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 NEWSCEO of MySQL explains why open-source may be right approach for many enterprises By Michael Vizard and Steve Gillmor December 20, 2001 10:59 am PT WHEN MOST IT organizations think about databases, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and Sybase come to mind. But although these companies fight each other directly, a fifth player is starting to gain some headway. MySQL is a Sweden-based provider of an open-source relational database that runs on Linux, Windows, MacOS, and Unix and has the added benefit of being free. At a time when many IT organizations are openly griping about database pricing, an open-source approach to databases is getting more of a hearing than it might have a year or two ago. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard and Test Center Director Steve Gillmor, the CEO of MySQL, Marten Mickos, argues that although an open-source database is not as rich an environment as Oracle or IBM's DB2, it can easily handle the basic requirements of 80 percent of all relational database customers.
 Mickos: Usually, I tell people that I don't want to convert them into true believers of open source. I wait until they believe in it and then I explain that MySQL is the sexiest thing within the open-source community. Open source is at its best when it comes to software that has been commoditized, is used all over the place, and where the rocket science has been done. That's true for operating systems and relational databases, which were created in the 1970s. IBM and Oracle are investing billions in creating the newest thing in clustering or transaction management. Then that's not the game we are in. We're not trying to be leaders in the newest features. We're more like what Dell is for PCs.InfoWorld: Given that, who is the core customer for MySQL? Mickos: You have to be a developer to install MySQL and get it up and running. It's easy, but it's not meant for the end-user. It's meant for developers. We believe we have about three million installations worldwide. We have three million who use it freely under the GPL [General Public License]. Most of them pay nothing and have no intention of ever paying us anything. Some of them turn into support customers, so they use it freely but they want support of different levels from us. Some of them want to embed it in their own product and sell it, so they buy commercial licenses. InfoWorld: How stable is the core database platform? Mickos: The architecture is very clean, fast, and robust. We get no bug reports. We don't have any known fatal bugs in the software. There's no software without bugs, but we have no fatal bugs that we know of. And that we can say because anybody can go in and look at it because it's open source. When people come and say that open source can't do anything in the database business, that's plain wrong. InfoWorld: In terms of the underlying technology, what is the most unique thing about MySQL? Mickos: If you look at the architecture in MySQL, there's one thing that no other database, as we know, has ever done. We have separated the SQL server from the actual table handler, from the storage handler. That means that when we started, you can pump in and pump out data in speeds that others can't do. But it doesn't support transactions. But now we have added two modules that each can support transactions. And we can add new table handlers. We can create the table handler specifically designed for XML. We are not limited in any way on how many table handlers we have there. But at the same time, the interaction of how the programmers write their programs is the same. InfoWorld: How does MySQL make money? Mickos: You have to remember that we are a very peculiar company. We have about three million users. We have touched about 3,000 of them. That will increase, but we don't believe that we ever will get money from more than perhaps 5 percent of our users. It's part of our business model to have this vast group of free users all over the world, because that's how we fuel the whole product development. That's the way for us to lower the cost. We keep this huge community happy and they bring all kinds of gifts to us every day. We want MySQL to be available and affordable for all. We want every single Indian and Chinese and Brazilian to use MySQL. We take such good care of our community. That's one reason why we don't have a separate research facility somewhere in southern France with 100 database specialists. It's our community doing that work every day. If you have any question of where to get the best MySQL support in the world, there's only one place. There's only one company that has developers that develop MySQL. There is a valuable business model under open source based on two facts: Keep your intellectual property rights in the company and own your own trademark. InfoWorld: What percentage of the people out there that you think are using IBM and Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server are using primarily just the base-level commodity functions? Mickos: Most of them, but the sad truth is they don't want to hear it. We don't want to spend time fighting dinosaurs. Let them have their play and something will happen to them over time.  RELATED SUBJECTS  DatabaseBusiness NewsSPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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