Tuesday, April 21, 2009

New Dawn Fades as Sun goes down

Oracle, the database software vendor, has bought Sun Microsystems. Sun specialised in server hardware and software, but was also behind the Java programming language and various Java related tools and initiatives. Fairly recently Sun had also bought MySQL, the open source database.

So, what are the consequences for us of this acquisition? Well, most open source software uses MySQL as the primary database. Joomla!, Zen-Cart, Magento - to name just three - all use MySQL as the default database. You can add Drupal, and virtually every other open source project to this list.

The key question then is, will Oracle continue to support MySQL or will it allow it to wither as a direct competitor? Is MySQL actually considered to be a competitor by Oracle? The answer to this question will no doubt be a key influence on Oracle's eventual decision.

This decision has consequences for most of us, either directly or indirectly. If our business, website, etc, use open source software, then we may be faced in the future with having to change our database if MySQL goes down. The obvious open source candidate to replace MySQL is Postgress, considered superior by many. However, it is not clear how widespread is the hosting provision for Postgress - almost all hosting plans offer MySQL as a very affordable option, yet Postgress is still not offered by most hosting companies.

There is the real possibility that a fair proportion of open source software will have to be tweaked to use another database (Postgress) and that is again problematical if Postgress provision is limited.

Almost certainly Oracle's acquisition of Sun means we'll see, 'A change of scene, a change of style' with regards to the open source landscape. Whether we'll benefit from this is yet another question.

2 comments:

Theoden said...

While this change may affect MySQL, there is only so much damage that Oracle could do.

MySQL is GPL software, so there is nothing preventing a group from branching the code and continuing development on their own. There is little reason to believe that the product is going anywhere, even if it had to be called something else.

Erik

Unknown said...

Hi Erik,
Thanks for your feedback. Yes, it's probable that Oracle will not 'kill' MySQL & yes, another group could also take the code base and create a new 'MySQL'. However, projects like this take time and are disruptive - initially at least. Look at the Joomla fork from Mambo. In this case, Joomla is now by far the superior & more popular product.
That said, the fork was mentioned to me at the time as one reason why a client wouldn't use Open Source for their projects - they kept faith with Open Text's LiveLink WCM - only for that to be 'retired' shortly afterwards!

So, my real point is this - Oracle need to clear up the future of MySQL asap in order to reassure all that MySQL has a future.