blog

Help Save MySQL

By Elliot Noss
Posted on January 6th, 2010
Read 5 comments


Help Save MySQLOne of our core values at Tucows and OpenSRS is that the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen. And we strongly believe that open source tools are central to the continued growth and health of the Internet.

You may have heard that Oracle has acquired Sun, and along with it, MySQL, which is is a central building block in the suite of open source tools.

While MySQL holds that position in the world of open source software, it is not important to the Oracle acquisition of Sun. In fact, all of the most important reasons for Oracle doing the acquisition would still be in place if Sun had no role whatsoever with MySQL.

The “cost” to Oracle of freeing MySQL is very low. The benefit to the world is extremely high.

With that in mind, please consider lending your support to the campaign. We’ve added our support by signing the petition. The Save MySQL website has lots of information about why the community feels that MySQL is important, and what you can do to ensure it stays open and freely available to the entire Internet community.

Category: General | Tagged: ,

5 comments so far →

  • I don’t generally have much use for the EU Commission, but it seems that, rather like software patents, they may be the last best hope

    “Oracle had been adamant all the time about not proposing anything real and serious and has let an important legal deadline go by without doing what it should have done. As a consequence of that behavior, the European Commission and other regulators actually have a legal and moral basis to block the whole acquisition of Sun now.”

    http://helpmysql.org/en/theissue/lastchance

    Comment by gembiz on January 11, 2010 at 6:52 am

  • My personal opinion;

    Oracle can and will produce the most reliable appliance platform(s) available on the market. These systems will further speed deployment (and growth) of MAMP, SAMP, LAMP and other cluster foundations. Removing the burden of solution creation from the owner is what we’re all about. Deploying mission critical application stack(s) on the most reliable cluster platform is what we do every day. This leaves the actual business creation team uncluttered and more clear to focus on what they do best, running and growing their own business!

    Some people build cars and you expect your car to take you to your destination. We do the same thing with compute and storage clusters, the difference is, we do it a little faster……

    scott.myers@sun.com
    scott@petascalecomputing.com

    Comment by Scott Myers on January 11, 2010 at 6:15 pm

  • Scott,

    The point is that MySQL is already a very stable and reliable piece of “kit” and in much of the small to medium sector it is of sufficient capacity and capability already. These businesses don’t need an Enterprise Solution with a billion bells and whistles because those sorts of databases are for a totally different market.

    To carry your car analogy a bit further, these smaller businesses need a 2.5 ton van, not a containerised articluated 40 ton lorry. Some of us are worrying that the 2.5 tonner is going to be phased out but we can have a 40 tonner that’s so flexible that we can have it in any colour we like…

    Cheers!

    Brian

    Comment by gembiz on January 12, 2010 at 5:12 am

  • The loss of a truly “FOSS” sql database is a pity. A shame. Oracle does not even realize this. Their greed is myopic. They actually ought to leave it out there so that they take the best of the open source ideas, tricks, code, features, and then import those in to their commercial offerings. Killing mySQL will actual close the entire ecosystem, developers will not contribute, it will be a loss. If they were not so single-mindedly focuses on one thing, they would actually benefit from both ecosystems. They wont though. They will ruin it. It will be an enormous loss. I am sad about it. I guess we can all switch to postgres now. We have already started here & will increase our speed in doing so over the next months.

    Comment by Jason Sjobeck on January 17, 2010 at 1:38 pm

  • Ahh did any of you actually read the articles. Read this one. http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/042364 please note item 6 on this list.

    6. Increase spending on MySQL research and development. Oracle commits to make available appropriate funding for the MySQL continued development (GPL version and commercial version). During each of the next three years, Oracle will spend more on research and development (R&D) for the MySQL Global Business Unit than Sun spent in its most recent fiscal year (USD 24 million) preceding the closing of the transaction.

    Please don’t post garbage based on assumptions. Its blind to not review the companies take over offerings first.

    Comment by Matthew King on January 19, 2010 at 7:03 pm

Sorry, comments are now closed.

Previous Post:
Next Post: