[members at lugog] Help save MySQL; Sign the petition (fwd)

[Sean Miller]

I do not find this argument compelling at all...

"There is no other logical reason why Oracle would buy MySQL than to
control it, reduce the competition with the present Oracle offering
and slowly change it to a more closed source product and start
charging for it and at the same time eliminate the competition between
MySQL and Oracle."

I think there are many logical reasons why Oracle would buy MySQL and
leave it to go its own way, whilst integrating Oracle's own premium
products into it.  Oracle is no longer just an RDBMS provider, it
provides a whole framework including Oracle Forms, a J2EE Application
Server, the JDeveloper IDE and the distributed architecture of Oracle
10/11G.  It is seeing a large percentage of the market now using MySQL
as their database of choice - how much more money could they gain by
upselling their products to those with large MySQL databases who don't
want to change?  Meanwhile every small MySQL user is somebody who, as
they grow, might want Oracle's other products to bolt on and/or
consultancy.

Remember - many Open Source companies have very sound business models
based on training and/or consultancy and/or support.  Consider JBOSS
as an excellent example of where "free as in beer" is put to bed as an
Open Source concept for good.

At Cornhill we evaluated serveral J2EE Application Servers.  These
included BEA Weblogic, IBM Websphere, Oracle and JBOSS.   One of the
pre-requisites was that we had to have 24x7 support for the servers.
It is interesting to note that JBOSS actually proved more expensive
over 5 years than a couple of the others.   Sun currently makes
significant income from MySQL using the same model.

If you go to http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/ you will see
what I mean.

We, as small users of MySQL, see one side of the MySQL business but
Oracle - as one of the largest IT companies in the world - are no
doubt focusing on the other.  They can make a fortune out of MySQL,
alongside their existing products, whilst still enabling it to stay
Open Source just as it is at the moment.

Anybody know what licence MySQL is distributed under, in particular
whether if we wished to create a GlySQL (Glastonbury SQL) forked from
MySQL we could?

For if we could, surely anybody else could too - and therefore MySQL
Is not under any threat at all, whatever might happen, but is rather
likely to go down a Mambo->Joomla path should Oracle screw up.

Thoughts?

Sean