Oracle to Offer Free Database

November 1, 2005 Leave a comment

Yup, you read that right, Oracle is going to offer a free database product. This is a gratis version and not a libre version, of course, but for Oracle even that is a huge step. Now, they have offered a free devel version for a long time…but this is a production version (although the limitations of 4GB disk and 1GB RAM are really low). This is surely a response to IBM and Microsoft doing something similar with DB2 and MSSQL Express. The database market is really starting to commoditize. The recent feature upgrades of MySQL with the release of 5.x coupled with Sun and some other large companies starting to really rally around PostgreSQL means that the commoditization is likely going to move one layer up in the DB market very soon. Oracle clearly doesn't like that. While I initially thought this free release might be based on InnoDB due to the recent acquisition, it's not. They're hoping to win mind share and also introduce Oracle to people who wouldn't normally be exposed to it, hoping one day those people will turn into decision makers. One thing that I found interesting was that, contrary to recent MySQL AB comments that the two vendors don't compete with each other, an Oracle spokesman specifically mentioned MySQL as a competitor that they'd like to target. I also found it interesting that the main reason given for the recent Innobase acquisition was “Oracle intends to extend a contract with MySQL where the InnoDB storage engine is packaged with MySQL”. No… that's not predatory. I'd watch out Monty.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

OpenDocument Debate Heats Up

November 1, 2005 Leave a comment

As you may have anticipated, this debate has turned political. The amount of FUD getting thrown around is amazing. What's also amazing is that people who clearly don't understand what is being decided are the ones making the decision. I guess that's not so surprising when you think of how Government is run sometimes. There seems to be some confusion that the move is to OpenOffice.org, when the move it to OpenDocument and anyone that is willing to support it, including Microsoft. How a senator could say “it appeared that no cost analysis had been done before ITD committed to OpenDocument, and that the agency had moved forward unilaterally without input from other agencies.” is beyond me. Was a cost analysis done when the choice was made to move to Microsoft Office? Was one made on the basis of remaining with Office? If so, did it take into account vendor lockin, constant upgrades, the potential of getting locked out of your own data and restricting access to Government documents to the subset of citizens that run Windows or Mac OSX in addition to being able to afford a multi-hundred dollar office suite? It also escapes me why “training” is always lumped into the migration side and not the upgrade side. Let's face it, moving from Office 97 to OpenOffice.org 2.0 is not that much more of a stretch then moving to Office 2003. Both are completely different than Office 97. If someone can figure out Office 2003 based on their Office 97 experience, they won't have much trouble with OOo 2.0. The reality here is that Microsoft doesn't want to fully support OpenDocument because it would require them to compete on a level playing field. While some people inside the company are willing to do that, clearly most aren't. Some at the company even want educated consumers, while clearly others just want a check to cash.
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

On Educated Consumers

November 1, 2005 Leave a comment

Scoble points out 12 reasons that people may not go with Microsoft products. There, of course, are more – but on many accounts he hits the nail right on the head. So why is a Microsoft employee listing these things out? He wants educated consumers. That's something everyone should want. In the end, it really is best for everyone. Unfortunately, many reps (be it at Microsoft or at VAR's) do not feel this way. They want to make a sale regardless of what is best for the client. Let's face it – Microsoft is not always the best solution, but either is Linux. The right tool for the right job. Anything else and it's everyone but the sales guy who gets his commission that suffers. If everyone at Microsoft thought like Scoble, they'd clearly not have the reputation that they have. Unfortunately for everyone, that's not the case. The Scoble post was sparked by this post by Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield, whose post was sparked by this post by Steve Gillmor. You should read all three posts.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

All You Base are Belong to Google

October 26, 2005 1 Comment

As if you haven't already had enough of that joke. From Google Base: “Post your items on Google. Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free.”
Oddly, only some people can seem to get there right now. This could get interesting. With this move, Google is trying to become a huge generic data warehouse. They get the data for free, which gives them not only more to search (so more ads to show) but more importantly more information on how people use data. Think about that for a second. Add in the much rumored Google payment system and you come out with a Craigslist-Ebay hybrid that is searchable via Google technology. Could be huge – we'll have to see which direction Google pushes it in.

–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use

October 24, 2005 Leave a comment

I've been talking a lot about MySQL recently, so I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that MySQL 5.0 is now the official GA release. Congrats the the whole MySQL AB team. You probably have a tough road ahead, but this is certainly something to be proud of and a moment to sit back and enjoy.
One thing I've never quite understood is the huge rivalry between some of the PostgreSQL and MySQL fans. I say some, because it's clearly a small but vocal minority on both sides. The PostgreSQL fans point out the MySQL is not a real database and data integrity is zero while the MySQL folks says…well – I'm sure you've heard the arguments. The fact is, they are both quality Open Source solutions that we should be proud of. We should be on the same team here. The fact is, PostgreSQL started at one end (hard to use, slower but ACID and more SQL compliant) and MySQL started at the other (easy to use, faster but not ACID). They've both made huge strides in each others direction and they are both now much closer to the middle (although still skewed slightly in their original directions). Because of their roots they tend to have much different supporters, but in reality I see many PostgreSQL people making comparisons when they've clearly not used MySQL since 3.23 and I see many MySQL people making comparisons when they've clearly not used PostgreSQL since about 6.5. Stop the bickering and use the right tool for the right job. I think you'll find that between PostgreSQL and MySQL you'll find that you have a solution for almost any occasion. In more cases then you might think these days, I think you may find that either DB will fit the bill. FWIW, LQ uses MySQL and it's not even 5.x. We've put off even looking at InnoDB until things settle down. Even if we had transactions, guess what – we wouldn't use them. Why? We don't need them. Does that mean we'd never switch? No! The right tool for the right job.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

Microsoft, OSI Discuss Shared Source Licenses

October 24, 2005 Leave a comment

It seems that Microsoft is talking to the OSI about licensing. Now, I know that license proliferation is a very real problem, but I think Microsoft having a bona-fide OSI approved Open Source license that they are willing to consistantly use is probably a good thing. It would be ideal if they felt comfortable with one of the current ones, of course, but that may not be the case. Considering one of the main mantras of Open Source is that choice is good, I never understood the “GPL is the one true way” mentality. The Red Hat rep rails Microsoft for not using th GPL, but then goes on to say that out of 800 RHEL 4 source packages, only 400 are under the GPL. The OSI is still working on the proliferation issue, but surely “no new license under any circumstance” isn't a stance I can see them taking (for good reason). IMHO, if choice is good then the ability to choice from a variety of bona-fide Open Source licenses is good too. The obvious downside is that code licensed under one license can't be used in code licensed under another. That is a huge downside and one of the main reasons that proliferation is a problem at all. Like most things that are worth while though, this is a balancing act and is going to take some work to get right. Danese Cooper and Tim O'Reilly weigh in on the issue.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

A Little More MySQL Info (but I'm not linking)

October 23, 2005 Leave a comment

I found a little more information about the recent MySQL/Innobase topic. Why am I not going to post the link? The article is on a SYS-CON site, but that has nothing to do with it. You may remember that most of the Open Source related SYS-CON staff resigned a while back (LQ Radio interview), but I have a policy on this blog of linking to any story that I find useful or of interest, regardless of the source. So what is the reason? It reliably crashes both Firefox and Mozilla for me, and I don't want to put you through that. I'm not sure if it's one of the 14 ads or the video applet that insists on auto starting…but after the fourth try I gave up and went to good ol' lynx. The interesting tidbit in the article is the following quote from MySQL AB CEO Marten Mickos:
“On the day of the announcement, I received a phone call from Oracle president Charles Phillips assuring me of their intent to renew the contract. They certainly have the resources to add value to InnoDB. But even if the contract would not be renewed for some reason, the existing contract gives MySQL broad rights to future releases of InnoDB. The contract also allows us to perpetually service our existing InnoDB customers. Additionally, users can feel secure in the fact that InnoDB is an open source product that is freely available to use and modify under the GPL License.”.
It seems the current contract terms might be a little more liberal then one would have thought. Since it was probably just Heikki negotiating for Innobase, the terms seem to be quite favorable for MySQL AB. Odds on that happening again with Oracle at the helm? Slim I'd guess. The article also has a brief comment on the recent SCO deal. You haven't heard SCOX for a while, have you. It's nice, isn't it ;) I'll keep it that way and not go into any more detail.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

BitMover Madness

October 20, 2005 Leave a comment

While I've not seen a lot of news about this, it seems quite asinine to me. When a vendor can tell a customer what its employees can do on their own time, something is wrong. I'm sure most of you remember the BitKeeper Linux kernel debacle from a little while ago, but this really kicks things up a notch. It would be like Ford saying that once you purchased a Ford, you couldn't work at any other automobile manufacturer. Even Microsoft doesn't have a policy this insane, and I have no doubts that if they tried they would be sued for anti-competitive practices faster than you could commit a patch with git. Larry seems to have completely lost it as this point, IMHO. I'm quite frankly surprised that this story hasn't created more noise.
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–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source

MySQL Innobase Follow Up

October 19, 2005 Leave a comment

A quick follow up to this post. Not a whole lot of details have surfaced unfortunately, but a little moire information is available here. I'd love to get a hold of some of the “speculation” that was edited out (even off the record), but so far I haven't been able to ;) This is turning into a huge story though, and even Forbes has covered it. Daniel Lyons is right up there with Laura Didio and Rob Enderle though, so watch where you step. The one thing I did notice is that just days after the announcement, Heikki was on the support list as usual – helping random users (which I think shows some class). I'd still guess that MySQL AB is kicking themselves for not acquiring Innobase when they had the chance, and they certainly can't be looking forward to having to renegotiate their deal for InnoDB with Oracle. Ellison is ruthless when it comes to competition and something as simple as making all products containing InnoDB to be GPL'd would throw a huge wrench into the MySQL revenue stream. This will get interesting (and probably messy).
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Open Source

Microsoft Says "Maybe Someday" on OpenDocument

October 18, 2005 1 Comment

A follow up to this post, it looks like Microsoft may consider adding OpenDocument support after all, based on “customer demand”. I'd guess that just one or two state Governments alone would be enough demand. I hope MA stands firm here. Unfortunately, one thing I can see happening (which could potentially be quite damaging) is substandard support. By adding deficient support, Microsoft could make using OpenDocument sufficiently painful that it would almost be useless. They'd have the “supports OpenDocument” checkbox to get the contracts, but people who had to use it would suffer. This could have two possible outcomes; 1) People hate OpenDocument and just keep using .doc out of a fundamental lack of understanding what the problem is. 2) People turn to a Word alternative that properly supports OpenDocument. I could see either happing depending on the situation, so it would certainly be a calculated risk on Microsoft's part. They have done something similar in the past with WordPerfect support and we know how that ended up. This story keeps getting more interesting though, and is definitely one I'll be keeping a close eye on (hint: you should too).
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–jeremy

Filed under Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source

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