Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle [LWN.net]

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 17, 2009 15:32 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle by hingo
Parent article: Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

The reason you are being accused of being self-serving is simple: Monty (as owner of MySQL Inc) created this situation deliberately, because it made him more money. He then sold the company to Sun, without putting restrictions on the sale that would have prevented Oracle owning MySQL, because that made him more money.

Now that the sale to Oracle is in progress, you're complaining (effectively) that Monty didn't mean to sell the company without those restrictions, because Monty's that sort of nice guy, but he just forgot, y'know? You don't seem to be talking about offering the $1bn that was paid for MySQL Inc to Oracle to buy it back from them, or even a significant fraction of that; instead, you appear to be complaining that your reputation and future business model will be damaged if MySQL isn't treated specially.

People other than Monty and his employees complaining is fair enough - they could not have taken action at the time MySQL was sold to avoid the problems you're now complaining about. However, Monty chose not to put these restrictions on the purchaser of MySQL; it's now rather self-serving to ask competition regulators to (effectively) fix his past mistakes that might doom his new venture, especially since I suspect he would have received rather less money for MySQL had he put these restrictions on from day 1.

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Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 17, 2009 16:28 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (8 responses)

So half of what you say is right, the other half less so. (But it is probably right that this is why people accuse Monty, even if it is baseless, so I'm with you there.)

It is absolutely right that MySQL business model was designed the way it was on purpose, deliberately, even to make money. And such a business can be sold to another business, etc... And from an open source point of view you might think this was a bad model and the reason we are now in this mess (debatable, but valid point).

I guess it is good to point out yet again, that Monty was not in a position to decide anything about selling MySQL to Sun, and he did not get more than a few percent of the billion dollars. But that's not the point, there was nothing wrong in selling MySQL to Sun, whoever is responsible for it.

In the case of Oracle, it is quite obvious (well, to me) that Oracle has a completely different interest in acquiring MySQL. The anti-trust regulator in Europe is rightfully concerned about that, it is their job to stop such mergers if proven to be harmful. So it is quite normal for anyone, whether Monty or a MySQL customer, to expect that MySQL can indeed be sold to anyone, but not to a competitor that just wants to reduce competition. (I realize especially in the US there is a common political opinion that you should be allowed to sell anything to anyone and the government shouldn't interfere, but that is a political view, and as it is now, we do have regulation.) So there is nothing wrong in helping the EU to do their job, which they are supposed to do, and there is no benefit to Monty (perhaps emotional, that's all) to be doing this.

Anyway, I get what you are saying, that this is why people are blaming Monty, because many of them probably think along the lines you just said.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 10:42 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (7 responses)

"It is absolutely right that MySQL business model was designed the way it was
on purpose, deliberately, even to make money. And such a business can be sold
to another business, etc... And from an open source point of view you might
think this was a bad model and the reason we are now in this mess (debatable,
but valid point)"

I don't think there is much room for debate on that. Monty in his discourses
isn't even pointing to this fact which is one of the reasons for me to
believe that this is a self serving position. If I create a mess and wanted
someone else to clean it up, the least I should be doing is to acknowledge if
not apologize for the fact that I created the mess in the first place.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 12:19 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (6 responses)

Perhaps so :-)

Since personally I'm not the one who invented dual licensing, so have nothing to take credit nor apologize for, I can say that my personal opinion is that it remains to be seen if it is a sustainable model or not. It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there.

Due to MySQL's and the model's financial success, it is becoming an increasingly popular model and more software is being created under a similar setting. It may be good for us to also be aware of potential pitfalls.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:09 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (5 responses)

"It is a good way to produce great software which is GPL licensed. In some
cases it may even turn out to have a happy ending, like is the case with
Qt now. On the other hand, this risk was always there."

Heh. Qt's happy ending turned out to be leaving behind dual licensing by
releasing it under LGPL and striving to become a real community project
instead of centralized ownership. That's because Nokia realized it made
better business sense to strive for ubiquity. I agree, that is the way to
go forward and Oracle might still do that since they don't need rely on
dual licensing. MySQL's business according to then CEO was increasingly
moving towards support and services as well. Anyway, you wanted to know why
I consider it self serving and I hope I have explained that clearly to you.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 13:18 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (4 responses)

Yes, thank you.

And: My point exactly with Qt, less optimistic with Oracle but time will tell. If they wanted to LGPL MySQL, they should have saved us these months of agony and done it long ago...

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 18, 2009 14:47 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (3 responses)

Sun is too busy keeping its head out of the water to think about such
matters. Oracle cannot do it before acquiring them. I won't even say that
it is likely but it does make sense for Oracle to consider it at some
point after the acquisition.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 8:17 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link] (2 responses)

Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it.

On the other hand, we shouldn't read too much into it. Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not). So if they one day turn around and do LGPL anyway, it can be explained with pure cluelessness.

That, and having seen how Oracle plays this game, they could just out of principle refuse to do any compromises with the EU, then do the same thing anyway later. Just to make it clear they don't negotiate with anyone about these things.

But as I said, assuming rational and informed behavior from Oracle, it would seem they are against LGPL.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 12:06 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

"Actually, AFAIK, Sun has discussed it with Oracle and Oracle has rejected it."

Reference?

"Majority of Oracle people haven't yet understood what significance it would have anyway (for instance, in conversations they would confuse MySQL commercial licensing (non-GPL) and subscriptions (GPL) and just in general when you can use the GPL version and when not)"

This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all.

Some thoughts on MySQL and Oracle

Posted Dec 21, 2009 13:00 UTC (Mon) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

Reference?

Those discussions did of course not happen in public. (And no, I don't have first hand information, I could be misled myself.)

This was a common accusation against MySQL Ab and then later Sun as well. So not specific to Oracle at all.

I give you the Sun part, it was a big company and certainly most Sun employees had no clue about MySQL's business model either. But my point was exactly that it may be premature for me to say anything about Oracle's plans with MySQL licensing based on their current actions, since currently they don't even understand the basics of what the current situation is. So I tried to say that from all I can see I don't expect them to go LGPL, but if it happens, then this could explain why they didn't do it much earlier.