back to article Monty on broken MySQL promises: Oracle's going to fork it up

Oracle will break the promises it made to European regulators on MySQL nearly three years ago, according to the open-source database's co-creator Monty Widenius. In fact, he says, it has already broken a few. Widenius told The Reg he's scared about the future of MySQL. He said he is concerned that if the database giant further …

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  1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

    What do the regulators say?

    Would be interesting to get a response out of them (also because it would trigger a heads up that Oracle needs a bit of attention)..

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: What do the regulators say?

      Why?? Regulators should just make sure that MySQL Free cannot be hindered via patents or other shenanigans (in other words: patent lawyers and EPO employees should be made unemployed and "respect mah IP" should be a demand emitted only by backward rednecks).

      Then let CAPITALISM reign.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why is Monty surprised? You get to sun yourself on your multi-million pound boat in exotic locations by giving your competitiors an edeg they can beat you with. You dance with the devil expect to find your corpse to be found slung over a fence with various musical instruments protruding from your nethers!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I presume you're referring to the millions Monty made from selling MySQL to Sun?

      Hah, Monty's millions, reminds me of Montgomery Brewster in Brewster's Millions

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Monty crying again????

    The only thing open about monty is his mouth.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Monty crying again????

      Pot, kettle, ...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Widenius fears Oracle will stop developing MySQL

    ...and nothing of value was lost.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: Widenius fears Oracle will stop developing MySQL

      T'was 1 billion dollar to Sun back when 1 billion was worth real money.

  5. Bumpy Cat
    Happy

    Bears repeating:

    Oracle doesn't have customers, it has hostages.

  6. Combat Wombat
    Facepalm

    Poor Monty

    Maybe he should go and roll around in his money for a while, to cheer himself up

    1. Lars
      Pint

      Re: Poor Monty

      Poor Monty, indeed, but why this envy. Monty did make some money out of MySQL, but he was also the programmer behind it. A bit like the laughable fatty behind Apple. So how come we do not envy guys like Gates and Jobs but guys like Monty and similar. Are they just closer to what we could have been and thus more easier to envy.

      1. Vic

        Re: Poor Monty

        > but why this envy

        It's not envy.

        Monty was the guy behind MySQL, sure. But he sold his interest.

        Since then, he seems to have spent all his time bemoaning the fact that he no longer gets to decide what happens to MySQL. But that's kinda what happens when you sell something - the new owner tends to get to decide where it's going...

        Vic.

  7. CadentOrange

    PostgreSQL

    This is why I decided to go with PostgreSQL with new projects. I think it's a shame to see MySQL become so fragmented, but all is not lost as it's made many transition to PostgreSQL.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @CadentOrange

      True...

      If only most webapps would have been written a lot better.. I'd rather have seen a global PHP SQL "layer" where the admin gets to chose the eventual backend which provides the database functionality than the specific per-engine support we have now.

      Because then I would have replaced MySQL on all my webserver months ago, yet I can't.

  8. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Surprised?

    People surprised by this news are probably surprised every evening when the Sun sets.

    1. P. Lee

      Re: Surprised?

      He isn't surprised that oracle are acting this way- he said so himeself- he's surprised that they are so brazenly doing it so quickly.

      If Oracle has obligations to the regulators, they need to honour them, regardless of who flags the violations.

  9. MySQL Choices
    Happy

    There are other fish in the sea

    Oracle MySQL and MariaDB aren't the only MySQL options. How about Percona Server? The second most popular MySQL branch according to The 451 Group's survey. And it's even drop-in compatible with Oracle MySQL, unlike MariaDB.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Monty is afraid his fork can''t compete with MySQL in markets where real money are made...

    Monty is afraid Oracle is adding some high-end features that will make MySQL far more compelling in the high-end markets - where real money is made, not the "hey I use MySQL because it's free" low-end ones - than its forks. I can't see why advanced authentication features and clustering should be offered to competitors as well, many open source projects are just the core part of far more complex (and expensive products), for example Eclipse.

    Monty would like to get them for free, of course, because they're not so simple to develop. AFAIK the GPL covers only the product code, not its tests - MariaDB & C. are free to write them own, of course, without releasing them.

    None is asking Monty why he did sell MySQL instead of running its own company and making money from it? He can't now blame Oracle if it's trying to make money from MySQL.

  11. Fazal Majid

    We switched to MariaDB when Oracle acquired Sun

    The writing was on the wall. I expect all the MySQL talent has left Oracle, just as most of the Solaris devs did. That said, we use PostgreSQL for all our own work, MariaDB is only for Wordpress.

  12. Havin_it

    I can't understand the level of hostility towards Monty here (and on any prior article of late when he's voiced concern over MySQL). Selling the property off has been condemned by many, but remember it was Sun he sold it to, not Oracle. Perhaps memories are short around here, but back then, even when its overall health was far from peachy, Sun was one of the pre-eminent champions of Open Source, having (albeit tortuously slowly) rendered up a couple of its crown jewels in Java and Solaris, while fostering a number of other interesting and complementary projects (Java, OpenOffice, GlassFish, Hudson, Kenai etc). Unlike IBM it didn't have a serious database product as part of that stable, though.

    If I were Monty at that time, wanting to sell up for whatever his reasons may have been (anyone ask? Oh right, big yacht made of tenners, that must be it) I'd want to leave my baby entrusted to someone who I thought would help it grow (perhaps beyond what I felt could personally offer it), keep it honest, and keep it in with a good crowd to help it thrive and diversify. I can't think of a better candidate at that time -- certainly not one so apt to be revered by a generation of geeks -- than Sun.

    In those terms, and as I think many here may agree, I can't think of many worse candidates than Oracle. That he's been shitting the bed ever since seems not unreasonable to me.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You ought to learn some business acumen, young Kochediks

    If you hadn't been born yesterday, you would know at least two things about how the world turns:

    1. When you have a successful start-up in your hands and it grows up, you are not the owner, just a guy with a participation option if there is anything left after bankruptcy. The real owners are the Venture Capital Vultures and the banks you've mortgaged your ownership to, in order to pay the salaries of your employees and, oh!, equipment and basic monthly utilities. As if electricity, internet access and office space were free. Oi vai iz mir!

    2. As far as memory serves, Monty and Lars barely owned 30% of the company at the time of sale, and it was the board, bunch of investors, who got cold feet and pressured to cash out whatever the cost. Yes, Monty got a lot of schamoleans in the process but he has to pay taxes. So, no. No America Cup yachts for Monty.

    And on the personal side of things... If you have ever created something worth zilch where you have invested a lot of you life and your cred, the last thing you want to happen to it is to see it thrown to the ground and destroyed and that is precisely what Larry "L'Estat" Ellison and his minions are doing to MySQL.

    We should be using real databases like PostgreSQL and Firebird anyway.

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