Pythian Group

I am writing because Sheeri sent me a note about a blog post written by Brian Aker, where Brian concludes, quite correctly, that (in Sheeri’s words not Brian’s)


MySQL is now just a branch (the official branch,
but a branch nonetheless, and a bunch of trademark (logo) and
copyright (docs) ownerships).


This is exactly true. No denying it. Why bother. It’s true. It’s also true for the vast majority of open-source projects, by the way.

I replied to Sheeri:


There's no denying that. The product direction will be set by whoever sets the best product management strategy backed by the most effective development effort. And there can be multiple winners.
-Paul


Well, this is the kind of quality output I can be relied on. It might not fit on twitter, but it’s not blogworthy. Sheeri’s word of encouragement:


See, now that would be a nice blog post with a positive outlook that
both Oracle Corp and MySQL community would agree and be happy with,
because both Oracle Corp and the MySQL community feel they can set
"the best product management strategy backed by the most effective
development effort."
-Sheeri


God. My reply was embarassing but maybe I should include it for humour value:


Go for it. Its a tweet for me at the most. No time to expand that thinking into a blog worthy of the blog today.
-Paul


and then, right away,


ah censored it i'll do it.
it'll be short.
-paul


You are now reading the result of this very modest effort.

Here’s the future of MySQL, Drizzle, Monty Program, the Percona fork, etc.

The best product management strategies… should we be lightweight for the web, plug-in oriented like Drizzle? Should we follow Monty’s giant-killing roadmap? Should we focus on performance-oriented patches? The best product management strategies will win.

They can’t win alone. Will they be backed by appropriate investments from effective developers? Effective developers are the ones who convert winning product management strategies into working products. You can’t get there without them and I’ve seen lots of great strategies fail that test (including my own actually).

And there can be more than one winner.

It’s doesn’t matter what roadmap Oracle plots for MySQL. If it’s not the roadmap the community wants, it will lose ground and open an opportunity for another fork. If it is, however, (and NEVER, NEVER underestimate Oracle’s product management because it is outstanding and a big component of their historical success), if it is, however, Oracle can win the long-term hearts and minds, because they can resource quality developers in a way that I don’t think any of the competing forks are capitalized to do (yet.)

Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch.

And more than one player can win.

And regardless, the community wins. Big time.

The bottom line: As both a community member of MySQL, and a service provider, I am not worried about Oracle buying Sun and acquiring MySQL in the process. There is no validity to the argument that Oracle will slow down or stop MySQL development — it is not possible, with various forks already in heavy development, and it is not probable, because Oracle has owned the InnoDB codebase for 4 years and has not slowed that development down.

My bias

I use MySQL, and want to see it continue to be developed. I work for The Pythian Group, providing DBA services to clients running MySQL. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Play or download the podcast here: http://technocation.org/content/oursql-episode-24%3A-sun-shining

OurSQL Episode 24: “The Sun is Shining”

Sun Microsystems recently announced the purchase of MySQL. In this interview the day of the announcement, OurSQL asks Brian Aker about what this means for customers, community, Sun and MySQL.

Tell us what you think of Sun buying MySQL by calling the comment line or sending your voice through Odeo!

Links:
Register for the MySQL Users Conference Today!
www.mysqlconf.com

A special thank you to our sponsor, The Pythian Group, www.pythian.com.

Feedback:

Email podcast@technocation.org

At 2 pm EST (-5 GMT), OurSQL will be interviewing Brian Aker, MySQL’s Director of Architecture, about today’s announcement that Sun Microsystems bought MySQL.

If you have a burning question (about the purchase), please comment here. If you’d like to be identified, please leave your name and where you’re from in your comment — just enough for me to say “Sheeri from Boston wants to know, does this mean we’re getting Sun T-shirts at the MySQL User Conference and Expo this year”?

SUN Microsystems just bought MySQL, see the announcement at http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-01/sunflash.20080116.1.xml

Now, MySQL isn’t going away any time soon; there are just way too many people that use it. And while Postgres is not actually owned by SUN, they do employ some great folks to develop on it, and those folks are the the “known” Postgres folks.

However, SUN can decide to stop development, lay off all the [former] MySQL developers, support techs, etc. I’m not saying they will, but they could. They could stagnate the growth….or spur it along.

I don’t know much about SUN internals, but I’m not sure how the company resolves being the primary developer of 2 differing DBMS’s. And since those are the top 2 open source DBMS’s (and there aren’t really any other ones out there, as I don’t count sqlite as a DBMS), there could be a real conflict of interest.

I’m sure it will be a good move, but I’m worried. I wasn’t worried when Oracle bought InnoBase, I wasn’t worried when the community/enterprise split happened. But now….