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May 21, 2009

MySQL: Forked beyond repair?

Amid misgivings over past mismanagement, the MySQL community is fragmenting. If Oracle can't pull it together, Monty Widenius just might do it himself.

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One month after Oracle announced its takeover of Sun Microsystems, the future of MySQL remains up in the air. Can the leading lightweight open source database still thrive when it's controlled by the leading proprietary commercial database vendor? So far, the prognosis doesn't look good.

Even before the Oracle buyout, there were signs of strain within the MySQL community. Not long after Sun acquired MySQL in 2008, key MySQL employees began exiting the company, including CEO Mårten Mickos and cofounder Monty Widenius. Widenius, in particular, was vocally critical of the MySQL development process under Sun's stewardship, citing rushed release cycles and poor quality control. Another MySQL cofounder, David Axmark, left out of frustration with the bureaucracy and tedium of Sun's buttoned-down corporate culture.

[ Some analysts predict that MySQL could thrive under Oracle ownership | For more on the Oracle-Sun merger, see InfoWorld's special report. ]

In the wake of this exodus came another ominous development: Forks of the MySQL codebase began to appear, including Drizzle and MariaDB, offering users and contributors ways around Sun's control of the main branch. Drizzle is an attempt to shed some of the feature bloat that has crept into recent MySQL releases, in favor of a lightweight database server aimed at cloud computing and Web applications. MariaDB, on the other hand, aims to be feature-compatible with MySQL, but it uses a brand-new, transaction-capable storage engine by default. And perhaps even more significantly, MariaDB is spearheaded by none other than Widenius himself.

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davepullin 21-May-09 10:09am
As a long time user and fan of MySQL and Open Source I think these developments are great. In the proprietary software world, alternative ideas are called "competition" and considered to be "good". The downside is incompatibilities that no one is both motivated and permitted to fix. In the Open Source world we call it "forks" and appear to imply that they are unreservedly bad. But it is extremely unlikely that any of the MySQL forks will ever become, let alone survive, as irreconcilably incompatible as the most compatible of competing proprietary software products. What's more, if anyone feels inclined to reconcile the differences - perhaps because no one has a monopoly of good ideas - then ANYONE is permitted to make such reconciliation, building on, rather encumbered by, the efforts of all those who contributed to it. I hope Open Source lives forever, MySQL lives in as many forms as people find useful, for as long as they find it useful, and that proprietary software goes the way of the dinosaur as soon as possible.
dbates 21-May-09 11:21am

The long standing embedded database product, RDM Server, is offering a low cost replacement licensing program. Check it out at http://www.raima.com

jwaldron 21-May-09 11:29am
It need not be "Drizzle or MariaDB" conending for dominance. The two, based on the bits I've seen about them, seem quite complementary. I'd vote for a "merger" of those two forks and build on the strengths of each. The "lean and mean" approach of Drizzle could be the right choice in many circumstances, while MariaDB lets the power mongers have all the bells and whistles they could want. And if the "bells and whistles" are refactored and rebuilt as they evolve into modular components, the two forks could eventually merge in technology as well as in their roots. I'd think that has the potential to be a very powerful model -- powerful enough to hold its own standing against Oracle and MS SQL Server.
csitol 22-May-09 3:47am
I moved from MySQL to PostgresQL some time ago. I'm glad now that I did. However, the most important part of this post was the link to The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I had never read it before and I thank you so much for bringing it to my attention.
BrianAker 22-May-09 8:15am
Hi! You do realize that Drizzle is a project that is well supported by Sun don't you? Your article makes it sound like it is not. Cheers, -Brian
Log Buffer 22-May-09 10:50am
"Or is it already too late? Neil McAllister of Developer World wonders if MySQL is forked beyond repair. [...]" Log Buffer #147
jmcp 24-May-09 6:34pm
and was finally acquired by Oracle. Oracle now owns all the copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property associated with the MySQL name. Uh... no. Until and unless the purchase of Sun by Oracle actually completes, Oracle does not own the MySQL family of IP. The buyout has to be approved by shareholders, and by various competition agencies in the USA, EU and several other locations. While it is reasonable to assume that it would be approved at all stages, it is by no means guaranteed. Assuming that the buyout is sucessful, only then would Oracle own the MySQL IP.
truemysqlfun 26-May-09 1:12pm
The name of MySQL does mean a lot! In a recent MySQL Meetup, I asked attendees about the various forks of MySQL. All of them said the same - they only care about the releases from mysql.com, none of others matters.

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