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URGENT: Action Needed to help save MySQL

Posted on 13/12/2009, 4:44 am, by Colin Charles, under MySQL.

I got a call from Monty today, and he told me that its crunch-time: the European Commission is about to come up with a decision on the status of Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems. The part that interested me verbally, and he wrote (you should read: Monty says: Help saving MySQL), was this:

Instead of just working out this with the EC and agree on appropriate remedies to correct the situation, Oracle has instead contacted hundreds of their big customers and asked them to write to the EC and require unconditional acceptance of the deal.

Monty has a simple request: write an email to the EC, and use either a), b) or c) of his template if you’re too busy, and let your voice be heard. If Oracle reaches out via their lists, the open source communities should crowd-source!

Your action is needed, now. Send the email. It only takes a minute.

(all users of MySQL/open source are entitled to write this email. You do not have to be a citizen of the European Union (EU) to do so.)

Elsewhere…

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  • JZA
    Interesting discussion, I also heard about his attacks on Eben Mogblem's letter which he diminish the huge impact Eben got on GPLv3 and how dimissive he has been from the overal letter he made for the EC to decide.

    MySQL is GPL, so for that, the code should be open regardless of the copyright holder.

    This is further studied and discussed by Bradley on his podcast:
    http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast-media/So...
  • James
    I should let this go, but check out his comment at http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/blog/cases/oracl... - he complains about the MySQL client libs being pure GPL with no FOSS exception would stop their use with PHP etc. and they should be LGPL, when he was the one to change them from LGPL to GPL back in 2003!
  • Harrison
    Hi Colin,

    You might want to update your side bar to say that you no longer work for Sun, but instead work for Monty Program. In these times of strong political opinions, truth in advertising whom you work for is pretty important.
  • Hi Harrison!

    Thanks for the reminder.

    Cheers,
    -c
  • James
    Ah, I did wonder why he was buying into this bollocks.
  • Actually, why do you think its bollocks?

    Have you seen: http://mysql.com/oem/ ? And the list of customers (http://www.mysql.com/customers/embedded/). These folk could be troubled, in many ways.

    What about the application vendors, like KickFire?

    This is a view I've had for a while, but I've not been able to talk about it in public - you know, rules, and all...
  • James
    I haven't looked into it in detail, but everything I've seen makes it look like Monty is trying to get the EC to force Oracle to sell MySQL because the only non-competing buyer will be him. He can't have his cake (the proceeds from selling MySQL to Sun) and eat it too (get back the copyright so he can start dual-licensing it again). The fears he raises, that Oracle will kill MySQL seem ridiculous, one is Oracle SQL server and MySQL don't really compete; two is that this is exactly what the GPL is for - if upstream stops developing your product, then you're Free to do what you want with the code, and there's already several companies offering MySQL support. If you're complaining on the behalf of the proprietary licensees, I have no sympathy for them because companies killing products happens all the time with proprietary software, that's what happens when you give up the freedoms of the GPL.

    I'm not familiar with KickFire's business model, but there's no law that protects business models, much as the some companies wish there was.

    His attacks on Eben Moglen certainly don't endear me to him.
  • Hi James!

    Just to make it clear - Monty cannot afford to buy MySQL :-) I think he's said this in public before, and I'm certain that he isn't going to buy MySQL. Brings up the question as to whom should own it? I don't know. I'm willing to say a foundation, but that's always been my odd dream - a MySQL Foundation.

    Frankly, if its a case of getting your cake and eating it too, even I wouldn't be happy. And maybe its been seen that way in general... which is unfortunate.

    Now, back to point 1: Oracle/MySQL don't compete.
    - MySQL NDB (Cluster) is in direct competition w/Oracle RAC in the telco space (usually).
    - MySQL 5.0 got "Enterprise" features to compete with other big-named databases
    - There have been many a tutorial targeted at "mysql for the oracle admin" or "migrating to mysql from oracle" bootcamps

    Point 2: MySQL has never been an opensource project like PostgreSQL or Linux has. Its development model circled around having paid developers. There was no developer community, so to speak. There generally still isn't - barriers to contribute back to mainline have always been difficult.

    Kickfire, Virident, etc. all have to get licenses to use MySQL

    Granted, in the embedded space, one can argue that SQLite should just take over and no one should use embedded MySQL. However, the list of OEM/embedded customers are quite lengthy.

    Monty attacked Eben? I'll admit, I'm not following the politics closely - my interest is in the community of MySQL users, and developers that have started using MySQL and find it an integral part of their daily routine.

    Don't want a scenario where people are saying "hmm, wish we went $some_other_db_now_eh"...

    P/S: I can't remember when, but I think Monty has donated to the SFLC at some stage.

    Cheers,
    -c
  • James
    It has been seen that way - see Groklaw for that point of view. I see they're proposing forcing Oracle to change the MySQL license to the Apache license which is getting close to cake and eating it territory. I see your point about the users, but just because people are afraid of what Oracle might do doesn't mean they have the right to stop Oracle doing it.
  • James
    The short version: I seem to have become a Free software zealot - if users can't use MySQL any more, it's their own damn fault for choosing the non-Free license. Anyway, Oracle's given some assurances now, can we go back to making the world a better place?
  • JZA
    Is this the right time to say why dual licensing is not a good business model. Because in times like these where companies are being take over, FLOSS projects tend to be in inminent danger.

    That is why is good to have a Free software only model, there is no reason to bundle support into a new license, you could as well have a support regardless of the GPL license like other companies operate, like Red Hat.
  • Hi JZA!

    Healthy FLOSS projects should never be in imminent danger, but MySQL has always been a "corporate" backed open source software project.

    Sun was said to be a good home for MySQL because they understood opensource, and did not have a competing product.

    Cheers,
    -c
  • JZA
    So I guess this can teach us the risk of the corporate backed model. In any case the GPL freedom to go to MariaDB or a fork of MySQL would make the project continue dispite the copyright-trademark, just like Joomla did with Mambo a few years back. So what is the real threat? Loosing the name?

    We at OOo have a similar risk, but also there is a lot of "soft forks" of the project like EuroOffice, OOo4Kids and others, so I am not sure if the project is in real danger.
  • Harrison
    Hi James,

    I am neither approving nor disapproving of Colin and Monty's message. I just wanted to make sure that people were presented with all of the correct information to make their own decisions.
  • If MySQL survives, it will survive. If it dies, then it needed to. Who cares about Oracle or Sun? Let the free software ecosystem take care of it and don't bother engaging in using the same "weapons" as Oracle. Mass-mail campaigns are a waste of resources and mostly useless.
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