2011-04-14

Update from the MySQL users conference

I just finished the MariaDB future planning BoF session, which was more about discussing the distinct flavor of the home made black vodka than about future MariaDB features. It was still a very good BoF and there is still time for those interested to add their future request to the plans.

I have never before spent such much time preparing a keynote, and it looks like my attempts to present something a bit different were appreciated. You can find a copy of the keynote and video of it at the MySQL conference web site.

I would, however, like to offer a correction. A couple of days before the conference I had been told by someone (someone that I had all reasons to believe was a reliable source) that there were only 54 of the original 400-450 MySQL Ab people left at Oracle. I asked a lot of former Oracle employees if this figure could be accurate and everyone told me that that the figure sounded low, but they could believe it. I could not find anyone in Oracle willing to comment upon it before the keynote. Now I have finally been able to verify this and there is still closer to 200 original MySQL Ab people left at Oracle working with MySQL.

My statement that it's only the InnoDB, NDB and most part of the replication team that are intact and that there is only 2 original core MySQL developers left is however accurate. My apologies for the wrong initial number of total people left, but I was in good belief regarding it!

To make things clear, I am not in any way trying to downplay the hard work the MySQL developers (and other MySQL people) are doing. They are doing an amazing job, with the resources they have at their disposal.

My point was that I am worried that the MySQL developer and support ecosystem is slowly falling apart because people are leaving Oracle and going to other companies where they are not anymore participating in the MySQL development. That is why companies like Monty Program Ab and SkySQL are important as we help keep the ecosystem together by having people working on the same thing they did before!

Apart from this, it has been a great conference and it's been a true pleasure to meet all of the 'old MySQL conference gang' yet another time!

3 comments:

Davi Arnaut said...

The runtime team is also mostly intact, with only one departure.

Henrik said...

Your keynote this year was great and much better than last year. As I was to a large part responsible for preparing last year's keynote... well I'm just glad you found a style that works! Last year was very hectic too.

In any case, nice to be here again. (Btw, 200 sounds too high, maybe it includes the Trondheim team or something? 54 certainly sounded too low.)

Henrik

Mulia said...

Dear Monty,

I'm quite confused about the situation. Situation I mean is did you still support MySQL or have already leave it and focusing on MariaDB?

Several days ago, I just know that there's a fork of MySQL called MariaDB and amazingly the founder is the original author and founder of MySQL, you.

Until this moment, many people in my country didn't know about MySQL's fork MariaDB. Hosting company in here alse still keeping MySQL as default database system for customer like me.

It's great to know that you've fought hard to keep MySQL open source. Although at the end, Oracle successfully gain control over Sun and MySQL.

I'd like to thank you and the other people behind MySQL, because of your effort we can use MySQL.

I hope MariaDB can keep developing bigger and better and soon integrated in many default hosting server. Pardon my bad english. :D