A Bright Future for Drizzle
It seems like there's been little but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle.
Turns out, there's plenty of interest in the fledgling database project. Specifically Rackspace is investing heavily in Drizzle for its Rackspace Cloud. Jay Pipes, Monty Taylor, Eric Day, Lee Bieber, and Stewart Smith have all landed over at the hosting company to work on Drizzle. According to Pipes, Rackspace sees Drizzle as the answer to problems that MySQL can't solve:
Rackspace recognizes that the pain points they feel with traditional MySQL cannot be solved with simple hacks and workarounds, and that to service the needs of so many customers, they will need a database server that thinks of itself as a friendly piece of their infrastructure and not the driver of its applications. Drizzle's core principles of flexibility and focus on scalability align with the goals Rackspace Cloud has for its platform's future.
Rackspace is also heavily invested in Cassandra, and sees integration of Drizzle and Cassandra as being a key way to add value to its platforms and therefore for its customers.
It's really good to see the Drizzle team landing somewhere that they can continue to drive the project and with a company that has a strong incentive in working well with the community. The Drizzle Project is a shining example of a project being set up right. Brian Aker asked the right questions and made smart design decisions when starting the project. It seems likely that Drizzle will continue to build momentum, and I doubt Rackspace will be the only company scrambling to hire core Drizzle developers.
Rackspace seems like an ideal spot for the Drizzle team (or a large chunk of it, anyway) to land. As Eric Day writes, "what better place to develop a database designed for the cloud than on one of the fastest growing cloud platforms. We'll get a detailed look at the demands, get feedback from cloud customers, and have the perfect test bed for offering new services. We'll also be able to work closely with a top-notch group of DBAs, developers, and sysadmins in one of the most demanding service architectures out there."
It also makes me wonder whether all of the fuss over MySQL was worth it. MySQL has played an important role for more than a decade, and will continue to be an important part of the FLOSS ecosystem for the foreseeable future: But it's not the be-all, end-all of database technology for FLOSS. When the 451 Group surveyed its users the response was indicative of a decline in MySQL usage in the next four years. MySQL isn't going anywhere, but it also doesn't look like it's going to continue growing or remain as crucial to the community as it has been.