Virtualmin uses MySQL ! Help us save it. Sign the petition now !
Us as a community needs to support the development of MySQL.
If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill and ultimately all the scripts VM Pro supports will be history. Our client base might very well dry up if we can afford to pay what Oracle will demand from us.
This is why MySQL needs to remain GPL licensed. If you think the economy is bad now just think of all the websites we host that use wordpress, phpBB, Joomala amd all the other scripts/programs that use MySQL can no longer use MySQL if the license is changed and we no longer can upgrade or even continue to develop MySQL..
Please sign the petition at http://www.helpmysql.org
If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill.
In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.
If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn't any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL's success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.
If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL's primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle's own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle's products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle's salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.
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Parrot post ?
Don't get too riled up. I don't think MySQL is at any risk...it is Open Source, after all, and several core developers have already spun off new variants of the code (even before Sun was acquired by Oracle). MariaDB and Drizzle are both spinoffs from MySQL; MariaDB was started by Monty (the Monty) himself, so, technically, the real next version of MySQL will be called MariaDB.
But, I don't expect anything horrible will happen with MySQL.
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I'm sure Oracle would cop it hard from the webhosting community if they did try to do anything bad with MySQL. The worst is they'll stop development of the software, they can't turn around and rectract a licence for a system that's already deployed can they?