Technology blogs by Professional Snails!

A depressing start of the day today. I heard the news that Oracle has acquired SUN. And Since SUN acquired MySQL about a year+ back, MySQL is now served as a desert.

Let me warn you that I have a love/hate relationship with Oracle. And, it is complicated. My views may be biased. But right now, I am worried about MySQL. Seems like worlds largest commercial database vendor buys the worlds most popular opensource database! And we don’t know, what Oracle will do with it? Is it just to kill the competion, at the lower end as well? (Well, the word “competition” may not suite much, but anyway). What about people who are using MySQL now? There are literally thousands of businesses / shops woven around MySQL technology. What is their fate ? Will Oracle be introducing complex (clever and evil) licensing for MySQL products? Or will they allow it to remain free, and allow them proper exposure and support? Nothing is for sure. Will we be able to see more MySQL releases in future with more features ?

I don’t know, I am one of those, who think that Oracle bought MySQL just to kill it. That makes PostgreSQL the next available candidate in the “free / opensource” slot . PostgreSQL is worlds most advanced open-source database. For some reason, it is not as popular and widely used as MySQL is. So even if PostgreSQL becomes the next platform of choice, what about the existing MySQL database users? (that includes DBAs, programmers, SysAdmins, everyone). The migration cost is just too high to think of. It is kind of dreadful to the sysadmins as well, as most of the management and monitoring utilities are painlessly configured ove mysql. I am also wondering about the famous Qmail+MySQL setups .

I can only hope to see a much “free(er)” version MySQL in future. Possibly by fork(ing) out / branching from the current MySQL code, by the open-source freedom fighters.

I suppose that, “Lets see what happens!”, will do not good. Something “needs” to be done about it. I remember NCR once acquired TeraData, but later spun it off as a separate entity. Can we libertate MySQL from Oracle, by convincing Oracle to spin it off ?

One line of silence for MySQL …………………