MySQL and SAP

Nobody can say the same thing about MySQL. This free relational database manager, despite a lingering reputation for lacking the features that "real" database systems have, claims some four million installed systems. MySQL's user community is large and strong, and MySQL AB, the copyright holder for MySQL, is apparently thriving. But MySQL's "fast, reliable, but still a toy" reputation (at least in some circles) is probably not helping MySQL AB win those really big contracts.

So the announcement of a partnership between MySQL AB and SAP makes a fair amount of sense for both sides. Under this deal, MySQL AB gets the right to sell commercial versions of SAP-DB, which will be relicensed entirely under the GPL and renamed. SAP-DB will thus become a product much like the current MySQL offerings, but one aimed at "enterprise" deployments.

MySQL AB gets a new product to sell which has a lengthy large-deployment track record and which should prove easier to market to large companies. SAP's sales force and existing large company customer base should also prove most helpful in that regard. And, of course, MySQL gets to mix together the best of both systems to create "the next-generation MySQL open source enterprise database."

SAP, meanwhile, gets access to a brand with great respect in the free software community. MySQL AB has a proven ability to create an active developer and user community around a free database system; this skill will come to great use in reviving interest in the database formerly known as SAP-DB. More significantly, however, is the fact that MySQL AB has figured out how to sell proprietary licenses to a free software product, pleasing its customers while simultaneously avoiding alienating the developer community. The company's ability to walk that fine line bodes well for SAP-DB's future.

If there is a down side to this deal, it is that the SAP-DB client libraries, which were formerly licensed under the LGPL, will, in the future, only be available under the GPL. That change is crucial to the entire strategy, of course; it is the lever that will force proprietary software vendors to buy a commercial license. But it is a change which will upset users who were making use of the previous LGPL licensing; a look at the sapdb-general mailing list shows a handful of messages from users who are unhappy with the new state of affairs.

Of course, those users have not really lost anything; the current SAP-DB release cannot and will not be taken away from them. They simply will not have the same access to future releases. SAP-DB users have the right to fork the code base and maintain the code independently, and they might just do so. But it is hard to see a forked SAP-DB attracting a larger community than SAP-DB has now, especially when the folks over at MySQL appear to be having all the fun.