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Blog: Pete LoshinApril 18, 2008Clarifying the MySQL "Closed-Sourcing" brouhahaRemember yesterday? Well, I was reading that post again and realized that it's not entirely clear what Sun is actually doing with MySQL. Here's another article about the whole thing, MySQL Not Going Closed Source? that you can check out, but the gist of it is this: MySQL Server is still (and always was) open source. The difference is not (as I might have implied yesterday) that the Enterprise product was going to be different. What's actually happening is that if you are an Enterprise customer (meaning, you're paying the big bucks for the Enterprise license), you get some extra "add-ons". Somehow, calling them "add-ons" made a big difference (for me, anyway) in understanding what's going on: Sun is giving their customers another reason to pay extra for Enterprise MySQL. The add-on in question, this time, is online backup. If you want to do online backup with MySQL at this point, you have two options:
Sun Senior VP and former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos spelled it out, pretty much in those words. I believe in free and open software as much as the next person. I also think that companies "selling" open source software have not just the right but the obligation (to their shareholders) to find a business model that allows them to continue to publish open source software. Enterprise customers have special needs--needs that generally don't intersect with the needs of most individuals or small groups who are using the software--and that as a result, it makes sense to have enterprise customers get the extra add-ons as part of their licensing fees. Am I wrong? April 17, 2008Is Sun/MySQL selling out, or just selling?Here's some news: MySQL, Sun's still-shiny new open source database acquisition, will be adding new features to its Enterprise (that is, paid) version that won't be added to the Community (free and open) version. Here's the story at ComputerWorld: MySQL reserves features for paying customers; open-source community up in arms. Oddly enough, though, the story seems to have originated on Jeremy Cole’s blog: That tells me one of two things is happening: either Sun/MySQL is trying to pull a fast one and sneak this new development under everyone's radar, or else this is just business as usual and not anything to get upset about--or at least, not be surprised about. You can read about "user outrage" in the ComputerWorld article, as well as on Slashdot (Sun to Begin Close Sourcing MySQL). But Sun has to find a way to make that MySQL acquisition pay off, somehow. On the other hand, as Dana Blankenhorn points out here (Did Sun just make mySQL closed source?), MySQL started limited source code access to its Enterprise version last year--if you want to see the code, you've got to be a paying customer. That's fine: if you've paid for an Enterprise license, you get to see the source code (and do what you want with it). It shouldn't surprise anyone when a company that runs an open source project tries to make it pay off. The good news is that there is a huge--and strong--open source MySQL community, and that (as Mickos pointed out) anyone who likes could develop their own, free and open, version of the features that aren't going to make it into the community version. I'm sure we'll be hearing more interested news from the open source database players in days and weeks to come (including from me!). One of the exciting aspects of this development is that it illustrates and illuminates some of the most critical issues facing paying and non-paying users of open source software, as well as the vendors who are trying to build their businesses on free software. October 23, 2007New Open Source Business Model using EclipseIt's starting. The new wave of new businesses, built on new models for making money while using and supporting free/open source software. Eclipse is "an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle." Even with massive improvements since I first wrote about it in The Value of Eclipse for the Open Source Community almost two years ago, Eclipse can still be confusing and complicated to get up and running. Some see that as an obstacle to an otherwise useful tool, but others, like the people at Genuitec saw an opportunity for a cool service, MyEclipse, a subscription based toolbox for enterprise Eclipse development. MyEclipse subscriptions start at $31.75/year, but according to this article at eWeek, Eclipse Gains a Pulse, Genuitec next month plans to announce "PoweredByPulse, a free service that company executives said could become the de facto mechanism for provisioning software, whether commercial, free or mixed." This is most encouraging: it means the long-anticipated model of providing services around open source software is getting real. If you want to use Eclipse, it's free. You can figure it out on your own, spending your time; or you can purchase access to infrastructures for using and distributing software using Eclipse. Genuitec is doing the heavy lifting to build the infrastructure, but they're keeping the costs down because the services are automated. So you get the best of both worlds, and if someone comes along and offers a better set of Eclipse-related services, you're free to jump ship. What a concept: vendors compete based on the value proposition they offer, while not imposing proprietary software with its attendant vendor lock-in. Enterprise software consumers can decide on which vendor based on performance and quality, not whether or not they support some proprietary standards. October 17, 2007Cloud Computing with AmazonI just mentioned Amazon EC2 the other day, as being in limited beta--now Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is open to the masses in an unlimited beta. EC2 "is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers." From the EC2 page: Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network's access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire. So now you can create your own virtualized data center, optimized for the web, and it'll cost you next to nothing, at least to start. Amazon's AWS calculator lets you estimate your usage of the Amazon Web Services, which include EC2, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) (that's middleware, and worthy of a separate discussion here, soon) and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS). If you think you know what you need, you can figure out about how much it'll cost you, monthly. You get the use of Amazon's infrastructure, worth who knows how many millions of dollars, but you pay for what you use. Kind of like having a limo/private aviation service available on-demand, where you pay only for what you use, when you use it--but you get instant transport in state-of-the-art cars/planes/helicopters. October 12, 2007Amazon S3, Now with SLA!Thinking about building or buying your own datacenter for a web-scale application? You probably know just how expensive it can be. Now there's an alternative: Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). (If you're an S3 subscriber and you want some compute cycles on demand instead of buying your own hardware, you can try the beta version of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), too.) From S3 page: Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. That's not news; S3 was announced back in March 2006. What's news is that now Amazon is offering an SLA . Which means that enterprises can now confidently use Amazon's big big datacenter for next to nothing to try out new web applications. Pretty cool. September 10, 2007Windows: Defective by DesignI've got to say, I truly wonder why so many corporations willingly cede complete and utter control over their software infrastructure to proprietary software vendors. Let's face it, when you are a proprietary software vendor, your entire business rests on how good you are at preventing people from using your software unless they've paid for it. The only practical way to do that is to build extra software that makes sure only authorized users use the product software. In other words, part of what you are paying for with proprietary software is an extra piece of software that decides whether or not you can use the software you've paid for. If that software doesn't work right, you can't use your own software. Even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong, until the vendor fixes the problem. Got it? That's how Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage works. If the server goes down (as happened recently, read the comments for some great user opinions on the MSDN blog entry about it here), or if something else breaks, you can't use your software. If I had to run Windows, I would seriously consider buying a pirated version (in addition to the "legal" version) just so I wouldn't have to worry about just this kind of thing. This isn't news: twenty years ago, PC support staff at small/medium sized companies routinely used commercial copy-protection cracking software so they could re-install Lotus 1-2-3 (et al) when the users lost key diskettes or misplaced their activation codes. If you were big enough, you could get more special-purpose software to manage your licenses; if you weren't, you had to go out and spend a few hundred bucks every time your users trashed their systems and needed to replace their applications. Just in case you had any illusions about what your software is doing and who is in charge, consider this: Windows Update updating without permission! Basically, the story here is that the blogger didn't want Windows Update to update without permission, but the fact is that the EULA for Windows says that Microsoft is in charge of how that software works, not you. But it is galling nonetheless. This little titbit, I Warned Ye... may be flip, but it sure is true: don't go rushing into the latest and greatest for no other reason than your vendor wants you to. Vista may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but according to this report from W3Counter.com, Vista has only about 3.46% market share, versus 83.48% for Windows XP (Linux is climbing, having just beat out Windows 98 at 1.34%). So what are you paying your software vendors for? August 9, 2007Welcome to the FutureWe've all probably seen those "demotivational posters" by now; one I liked a lot read: If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon. Why do I like it? Because maybe it'll be robots doing your job soon, or, maybe, it'll be the big scary Internets. Case in point, a question raised on Ask Metafilter recently: How do i build a data warehouse that scrapes data from public websites for my own use? Tools? Tips? Two things:
In other words, if you are in the business of providing solutions to business problems, it's becoming increasingly difficult to develop authoritative answers that are also exclusively your own--and better than what you could get by doing a bit of research with Google on your own. August 2, 2007Something new to think about: "Attention Silos"Is it a gimmick, or a business opportunity? Read Towards the Attention Economy: Will Attention Silos Ever Open Up? It'll get you thinking about all the data that is created in the course of websurfing. How do you concatenate the data by-product of all those individual page views and other types of web activities related to a single web entity? But beyond that, how do you collect the data crop relating to a single individual across different web entities that individual interacts with? What do you think? Is there a payoff somewhere to building these "attention silos"? July 16, 2007Talend Updates: More VC $$$ and New ReleaseIt's been a busy time for open source data intregration vendor Talend: last week, they rolled out version 2.1 of their Open Studio data integration suite. This week, they're announcing $3.5 million in second round funding from AGF Private Equity and Galileo Partners. While not the only (or first) open source ETL/data integration software (here's a roundup of open source Java-based ETL packages), but Talend is the first vendor to put together a comprehensive open source data integration suite. February 20, 2007Database Size is EverythingThink your database is big? Check out Top 10 Largest Databases in the World on the Business Intelligence Lowdown blog. Number 3, AT&T's Daytona handles the 312 terabyte AT&T call detail database (as noted here last year, Monitoring Telecommunications Traffic Requires BIG Databases). Check it out for an interesting overview to the obvious and perhaps not so obvious ten biggest databases. October 25, 2006"Data Center in a Box", by SunBack in 1994 or so, you could buy a thing called Internet in a Box, which was all the software you needed to get the Internet up and running on your Windows PC, in a box. Now, Sun just rolled out a new "in-a-box" application: Project Blackbox. Now, a data center is just a matter of ordering up one of these 20' shipping containers and finding a place to park it. Sun does the rest, jamming the box full of everything you need. No more wrestling with multiple vendors, juggling floor space for a data center installation, or worrying about how you're going to upgrade your a/c to handle the cooling duties, or any other annoyances related to setting up a data center from scratch. You can fit up to 150 servers, 10,000 desktop users, and 1.5 petabytes of database into disk on one of these babies. Install some nice BI stack on top, and you've got the ultimate in a turnkey BI system! |
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