MySQL CEO pans software patents, touts open source

MySQL has become perhaps the most visible player in the open source database market. With revenues now at $20 million annually, the company is eyeing a greater enterprise presence with its upcoming MySQL 5.0 database, which will add features such as triggers to the product. Marten Mickos, of Finnish descent, is the CEO of the company, which began in neighboring Sweden. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Mickos during the MySQL Users Conference 2005 in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, asking Mickos about topics ranging from MySQL's place in the database market to the volatile issue of software patents.

InfoWorld: What are you going to talk about in your keynote speech tomorrow?

Mickos: The big topic of my keynote is "Scale Out," which is a common denominator for a lot of what we do today in MySQL. So if you look at some of our most prominent customer references, [Sabre], Cox Communications, Google, Yahoo, they're all examples of scaling out and adding capacity to assist them, starting small and then scaling as the business need grows. So that's the common theme there. With [MySQL] 5.0 it's easier to do that with the new tools we have, with the services we have. It's easier to build a modern architecture where you can put many servers next to each other to take whatever load you have, a Web load or transactional load or a data-warehousing load.

InfoWorld: When is MySQL 5.0 coming out?

Mickos: We have a schedule to have it generally available by the end of June, but we also have said that quality is the No. 1 priority. So it's the same answer I gave you, what was it, two weeks ago?

InfoWorld: So it might not be out in June?

Mickos: We'll see. We are working very hard to get it out there, but the No. 1 priority is quality. So we have no reason to believe it wouldn't be ready then. The firm promise is about quality, not about the exact date.

InfoWorld: It was supposed to be out late last year, wasn't it?

Mickos: A long time ago we thought so, yes.

InfoWorld: What happened there?

Mickos: We were just not good at estimating times. Last year in June we hired a vice president of engineering who is now in charge of it, but since then we've had good predictability.

InfoWorld: How important is MySQL 5.0?

Mickos: I think it's very important in getting into new businesses, [reaching] enterprise corporate users. It has features that they will appreciate: stored procedures, triggers, views, and XA [extended architecture] support as well.

InfoWorld: What is your take on the whole software-patent issue?

Mickos: Software patents are detrimental to the entire software industry.

InfoWorld: Why?

Mickos: Because they restrict innovation and they don't protect the innovator like they should. So it's just a mistake to believe that patents, because they are good for hardware, would be good for software.

InfoWorld: So you would recommend eliminating them for software?

Mickos: Absolutely.

InfoWorld: Who do you see as your bigger competitor? Oracle or Postgres [now officially called PostgreSQL] or Microsoft or someone else?