Hello,
Is there something we should do? Could FSFE help raise awareness about Oracle and steer people to use the fork MariaDB?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Michael Widenius michael.widenius@gmail.com Date: 2012/10/29 Subject: MariaDB To: otto.kekalainen@seravo.fi Kopio: "Michael "Monty" Widenius" monty@askmonty.org, Rasmus Johansson rasmus@askmonty.org
Hi Otto
I hope you remember me; I am the founder of MariaDB and MySQL.
I am writing to you as we met at an conference some time back and you showed interest in MySQL/MariaDB.
The short story is that we are seeking after companies who are willing to help/work with us to ensure that MySQL & MariaDB will continue to exist in the future.
As You may be aware of, Oracle is actively monopolizing MySQL development (against the principles of Open Source):
- New 'enterprise' extensions in MySQL are closed source: http://monty-says.blogspot.fi/2011/09/oracle-adding-close-source-extensions.... - The bugs database is not public anymore http://mysqlha.blogspot.fi/2011/02/where-have-bugs-gone.html http://ronaldbradford.com/blog/when-is-a-crashing-mysql-bug-not-a-bug-2012-0... - The MySQL public repositories are not anymore actively updated. http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2012/08/16/where-to-get-a-bzr-tree-of-th... - Security problems are not communicated nor addressed quickly. (This is making Linux distributions very annoyed with Oracle) - Instead of fixing bugs, Oracle is removing features: http://www.skysql.com/blogs/kolbe/heads-no-more-query-cache-partitioned-tabl... - New code in MySQL 5.5 doesn't have test cases anymore. http://lists.mysql.com/internals/38562 - Some of the new code is surprisingly good by Oracle, but unfortunately the quality varies and a notable part needs to be rewritten before we can include it in MariaDB https://lists.launchpad.net/maria-developers/msg04837.html
This is not good news for you. If Oracle gets a true monopoly of MySQL development they will be able to increase their prices (which they are already doing), restrict the usage and over time stop the open source development of MySQL without anyone being able to do anything about it. We think it is in your interest to have alternatives to Oracle.
It's clear that Oracle wants to be the only entity that is capable of developing MySQL and wants to earn much more money on MySQL. (Paid by you).
The user community is quite unhappy about this: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/08/18/0152237/is-mysql-slowly-turnin... http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/oracle-makes-more-moves-to-kill-open-source...
The actions by Oracle make it much harder to work on MySQL forks/competing offerings like MariaDB! To be able to continue our work of providing a free MySQL based server we need resources. Because of this we have decided to create MariaDB Foundation to drive MariaDB development and to ensure that MySQL survives as an actively developed open source product whatever happens at Oracle.
If you didn't already know it, MariaDB is an branch of MySQL with a lot of enhancements but still backward compatible with MySQL. http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql-features/ http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql-compatibility/
We are now searching for companies that see benefits from MySQL surviving as the leading open source product and would like to sponsor the MariaDB Foundation either with money or development resources to ensure it's survival.
The target is to have the foundation up and running by end of November.
I am happy to send more detailed information about the MariaDB foundation. If you are interested in helping with MySQL & MariaDB's survival, please drop us a line!
If you know of others that would be interest to help, please forward this email to them!
It's only be getting enough companies behind the foundation we can guarantee that MariaDB will be actively developed!
Best regards, Michael "Monty" Widenius Creator and founder of MySQL and MariaDB