the dynamics of the "market" will shift and perhaps replacements will become more widespread. What I speculate will happen, is that at the low end, SQLite will prevail, and the fact that it is already in PHP5 makes it very attractive. At the high end, PostgreSQL will prevail. It is a better architecture and has better features than MySQL, and is not controlled by a company. So, it is possible that in the future we will have to move off of MySQL and support those two databases. Although PostgreSQL is already in core, it has issues. Also, lots of contrib modules cannot work with PostgreSQL. This may not be this year, and it all depends on how Oracle behaves towards MySQL AB when the time for renewal of licensing comes. I can't imagine Oracle not buying those two pieces to cut MySQL AB's legs off. I hope I am wrong ...
On Wednesday 15 February 2006 06:23 am, Khalid B wrote:
This may not be this year, and it all depends on how Oracle behaves towards MySQL AB when the time for renewal of licensing comes.
I doubt they will be very gracious.
I can't imagine Oracle not buying those two pieces to cut MySQL AB's legs off. I hope I am wrong ...
I agree on both accounts. -- Jason Flatt http://www.oadae.net/ Father of Six: http://www.flattfamily.com/ (Joseph, 13; Cramer, 11; Travis, 9; Angela; Harry, 5; and William, 12:04 am, 12-29-2005) Linux User: http://www.sourcemage.org/ Drupal Fanatic: http://drupal.org/
On 2/15/06, Rowan Kerr <rowan@stasis.org> wrote:
Gordon Heydon wrote:
On the other hand this will mean that we will need to use another database.
Great chance to make sure PostgreSQL becomes treated as a 1st class citizen :) And possibly improve the db abstraction in general..
I would not mind that. Technically PostgreSQL is technically better than MySQL (at least it always has transactions, and we can enforce referrential integrity). Where I am concerned is hosting company acceptance and hence widespread use. Drupal currently can run everywhere, because PHP and MySQL are everywhere. What I cannot predict clearly is whether hosting companies would all move to PostgreSQL, or stay with SQLite, or what, and when ...
On Feb 14, 2006, at 7:32 PM, Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/0018241
If you look at the MySQL documentation there have been hints about not using BDB for a while. Nobody that I know uses it.
Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
I spoke with the chief architect of MySQL a few weeks ago after Oracle purchased InnoDB. He assured me that that serious InnoDB commits were on track and things seemed to be business as usual. I am much more hopeful about MySQL MaxDB, http://www.mysql.com/ products/maxdb/, which is used to run some of the largest enterprise databases for SAP. There is brutal competition going on in the database market today with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft each trying to ensure they control the data. What's good for us is that for our very simple needs the big players have declared their support for making commodity databases readily available. IBM offers free DB2 for up to four processors. So I can get a quad opteron box and put 20GB of RAM in it and serve it for free. I don't see too many people bumping up against that limit any time soon. Oracle buys InnoDB and SleepyCat ensuring that the millions of MySQL users have the best path forward to grow up into Oracle. Oracle has a track record of treating great engineers well, and everyone else poorly so I think we will continue to see solid innovation in this space. If not MaxDB is a perfectly reasonable alternative that will give us all the advanced DB usage Drupal will need in the for seeable future. Microsoft is embedding SQL server into the next version of windows and despite wanting to turn SQL server into a 10 Billion dollar revenue stream, Microsoft is still trying to give as many copies of SQL server away as possible for the enterprise. Competition is fierce with no monopoly in sight, and we have outstanding Open Source alternatives if there is a monopoly. We win. If you saw Rasmus's talk about PHP in Amsterdam, you will realize that Zend != PHP. When Zend is acquired by Oracle, they will quickly enterprise class PHP. This means brain dead design by corporate committee a la Java community process. Despite that PHP will be able to run in a shared memory space in the most complex environments and become compatible with other object models as Java did with C and C++. Expect a whole new wave of corporate buzz word bingo as dynamic languages are adapted into the enterprise. e.g. web services, service oriented architectures. Who cares, we are all going to be writing everything in the Drupal javascript framework soon enough anyway :-) Kieran
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
Here is my take on it. http://baheyeldin.com/technology/software/oracle-is-becoming-too- powerful-after-open-source-shopping-spree.html
On 2/15/06, Kieran Lal <kieran@civicspacelabs.org> wrote:
On Feb 14, 2006, at 7:32 PM, Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/0018241
If you look at the MySQL documentation there have been hints about not using BDB for a while. Nobody that I know uses it.
Yes. But it was the only transactional engine left after Oracle grabbed Inno. Now, even that is gone.
Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
I spoke with the chief architect of MySQL a few weeks ago after Oracle purchased InnoDB. He assured me that that serious InnoDB commits were on track and things seemed to be business as usual.
For the time being? Maybe. Going forward? They control MySQL AB's bread and butter which is providing commerically licensed transactional products (i.e. MySQL + Inno). They will eventually choke that revenue stream. If that happens it will be hard for the community to pick up the GPL version and keep running with it. Not impossible, but hard ...
I am much more hopeful about MySQL MaxDB, http://www.mysql.com/ products/maxdb/, which is used to run some of the largest enterprise databases for SAP.
Seems to have referential integrity.Not clear to me if it has transactions or not (doesn't say). http://www.mysql.com/products/maxdb/features.html Regardless, will it be enough to sustain MySQL AB's revenue stream from commercial licensing?
Who cares, we are all going to be writing everything in the Drupal javascript framework soon enough anyway :-)
Javascript? Where was that rope ... ah there it is .... <clicks Log out, and then hangs himself>
I am much more hopeful about MySQL MaxDB, http://www.mysql.com/ products/maxdb/, which is used to run some of the largest enterprise databases for SAP.
Seems to have referential integrity.Not clear to me if it has transactions or not (doesn't say).
No. It doesn't have transactions. Only InnoDB and BDB do. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/ansi-diff-transactions.html 1.9.5.3. Transactions and Atomic Operations MySQL Server (version 3.23-max and all versions 4.0 and above) supports transactions with the InnoDB and BDB transactional storage engines. Oracle played that one very well. BDB is used in many other applications, aside from MySQL.
On Feb 15, 2006, at 9:47 AM, Khalid B wrote:
No. It doesn't have transactions. Only InnoDB and BDB do.
"MaxDB is a heavy-duty, SAP-certified open source database for OLTP (Online transaction processing) and OLAP(Online Application process) usage which offers high reliability, availability, scalability and a very comprehensive feature set." From http://dev.mysql.com/doc/maxdb/pdf/whitepaper.pdf "MaxDB is never in transactionless mode." "MaxDB is additionally available as open source under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), the most popular open source license." SAP is in direct competition with Oracle so it's in their interest to ensure a viable OSS DB is available if Oracle tries to choke the DB market by squeezing the bottom of the market. Although I don't see cheap hosting offering OLAP functionality for $5.95 a month. :-) Cheers, Kieran
On 2/15/06, Kieran Lal <kieran@civicspacelabs.org> wrote:
On Feb 15, 2006, at 9:47 AM, Khalid B wrote:
http://www.mysql.com/products/maxdb/features.html
No. It doesn't have transactions. Only InnoDB and BDB do. "MaxDB is a heavy-duty, SAP-certified open source database for OLTP(Online transaction processing) and OLAP(Online Application process) usage which offers high reliability, availability, scalability and a very comprehensive feature set."
From http://dev.mysql.com/doc/maxdb/pdf/whitepaper.pdf
"MaxDB is never in transactionless mode."
"MaxDB is additionally available as open source under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), the most popular open source license."
Interesting. So there is a documentation bug here.
Khalid B wrote:
I am much more hopeful about MySQL MaxDB, http://www.mysql.com/ products/maxdb/, which is used to run some of the largest enterprise databases for SAP.
Seems to have referential integrity.Not clear to me if it has transactions or not (doesn't say).
No. It doesn't have transactions. Only InnoDB and BDB do.
Oracle played that one very well.
Oh, for chrissakes. That's enough. a) MySQL is GPLed b) InnoDB and BDB engines in MySQL are also GPLed c) ... ...there is no c). Nothing changes. This is a complete waste of bandwidth, as well as being wildly off-topic and in no small way misinformed. Please stop now. jh
On 2/15/06, John Handelaar <john@userfrenzy.com> wrote:
Khalid B wrote:
I am much more hopeful about MySQL MaxDB, http://www.mysql.com/ products/maxdb/, which is used to run some of the largest enterprise databases for SAP.
Seems to have referential integrity.Not clear to me if it has transactions or not (doesn't say).
No. It doesn't have transactions. Only InnoDB and BDB do.
Oracle played that one very well.
Oh, for chrissakes. That's enough.
a) MySQL is GPLed
b) InnoDB and BDB engines in MySQL are also GPLed
c) ...
...there is no c). Nothing changes. This is a complete waste of bandwidth, as well as being wildly off-topic and in no small way misinformed.
Please stop now.
John The concern here is whether MySQL AB (who does the bulk of MySQL development) will continue to thrive. If not, then the community may or may not be able to carry on with MySQL. That is all. The GPL versions are always there.
Khalid B wrote:
John
The concern here is whether MySQL AB (who does the bulk of MySQL development) will continue to thrive. If not, then the community may or may not be able to carry on with MySQL.
Non-sequitur. MySQL is what it is, now. If it is no longer commercially developed, it still will be. Therefore, imho, this is still off-topic. <obDrupal> Hey. Want a sneak peek at a new site which uses the autocomplete API from 4.7? Find out who your MEPs and members of parliament are, with Drupal. [But, right now, only if you live in County Mayo, Ireland.] http://dev.vocalvoter.com </obDrupal> jh
Hi, LWN has included some commentary on this in this weeks news. It is only for paid subscribers but I can provide links to some stories. http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/172128/aff738d540472700/ This will allow you to read the article. Gordon. On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 22:32 -0500, Khalid B wrote:
Oracle bought SleepyCat, the makers of the Berkeley DB that powers MySQL's BDB tables.
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/15/0018241
Previously, they bought InnoBase, makers of InnoDB.
This can spell financial trouble for MySQL AB (the company), since they rely on Inno for non-GPL licensed versions.
MyISAM is still there, but for commerical applications, this may be bad news.
Here is my take on it. http://baheyeldin.com/technology/software/oracle-is-becoming-too-powerful-af...
!DSPAM:1000,43f2a82349286636660142!
Gordon Thanks for the link: This sums it up for the community: 'It is worth noting that neither acquisition can do immediate harm to the free software community. The code which was released under a free license remains free and cannot be taken back. The worst-case scenario would appear to be that developers could be taken off the projects, slowing or stopping the development of that code." This sums it up for MySQL AB: "The situation might be a little more perilous for MySQL AB, however, and its customers as well. Oracle is now in a position to change the licensing terms for both database backends, or even to make them unavailable for dual-licensing altogether."
Hi, On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 23:18 -0500, Khalid B wrote:
This sums it up for MySQL AB:
"The situation might be a little more perilous for MySQL AB, however, and its customers as well. Oracle is now in a position to change the licensing terms for both database backends, or even to make them unavailable for dual-licensing altogether."
I do have one question about this, and can they revoke the licence for existing customers or will this only affect new customers moving forward. Gordon.
This sums it up for MySQL AB:
"The situation might be a little more perilous for MySQL AB, however, and its customers as well. Oracle is now in a position to change the licensing terms for both database backends, or even to make them unavailable for dual-licensing altogether."
I do have one question about this, and can they revoke the licence for existing customers or will this only affect new customers moving forward.
I am no expert, but it depends: The free license cannot be revoked. That is the beauty of the GPL. However, Oracle can say that future versions will not be dual licensed, only commerical. This leaves the community with an old version of the software to fork. (Side note: this happened with a security project that was dual licensed. They said they will no longer release free versions. I think it was Nessus). The commercial license is between MySQL AB and its customers, and Oracle has nothing to do with it. It all depends on the wording, duration, renewal clauses, ...etc. But Oracle can squeeze MySQL AB enough to leave MySQL AB into unpleasant situations (e.g. they ask for an exorbitant amount of money for InnoDB license renewal, or refuse to license it altogether). Again, this is all crystal ball ...
participants (8)
-
Gordon Heydon -
Jason Flatt -
John Handelaar -
Khalid B -
Kieran Lal -
puregin -
Robin Monks -
Rowan Kerr