MySQL's Response to Oracle's Moves

mAriuZ writes "I've recently written two articles on this topic for Database Journal, the earlier, written after the InnoDB purchase, entitled Oracle's purchase of InnoDB, their release of Oracle Express, and the effect on MySQL, and the most recent, just after the Sleepycat purchase, entitled Pressure on MySQL increases as Oracle purchases Sleepycat, with more to come. Since I only do a monthly column for Database Journal, and things change quite quickly, I thought I'd post a few more thoughts on the topic."

Bruce Perens' thoughts on the subject

Posted as AC to avoid karma whoring...

Does Oracle Understand What It's Buying?

Bruce Perens

Oracle's eaten the only two companies that make transactional database back-ends for MySQL: InnoDB last year, and now Sleepycat Software. The purchases send a message that MySQL won't achieve high-end database features without being beholden to Oracle. But the message is hollow.

When the InnoDB purchase was announced, I asked MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos: you're going to write your own transactional back-end now, aren't you? Mickos is loath to announce that, but it's a no-brainer. The database back-ends in question handle file storage and low-level query operations, don't understand SQL, and are plug-ins - ready to be unplugged and replaced by some new transactional design by MySQL.

What will Oracle have gained once MySQL announces a new transactional back-end? Sleepycat: an excellent, simple, SQL-less embedded database that's been a successful cottage industry for a decade, and InnoDB, which I suppose might produce a back-end for Oracle's own database. And not a bit of discomfort for MySQL.

But MySQL has an alternative to rolling their own back-end: they can continue to use the InnoDB and Sleepycat products under their Open Source licenses, which are valid forever and for anyone, instead of the commercial licenses that MySQL currently has for these products. Because MySQL is a server, physically separate from its client applications, the GPL and its restrictions won't be a consideration for MySQL's customers.

MySQL could slap Oracle in the face by going with the GPL strategy: they wouldn't have to negotiate with Oracle, they could use InnoDB and Sleepycat in perpetuity, and they wouldn't have to pay Oracle a cent. I'd be tempted to take such poetic vengeance. But Oracle, which has tried to buy MySQL before, could trump the GPL strategy by increasing what it offers for MySQL enough to make that purchase go through. CEO Mickos won't dabble at vengeance and will keep looking at offers that - if nothing else - increase the evidence for valuation of his company. But MySQL probably won't merge - they see too large a market, and intend to have it for themselves.

Even an outright purchase of MySQL by Oracle would not prevent anyone from using MySQL's server in a commercial application, without charge. That's possible today if you use an unofficial (and non-GPL) client library to communicate with MySQL. Other companies in the Open Source community would happily provide training and support for MySQL, while an independent Open Source project would evolve to maintain the program.

You can't really buy an Open Source project. The GPL was designed to make it possible for any Open Source participant to circumvent any other party who gets in the way. Other Open Source licenses are similar. Larry Ellison can buy business and influence over an Open Source project, but if he tries to have absolute control, Open Source developers will code elsewhere, replace whatever Larry holds close, and create new businesses.

JBoss, the Open Source J2EE company said to be a $400 Million Oracle acquisition, hardly owns its market today. Commercial Java projects, even those using Open Source code, may develop on JBoss but predominantly deploy on proprietary software from IBM or BEA. Years ago a large contingent of JBoss developers split off into what is now Apache Geronimo project, an eminently viable competitor to JBoss.

If Oracle is true to their history of eating their own ecosystem, they might now use JBoss to go after BEA. BEA moved this week to beef up their own presence in the Open Source community by releasing some previously proprietary work as Open Source. Why? they'll be using Open Source to go after Oracle. Open Source developers smile as proprietary software companies fight each other by collaborating more.

Re:Bruce Perens' thoughts on the subject

"The purchases send a message that MySQL won't achieve high-end database features without being beholden to Oracle."

"Even an outright purchase of MySQL by Oracle would not prevent anyone from using MySQL's server in a commercial application, without charge."

"You can't really buy an Open Source project. "

It seems to me that what Oracle is doing is not to try and take over or squash MySQL but rather to buy some more time. InnoDB is already OSS and I had thought Sleepycat was as well. MySQL has already been released under the GPL; no changing that retroactively. Even if Oracle had bought MySQL, the whole thing appears to be an attempt by Oracle to buy time while the new development team learns the innards of MySQL and/or codes a new transaction engine.

MySQL, with or without MySQL AB, will continue to exist and continue to be developed. Don't get me wrong, I am glad they declined the offer, but I don't think Oracle was looking to buy MySQL per se. They were just looking to buy time to keep the heat off.

Just my 2cents.

Re:Bruce Perens' thoughts on the subject

You have to keep in mind that MySQL isn't making money off techies that Get It, they're making money off of Suits. Suits don't want to make long-term commitments to software with a shaky or uncertain future. The fact that these purchases are raising doubts as to MySQL's future is already enough to make Suits (who are already skeptical of OSS) nervous & less likely to send their business to MySQL.

Re:Bruce Perens' thoughts on the subject

"The fact that these purchases are raising doubts as to MySQL's future..."

I don't believe that to be the case. In fact, if anything, I have to agree with Bruce Perens who states "(MySQL)CEO Mickos won't dabble at vengeance and will keep looking at offers that - if nothing else - increase the evidence for valuation of his company.".

It seems to me that if the "premier" database vendor (Oracle) in the market is looking to buy up a "lesser" database, it implies that the target database is (perceived to be) a threat in some way to the larger vendor; implying that the "lesser" is in fact not lesser. This suggests that MySQL *is* a solid database ready for the enterprise. Not to mention, the GPL version of MySQL is not going anywhere, regardless of what happens to MySQL AB. Its development cycle may be slowed for a bit if MySQL were bought out, but MySQL is too important of an application to too many companies with the budget/talent to let die. Someone will be developing MySQL for the foreseeable future.

Re:Bruce Perens' thoughts on the subject

Hmm, maybe they wanted an author with better street-cred on the subject?




Joke, joke... thanks for sharing. I'm never going to whine about having a submission rejected again ... even to myself. Thanks for all the good work, keep up the fight, etc., etc.

NewSQL

I really like this move of bringing Jim Starkey aboard. I've heard his name before, and I think he will really point MySQL's new engine in the right direction.

From the interview, I see that he is a big fan of Java. I've only worked with a slightly older version of MySQL but I feel that Java support is where MySQL is lagging behind Oracle. While MySQL works with a JDBC connection, an Oracle database seems to return faster results and more functional result sets. And I don't know too much about how well MySQL stores java code, but I know the newer versions of Oracle have really added some neat functionality with that.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where MySQL is headed and I'm glad they're standing up to Oracle's monopolizing.

Re:NewSQL

Just to add my 2 info-cents... Jim Starkey is basically the father of Interbase/FirebirdSQL DB (over 20 years ago). Borland did not do very well in marketing it but Interbase was truly revolutionary in many ways - superb transactions handling, no locks, any locks, until they are absolutely needed etc... And InnoDB copied many ideas from there, for example (if you try and benchmarks some scenarios between FB and MySQL/InnoDB the results are very, very similar). And BTW, the word "blob" is invented by Jim Starkey too.

Now I wonder what impact Jim Starkey joining MySQL will have on FB development?

Re:NewSQL

The thing is, they also have bought the product Jim Starkey has been working on for most of his time during the last 6 years. Netfrastructure [netfrastructure.com] is a revolutionary development platform for the web, integrating a database engine, a Java virtual machine, a full text search engine, and an HTML templating engine all into a single product.

Re:NewSQL

While MySQL works with a JDBC connection, an Oracle database seems to return faster results and more functional result sets. And I don't know too much about how well MySQL stores java code, but I know the newer versions of Oracle have really added some neat functionality with that.

Actually the reason MySQL sucks is because it doesn't integrate well with AJAX.
[/snark]

Aside from the low, low price, what gave MySQL the intial jump on Oracle and other 'mature' RDBMS is that it was much faster for simple things. This because it didn't include the kitchen sink of 10 years of "bright ideas" to synergize the enterprise with scalable robustness. You can include in this set of bright ideas, things like transactions (which many complex database applications really can't do without), and things like running a JVM within the database. No one has ever been able to coherently explain to me why it would be a good idea to do the latter (save as some workaround to a convoluted/broken legacy database they don't have the option of fixing).

Sometimes all you need is "SELECT ... FROM ... WHERE ..." Hopefully MySQL doesn't lose sight of that. From the looks of it, they'd do better to work on securing a backend storage engine that Ellison can't buy out from under them, than to keep adding feature bulletpoints to glossy four-color datasheets.

Let's hope the best

I'm looking forward to see MySQL come up with a real good open source transactional engine. MySQL has done a very good job in my point of view for the community, and besides that employes a fair amout of people. Getting a good engine as response to Oracles maneuver would be great.
My company uses the commercial version of MySQL in projects here and then, and I'd like to see it on more critical projects as well.

There is only one reason for these purchases

I know a bunch of people who work at Oracle and they all agree: Oracle is 100% focused internally on SAP. Other theories may be interesting intellectual exercises, but Oracle is trying to kill MySQL because SAP wanted to use MySQL as an option for their systems to prevent customers from buying an Oracle database.

Oracle and SAP are in the middle of a nuclear exchange here, and Oracle in particular doesn't care one bit how much money it costs them or what collateral damage in the open source space is inflicted. Their PR people may say otherwise, but its not a big secret there.

As a MySQL shop...

These moves have concerned me. We use InnoDB and have purchased hotbackup licenses for all our machines. Last year when we switched to IBM Power servers running Linux, we were able to talk to Heikki and Pekka directly and have them compile special versions for us (until then they never had a Power/Linux version). I doubt that such service would be common for long under Oracle.

I guess MySQL can just keep on with the latest GPL version and fork it if needed to keep things going. But one of the key Enterprise features of InnoDB is the hotbackup, which allows you to create a clean snapshot of the entire database without taking it down. This is pretty much a required piece of software and it is not GPL. As I mentioned we already own a perpetual non-server bound license, so hopefully Oracle will honor that. But that's the piece MySQL should worry about, and attempt to recreate. We would not have been able to stick with MySQL without that software.

Cheers.

Re:As a MySQL shop...

You can do the equivalent of a hot backup without any special software by replicating your database to another server. When you need the backup, you stop the replication and make a backup of the copy. After you reconnect the replication, the replication server will catch up again.

This is documented in the excellent book "High Performance MySQL" by O'Reilly. One of the authors is a database guru at Yahoo.

We were using MS SQL and, while I was interested in open source databases, did not have the confidence to use an open source database until reading this book. I know many will point me to PostgreSQL too, but the tools and the references for MySQL were better.

Re:As a MySQL shop...

Exactly.

This has been the part which pisses me off most about InnoDB. You cannot back it up online and the MySQL backup facilities introduced with 4.x are completely b0rken for it. At least in the GPL version. As a result I have had to write backup facilities of my own for the InnoDB databases we use (RT for once requires InnoDB)

Whatever MySQL will use and write it expect that it will not deliberately remove the backup facility to sell it as a special non-GPL addon. While MySQL has been known to withold some features from the GPL versions it has never shipped deliberate crippleware (and database without backup facilities is crippleware).

So as far as InnoDB is concerned - good buy and good riddance.

BerkleyDB is a different matter. It is heavily used as an embedded database. MySQL is only a minor use for it. In fact it has replaced Oracle as the dabatase of choice for telecommunications projects like high-end switches, network equipment, etc. Most of these used to have an Oracle backend 7 years ago. Not any more. Nowdays it is BDB turf. While there are replacements for it very few of them are as fully featured as BDB 3.x and higher.

GPL prevents this

Like Bruce Perens said, "you can't really buy an Open Source project." The developers can take their code, fork it, and keep working on it under another project name, if they want.

Oracle's latest "purchases" of these Open Source projects will not threaten MySQL at all. You can't apply for-profit, closed source takeover pressure to OSS code. The GPL prevents exactly this by keeping the source freely available and open.

Re:GPL prevents this

Ha ha ha ha. MySQL is an open source RELEASE - it is not an open source COMMUNITY. Effectively everybody that can hack MySQL work for MySQL AB, and the development process is run inside MySQL AB - it isn't set up to run as a community process. So, the transition would take a lot of time - and losing maybe two years of forward progress on this would most likely kill MySQL, market-wise.

Eivind.

MySQL gets the next great thing after Firebird?

Jim Starkey said that he'd been working on a new engine for the last six years but couldn't integrate it fully with Firebird because of architectual problems. MySQL has an architecture designed to accept pluggable storage engines, so MySQL might end up with what he thinks is the next great performance improvement after Firebird.

MySQL spatial data support

In regards to MySQL being more and more competitive in the geospatial area, there was an announcement last week about OGR and GDAL compatilibity for MySQL [hobu.biz]. With geospatial getting everywhere (you know; RFID, Google Earth, GPS, ...), this is great news for MySQL.

Wrong: It's the Other Way Around

The pressure is ALL on Oracle. The reason why they're doing all this is because they're scared. The vast majority of companies out there running Oracle really are beginning to realise that they DO NOT need to spend anywhere near the amount they do on Oracle. They've heard of Postgres and especially MySQL, and MySQL are sufficiently cheap enough where companies get the right support they need without Postgres being any sort of threat - just a good old fashioned competitor.

Oracle have overinflated revenues and profits based on crap software, and they've been doing it for years. Their management and configuration tools are utter crap as well considering what people are paying. I don't know what they do in that company all day. Good riddance as far as I'm concerned.

The guy who wrote this article (possible an Oracle fan) is simply putting some positive spin on some pretty panic moves from Oracle. It isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to MySQL, or Postgres for that matter.

Re:Wrong: It's the Other Way Around

Oracle have overinflated revenues and profits based on crap software, and they've been doing it for years.

Oh dear, looks like we have a MySQL weenie here. Oracle my well be pumping their revenue stream for every dollar they can get, and like IBM their salesmen used to be notorious for turning up for meetings without a price list (it's depends Sir :-). But crap software? Hardly. Oracle plummeled MySQL into the dust in quality before MySQL even existed. Oracle has had transactions and atomicity since version 6 in the early 1990s, a full and elegent procedural SQL language since around that time, SQL that supports concepts such as subselects and everything else needed so a dba could support a mission-critical company database and sleep easy at night.

Oh, and did I mention the support? When I was a dba I knew I could ring support up, at any time of the day or night, and I would get an answer to a question and a fix/work-around for any problem. Truly impressive.

MySQL has it's place and it's useful for many things - although generally as a database it's still pretty crap. Postgres is much much better and is now a serious alternative to Oracle, SQL Server and DB2. But to dismiss Oracle as crap frankly just says in large flashing letters that you've never used a real database for a serious application.

Re:Wrong: It's the Other Way Around

I can't believe you are seriously arguing the tuning tools on MySQL are anywhere near the ones on Oracle. Oracle has whole tuning libraries, tuning subsystems, autotuning components, performance analyzers.... Just for starters look up "statspack", "Performance report" in your oracle docs and tell me where MySQL has anything like this.

Oh and sending some guy for 2 days is not how you tune a database. You have a full time on staff DBA that works with your development team, understands the data and understands how the system is being used. Oracle 10 does an excellent job of self tuning (again an advantage over MySQL). To beat the automated routines takes time.

MySQL to adopt Firebird architecture

See: http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=129 [firebirdnews.org]

So what?

I know Slashdot users like to bash MySQL, so I will try not to put out any bait.

MySQL and all its components -- including innoDB and BerkeleyDB, which is the Sleepycat product -- are available under Open Source licences {GPL for InnoDB and BSD-like for BDB}. And they will continue to be available under those licences for as long as copyright subsists in any of the code; after which they become Public Domain.

Just because the makers have been bought out, does not mean that there is any threat to the Open Source nature of the code. Quite the reverse, in fact. If Oracle are trying to make the proprietary fork of MySQL more compatible with their own proprietary database, then they must be aware that there is no way they can prevent the open source fork also becoming compatible with their proprietary product.

Oracle have shot themselves in the foot here. There is already plenty of choice of Open Source database server applications; MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, SQLite, Ingres, and so on. This could be the beginning of the end of closed source software. We can only hope!

Oracle helping Open Source? I don't think so

I don't think Oracle wants to play in the Open Source field as the article suggests. They will probably try to kill/hurt the competitors and get as much customers from them as possible. Maybe Oracle will offer a free version of the software (InnoDB / BerkelyDB / PHP / JBoss), but I don't think they will do it like Sun with OpenOffice. Or IBM with Eclipse / Linux. Oracle doesn't need to do it, because they have the market share already (unlike Sun and IBM). Oracle just wants to keep the market share, and keep MySQL small.

Oracle tried to buy MySQL, and because they can't (probably MySQL just wants too much money), they try to hurt them as much as they can. Oracle must be really scared of MySQL. When they buy Zend, they will probably try to charge for it, and LAMP will become LAM.

Oracle bought Innobase just to hurt MySQL. I think Oracle will try to make as much money from InnoDB as they can (converting customers to Oracle) and then try to kill InnoDB. Probably MySQL tired to buy Innobase, but Oracle just offered more money.

Then they bought Sleepycat to hurt MySQL, and to use the technology and get more customers (the main customers of BerkleyDB are not from MySQL). So Sleepycat will probably survive, but the Oracle will poison it so MySQL can't use it. MaxDB now assumes a much more important role, and MySQL should be working on integrating it as quickly as possible I don't agree. MaxDB is a different database engine, including parser and so on. Probably it's a huge, ugly, complicated mountain of source code. Integrating such a thing is hard, really hard. If it's done in a hurry it means hacking and patching. This will lead to bugs, stability problems, slow performance. And if that happens, people will loose faith in MySQL. It could in fact mean the end of MySQL if they do that and if fails.

Better would be actually: grab a few database kernel developers (Jim Starkey for example), and write a new kernel. Probably even better (if MySQL has enough money): build 3 teams, one doing MaxDB refactoring, and two writing a new kernel. Then after some time integrate the best one, and throw away the rest. I heard Oracle did such 'competitive development' in the past.

Oracle Express: this is not a response to MySQL, it's a response to SQL Server Express Edition.

About other databases: I think PostgreSQL has the best position as an open source db, but don't really feel that Firebird is anywhere close. Firebird lacks a lot of features, and development is slow. Well let's see.

Thomas Mueller, author of Hypersonic SQL, PointBase Micro, and (lately) the H2 Database Eninge (http://www.h2database.com/ [h2database.com]).

Terrible article summary

The title leaves you looking for MySql's response to the recent Oracle purchases. Can you find it in the first link? Nope, not a single, concrete action from MySql is mentioned, just lots of speculation/analysis. How about the second link? Nope, just more analysis. How about the *third* link, entitled "more thoughts"? Yes, finally! That should have been the first link given in the article, and really the only link he needed to give, since the first two articles are mentioned in the third.

Oracle isn't anti-OSS

I don't think that Oracle is really anti-Open Source. They have released a ton of stuff, most importantly to me: o Big memory pages for the Linux Kernel (helps with TLB misses for shared memory) o OCFS 2, a very good clustered filesystem. o Firewire code o Async I/O linux support Oracle was probably the first major database to run on Linux (version 7 worked, version 8.0 was supported). That was almost 10 years ago. Sun used to be the bread-and butter platform for Oracle. Linux has basically replaced it. Oracle already owns the database market. Most SAP sites already use Oracle as the database. The reality is, no matter how good their database is, they won't make any more money from it. Feature-wise, Oracle is more than 10 years ahead of MySQL. These are features I use all the time, every day. Oracle Fin Apps is the only place their business can grow. While it isn't a great product, neither is SAP R/3. These are big bits of software. Fin Apps 11iR10.2 is about 50GB of install media. (That is a lot of code). With Oracle's acquisition of Peoplesoft and JD Edwards, SAP is really the only competetion.