I was yesterday, for the second time, on a call with the US Department Of Justice regarding how the Oracle / Sun deal could affect Open Source software, in particular MySQL and Java.
I told them that I still think that my original scenarios from April are still valid. What has been worrying me lately is that Oracle has been quite vocal regarding their plans for most things related to the deal, like Sun hardware and Java, but has not said anything related to their plans regarding MySQL.
During the MySQL conference and at other conferences afterwards I have been approached by numerous MySQL users that have been very worried about the future of MySQL. From this it's clear that most MySQL users are very interested to know what Oracle is up to, but those that have tried to inquire Oracle about this, myself included, have been met with complete silence.
I strongly encourage Oracle to start talking publicly about their intentions regarding MySQL. If your plan is to continue developing MySQL as a true open source project and take it to new heights, I think it's critical to inform us, the MySQL community, about it ASAP. The more positive information we get, the more supportive we, the MySQL developers and users, can be about the deal.
For those that are worried about the future of OSS software as part of the Oracle / Sun deal, and the affect (both good and bad) it may have on their business, the US Department of Justice is encouraging companies that are dependent on MySQL / Java to contact them and tell them how the deal may affect their business. The more information the department gets, the better equipped they will be in deciding what their recommendation for the deal will be.
You can either contact the Department of Justice directly or send an email to me at 'info at askmonty dot org' and I will forward it to those in charge.
We at Monty Program Ab and The Open Database alliance are doing our best to ensure MySQL's future survival as one of the leading open source databases. By making your voice heard, you can make all our lives easier!
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4 comments:
Yeah. We, at Pythian, have submitted some MySQL abstracts for Oracle Open World along with our normal Oracle submissions. I've got few Oracle sessions accepted but no response on MySQL yet. Not sure it indicates anything though. Perhaps, they gotta wait for official acquisition completion post DOJ approval.
Quite a few prospects (using Oracle) we've been talking to regarding their MySQL adoption are now in the waiting mode with an argument "why would we adopt MySQL as it's the same vendor as our main databases?". Well, I guess one of the primary reasons for adopting MySQL in this case is to gain some leverage against another vendor.
As to killing MySQL if Oracle decides to go that way... I guess Oracle would need to be quite creative to succeed - plan "stop" would just turn community against Oracle and they will focus on other initiatives like you new alliance.
As someone who has been very involved in open source for the last few years (first at Eclipse and more recently at Red Hat), I too wait to see what Oracle will decide on the MySQL issue. Many wait to see what they'll do - and personally I vote for more transparency. Transparency is one of the main keys to open source. And as Alex said, if Oracle chooses to pull the plug I think there may be riots of developers and OSS users.
RDBMSs are old and tired. If Oracle is dumb enough to kill off MySQL the internet will just transition away from RDBMSs all together.
If Oracle closes off Java, PHP, Ruby, Erlang and JavaScript will see greater movement and adoption.
++ if you give the founders of Sun Microsystems an exit, we may just see some new things in the marketplace.
I say let Oracle take up Sun, and lets start thinking about what is next.
One thing I'm sure Oracle will do is ensure a smooth and easy migration process from MySQL to Oracle.
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