Another Day, Another Reason to Fret Over MySQL's Fate

by Sam Dean - Sep. 17, 2009Comments (4)

Here we are in mid-September, and it's hard to believe that Oracle announced its plan to acquire Sun Microsystems all the way back in April, but the deal still hasn't gone through. While the U.S. Department of Justice quickly cleared the deal, the European Commission is continuing a drawn out investigation into it, and has expressed concerns about the fate of open source database MySQL.  As we noted when the proposed acquisition was first announced, it does raise many valid questions about MySQL's future. That said, though, I have to agree with Matt Asay that the EU's extended obstruction of the deal threatens to send MySQL's customers to IBM and other competitors while doing little to no good for MySQL. This week, there is evidence of even more confusion and possibly dire consequences for MySQL.

Matt Aslett from The 451 Group has a very detailed analysis up on what may happen to MySQL if Oracle decides to kill it, and what may happen in other scenarios. "We expect MySQL to become the scale-out database for non-transactional web applications and to compete with SQL Server in departmental deployments," he writes, adding that Oracle has little to gain from killing the database. At the same time, he notes that the fact that because MySQL was released under the GPL, if the Oracle/Sun deal is approved, Oracle, as copyright holder would have a higher level of control than the community at large, limiting outside efforts to continue MySQL as a commercial venture. For example, if Red Hat wanted to develop MySQL commercially, it would not have the rights to the database as a commercial brand.

Both Aslett and InfoWorld's Bill Snyder wonder why Oracle doesn't say more publicly about its plans for MySQL. As Snyder notes, Oracle has delivered only one line on its web site about its intent: "MySQL will be an addition to Oracle's existing suite of database products." Thud.

Actually, I think it's fairly obvious why Oracle is saying very little. Any comments would be closely monitored by the EU, and could contribute to obstruction of the Sun acquisition.

InfoWorld's Snyder also quotes Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research, on why Oracle may not be all that interested in MySQL at all:

"MySQL is a baggage, not an asset...[it is] almost impossible to be monetized. More than 98 percent of the customer base is DIY, and they don't see any value in paying for support. Contacts tell us that MySQL continues to struggle with monetization issues, with revenues probably not exceeding $50 million, and has been like that for the last three years."

All of this has to be very worrisome for MySQL customers and users. Still, I think Matt Asay makes the really essential point in his post "EU fiddles with MySQL while Sun burns." "In delaying the merger, the EU isn't helping MySQL," he writes. "It's helping its competitors, including Drizzle, OurDelta, MariaDB (Monty Program's fork), Percona, etc...Though the EU purports to be in tune with open source, its meddlesome muddling reveals a surprising ignorance of open source, and shows a complete disregard for MySQL's true market opportunity."

I don't doubt that the EU sees its intent as good, but sometimes good intent can translate into the worst consequences. I can think of no other major open source project, especially not one that's commercially focused, that is now in as much trouble as MySQL.


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4 Comments
 

Simply charging for MySQL use is not the only way to make $$ here. Firstly I find it hard to believe that with the amount of usage, that $50M is the only revenue being seen. That is embarrassingly low.


Secondly, the USER base is high, but the customer base is low. They have to offer interesting ways to monetize this and 'support' may not be the way to do it. How about some slicker management tools, especially for larger deployments? PHPMyAdmin is okay but it is kinda lame for doing anything real. There is no real visual GUI and no real clustering management.


There is good money to be made from the eco-system and that is mainly because there is pain and need.


0 Votes

Sam


Appreciate your Open Source posts. If you have a moment, could you contact me 'offline' via email at jmaruszewski (at) microstrategy (dot) com?


Regards,

Jane Maruszewski

Senior Manager, MicroStrategy


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Craig: as far as management tools, the mySQL GUI tools are getting better, although admittedly they're still not at the level of something like Enterprise Manager for SQL Server. However, the GUI tools are a big step up from phpMyAdmin.


I'm not sure what the future of mySQL is, but I'm hoping that the community edition will continue to be available for a long time. Either way, I also hope that one of the project forks bears fruit. I kind of wish some of the Drizzle enhancements would be made to a full featured version of the codebase. I've gotten used to having stored procedures in mySQL (among other things), and I hate seeing it go backwards in terms of features.


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Oh no another article suggesting problems for MySQL, what a surprise.


MySQL is alive and well in the Enterprise and is very scalable. There are simply too many very large corporations scaling very well for this FUD argument anymore.


Should MySQL not be treated fairly it can be forked. There are many large corporations who would benefit by taking it in that direction if necessary. The question has been asked of Sun reps and answered many times, they have absolutely no current plans of scrapping MySQL. If they do, it will because of legal problems with the European Union. Even than it will persist and do fine.


Besides you also have MariaDB and PostgreSQL. So there is absolutely no advantage in the company killing of their competitor to those two products (and the many others) as by supporting those customers they can eventually get some to move over to full blown Oracle. Never underestimate the power of marketing and sales, especially when combined with the right fear suggested into the ears of a less than knowledgeable corporate IT type. (Microsoft should have taught everyone this.)


Stop the FUD! Most of us are not buying it anyway.


0 Votes
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