Thanks for all the meat

I had last Friday an extremely nice 'farewell to Sun' (for me as an employee) dinner with former and current Finnish MySQL/Sun employees.

For once we didn't have the dinner at my place, because for this particular occasion I didn't want to spend a major part of my time in the kitchen (which I usually do because I love to cook).

We were at a Russian restaurant 'Saslik', which is famous for it's great food, hospitality and cold vodka (they took one look at us and put a full bottle of more-than-ice-cold Russian vodka on the table).

We had an entree called 'Zakuska' (a combination of Russian appetizers). Most of us took "Ivan's sword" as the main course and as desert we had "Baked Alaska à la Catherine the Great".

If you live in or are visiting Finland and want to have a special and memorable dinner, the above is what I would recommend (assuming you like meat).

Thanks to all that showed up at dinner (almost everyone was able to attend)!

Thanks Sun for the dinner!

From the development side, I am happy to announce than we are just adding a feature into MariaDB that will make MariaDB to perform much better on Solaris (thanks to the getport system call).

A special thanks to Henrik Ingo who had on his blog started a collection to 'the personal MySQL memory' where a lot of people have shared their memories about the old times and their encounters with MySQL and me.

Reading the blog was a great walk down memory lane. Thanks a lot for everyone that has contributed to it and everyone else who will contribute to it in the future!

What I like most about open source/free software and open development is that you don't lose contact with your former colleagues, friends or contacts just because you change work! Being able to continue to work on the same project and with the same people regardless of where you are is a great strength that is unique to open source.

What I find most delightful with now being outside of Sun is that I have been able to reconnect with a lot of former MySQL employees; Arjen Lenz, Peter Zaitsev, Kristian Nielsen, Ronald Bradford, Tonu Samuel, Antti Halonen, Larry Stefonic, Indrek Siitan, Patrik Backman, Camilla Zilliacus just to name a few (in random order) who I have talked with during the last weeks.

MySQL AB has always kept former employees and even companies working on anything that 'may compete' with MySQL business at arm length, which I have always thought 'leaves a lot to be desired'. By doing that, we have constrained the MySQL business growth instead of cooperating and making our total market larger. Many companies put pride in having an alumni club, but not yet the former MySQL AB.

What I think is needed to take MySQL to the next level is to create a company that is dedicated to support the community of the MySQL users, the MySQL developers (regardless of where they work) and all the companies that develop, work on or provide services for or upon MySQL. It is difficult for Sun to do this as the commercial interest of the different companies hinders trust between the parties and Sun.

This is what I am trying to do with Monty Program Ab.

I think we are uniquely suitable for this because:

- The people at Monty Program Ab have a great track record in working with the community.
- We are clearly dedicated to open source.
- We have proven over and over that our ideals can't be bought. We are working for open source and open source ideals both in good and bad times!
- We have a clear business agenda which is not conflicting with any other MySQL company.
- We are focusing on doing paid MySQL development, the result of which we will release in our open source MariaDB release.
- We do binary releases early and often, and we don't differentiate versions between customers and community users.
- We are creating a network of MySQL companies to together serve ALL needs of MySQL users.
- We acknowledge Sun as the key owner of the intellectual property rights.
- We are not doing front line support, training, web development etc.

A lot of companies have already contacted me to be partners in the network. Some of them can be found here.
If you want to be part of this new network around MariaDB / MySQL, send us an email to 'partners (at) a s k m o n t y (dot) o r g'.

If you need help with anything related to MySQL or databases, feel free to contact us at 'i n f o (at) a s k m o n t y (dot) o r g'. If we can't provide the right solution for your problem, we should be able to find a partner or someone in the MySQL community to help you!

And of course, if you are a developer who wants to change MySQL to better satisfy your business needs, join us developing MariaDB.

Lets connect to create better MySQL experiences for everyone!