Colin Charles Agenda

Its interesting to note some happenings in the MySQL world of late, that might be of interest to people in the database world, and those following open source software development and business models.

40% of developers say they use MySQL, according to the Evans Data Group. This is not including pilot projects, but real production use in corporate environments. A lot of MySQL’s popularity is generally attributed to the LAMP stack, though I see a change. Look at all the Ruby on Rails projects out there. They most definitely run on a MySQL backend. A good example are the products from 37signals, makers of the rather new, and cool tool, Highrise - they’re Ruby on Rails, and MySQL powered.

Is this 40% statistic prevelant to customers moving away from closed-sourced databases, or the traditional behemoths? I’m not privy to say (in fact, I generally don’t know how many migrations to MySQL there are), but I’m of the understanding that MySQL is probably hitting new markets, with all these web-based companies these days (ahem, Web 2.0 if you must). There are probably a large amount of migrations, but not significant enough to be a whopping large portion of the 40%.

Then, via James Governor: MySQL signs its first ever $1m+ deal. Keywords to take away include European telco, EUR$1m+, and helping the IPO momentum. This is obviously not something that there have been press releases about (yet?), but its great news, especially since its the first ever. This clearly gives the database some real bragging rights, I think. While MySQL’s planned IPO is not the first OSS IPO, its been quite a while since we last had one. Probably first open source database to IPO. And now, with a very large customer, this clearly rocks!

Technorati Tags: mysql, developers, production, lamp, ruby, RoR, ruby on rails, $1 million, million dollar, million dollar deal, european telco, IPO

Zimbra is truly the answer to the open source mail+calendering+contact management application. I have been playing around, and more recently using in production, the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and all I can say is that it’s darn impressive.

While evaluating, I was always worried about the upgrade process - it seemed like pain for some software you run out of an ./install.sh script, that has its own versions of a web server, LDAP, database, and so on. In fact, reading the Single Server installation guide states:

Important. You cannot have any other web server, database, LDAP, or MTA server running, when you install the Zimbra software. If you have installed any of the applications, before you install Zimbra software, disable these applications.

However, this is fully configurable during the setup process - run it at another port besides port 80, and you’ve got the usage of Apache again. This might I add, even works for upgrades - it saves the configuration rather sensibly. It doesn’t recognize CentOS officially, and that might be something they should fix in the Community edition. A Zimbra appliance (on Ubuntu Server?) might be really cool - think about the possibilities of collaboration in a box.

As with anything, there are complaints. No live backup, unless you buy the Network edition? Though the promising thread means that people are interested in prodding this further (I know, I am). Backups are horrendous - stop the server, copy /opt/zimbra, then restart. /opt/zimbra is large. mailx seems to not be so sensible in working, any longer, which means logwatch doesn’t get emails out to the root user.

Today, I also decided to give Zimbra Desktop a twirl. They have installers for Windows, OS X and Linux. It installed fine on Fedora Core 6 (i.e. for its java requirements, gcj must’ve sufficed. UPDATE: They have their own, shipped, JRE.). At version 0.36, upon asking it to start, it does ask for the location of my web browser, which seems a little daft. When I send it to the path that Firefox has, it automatically shuts the installer down, making me think it might have crashed (actually, moving to the workspace with Firefox installed, shows that the desktop account manager configuration has started!). Lo and behold, at localhost:7633, Zimbra starts syncing everything and I’ve got my mail locally! I don’t need to use Thunderbird for mail, or Evolution for calendering - the Zimbra Desktop just brings it all right to me, in my browser, even when I’m offline.

The Zimbra Desktop is your exact Zimbra online experience, delivered to you offline. It performs a sync at 60 seconds by default, and you get the full experience of the client, in your web browser. Cross browser, cross platform, similarity. They mention they’ve not got a price yet for this, but if I were them, I’d not charge for it - the client, really, needs to be free for mass adoption (and of course work with the Community and Network Editions). Of course, the differentiation can come from things like attachment searches/HTML rendering, rebranding, support, and so forth. But email in your web browser that syncs with the online server, that in itself should be free - no crippling necessary.

Technorati Tags: zimbra, zimbra desktop, zimbra collaboration suite, zcs, backup

Here comes a combined rant, from the random tabs opened in Firefox, about Malaysia.

Bloggers and the law
A Barisan National representative has mentioned that the same laws apply to those of newspapers and journals, even in the cyber world. I do agree that slander and libel should be avoided on the Internet, and getting sued for that, is probably sensible. However, censorship like in printed media, should be avoided (and as far as I remember, the MSC promise was that there will be no censorship of the Internet). I’ve been silent about the Jeff Ooi/Rocky case, because plagiarism is not something that is easily proven. Did Jeff and Rocky incorrectly slander Brendan?

The New Economic Policy
I don’t consider the NEP new, because its been around for over thirty years. Malaysia is probably the only nation that helps the majority, to become incompetent. Yes, maybe that is a strong word, but there’s no real other description for it - housing discounts, education preference, job discrimination, sleeping partners, gains without merit and the list goes on. However, there are calls within UMNO to get rid of the NEP, which is excellent. Tun Musa Hitam states that “there was a need to have a change in mindset to draw investors to the country.” No interests in cronyism, nepotism, the NEP. Yes! I quote the article, again:

In the last few decades of the NEP, the country used to have an Ali Baba way of doing business where Ali would give his name and Baba would do all the work.  

“As time went on, Ali and Baba became equal and Ali was able to deliver as much as Baba. Now, there are even Alis who are using the Babas not as sleeping partners but as equals,” he quipped.

Will we see change soon? Will people in Malaysia be recognized on merit? Not by their race, the strings that they can pull, and so forth? One can only hope, or succumb to the brain drain that is already happening.

Copycats
What is with Malaysia? A long time ago, there was a Friendster spin-off, called Kawanster. Now, there’s a Digg clone? Aizat has a pretty good analysis of this. He asks if this is the best Malaysia can do - copying, or apeing other products? I’m beginning to wonder, myself.

WiMax
Malaysia should have rocking Internet access soon, I do hope. No more tied down to Streamyx, but WiMax access for everyone. The Star reports:

The four winners are REDTone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd,
Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm Sdn Bhd),
Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd and Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd (a unit of YTL-e
Solutions Bhd).

Those are the companies to be watching, when it comes to improving broadband in Malaysia.

Chevna
The Linux distribution du jour, for Malaysians? (yes, bandwidth limit exceeded now). These were the TrianceOS folk, now selling Ubuntu for between RM39.95-49.95. From what I gather, they use Ubuntu mainstream repositories, add to sources.list a few more repositories (like mediaubuntu, beryl, wine, etc.), and they also have a Chevna repository at http://www.chevna.com/chevna. Is this an act we should support? I mean, Ubuntu + a sources.list that’s sexy, isn’t something that I think is worth much. But lifetime e-support? For RM50? I believe they’re going to encounter problems - even basing it off an LTS release, it probably doesn’t make sense to support something for life. And what about hardware issues?

It remains to be seen what they gather over just selling support for Ubuntu per se (I’d say, RM50/year, for Ubuntu support might make sense). And the next LTS release from Ubuntu, will send out free media. If anyone has tried Chevna yet, please do post your comments - I’m interested in giving it a twirl, the moment they fix their bandwidth issues.

Technorati Tags: malaysia, bloggers, law, new economic policy, nep, copycats, digg, wimax, chevna, ubuntu, linux, distribution, politics