A number of years ago I coined the term “the mysql ecosystem”. I did it at the time to express a view that MySQL had moved beyond being just what MySQL AB defined “MySQL” as being.
It was a radical thought at the time. In part because when I expressed it, I did it not only outwardly to the world, but inwardly to the company as well. Many at the time thought that the ecosystem danced at the whim of the MySQL AB entity. When Peter Zaitsev left to form Percona I remember very clearly a management meeting where there was a hubris that his business would amount to nothing, and that he was missing his opportunity to be a part of something greater. History is of course writing a very different story.
So how is the ecosystem?
It turns out it is pretty healthy.
I wasn’t sure if that was the case up until a couple of weeks ago. I was having lunch with Moshe Shadmon of ScaleDB and I asked him “Do you think the market is collapsing?”
His response to me was one of enthusiasm. He pointed out to me the obvious indicators. The growth Amazon has created with its relational database service, and the continued growth in applications that support the MySQL interface.
The conversation put me into a really positive mind set about the community. What did I find at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference?
I found a lot of happy people. I saw adoption numbers which show positive growth.
What didn’t I find? The overwhelming negativism of the previous two years that I have sensed in the community was not to be found. It has at times made me question not only my involvement, but the involvement of Drizzle* in the ecosystem. I personally don’t wake up everyday wanting to welcome that into my life.
But what was the vibe of the community this year, and that of the conference?
This year the negative vibe was seen as something that was not only as ugly, but as something that was an aberration. An evolutionary path that the ecosystem seems to not be taking. That is pretty awesome.
What are the big questions facing the Ecosystem?
Oracle. I watch the MySQL trees, and I see that they are having an overall positive influence on the codebase. They are making good decisions, none of which appear to be malicious in nature. I hear from people who are using it, and I get an overall positive view of the work.
The people I ask?
They aren’t the shills that are trying to gain favor with Oracle, these are people who have 24x7 needs who don’t have the time to write blog entries, and who see MySQL has just one piece of their overall architecture.
If you are using MySQL today, and you need a solid path forward on it as a platform?
I’d stick with what Oracle is creating.
Oracle will be Oracle though. They have a giant marketing machine that will not want, and by policy not allow, events to occur which favor a product like MySQL over other products. Oracle Open World will not be a MySQL conference. MySQL will be a track in that conference, a booth at best. Oracle will push for venues that they control. Oracle will push for users to adopt their stack, and MySQL is just another cog in their system. A vector to attack Microsoft? A product to keep at bay the growth of an open source database?
It might be all of that and more, but it will not be a crown jewel. The company is too large to focus its attention on MySQL, and the money that it obtains from MySQL is not enough for it to ever take center stage.
In the end?
The attention span of large companies is quite small, and at some point it will fade.
Will Oracle have a MySQL Sunday again this year at Oracle World? If it does, will it have one the year after?
There is nothing wrong with this, it is just the nature of large companies.
Percona. Percona is impressive. They do excellent work based on an excellent reputation which they have grown by doing the right thing. I’ve been asked before if they will become the next MySQL. I don’t believe they will. Percona looks to be the next Electronic Data Services.
Do they have a server product? Yes. Will Percona Server be the next MySQL server? No. Is that because it is inferior? No. It is because Percona server is about delivering on their ability to be the best at MySQL consulting. It is not going to go away, but I will be surprised if Percona decides that it is their one and only product that they service. Percona Server is an asset for them, but they show no evidence of being singularly focused by their own product.
SkySQL. SkySQL has a great feeling to it. It has the exciting feel that MySQL once had, but I see no signs of the baggage that MySQL AB gained in later years. The people they are hiring are excellent. In the MySQL world they could very easily take the dominate position in the next year.
Monty Program. I don’t feel like I can really say much here, but I don’t want to say anything by leaving it off the list either.
Amazon. They were a sponsor of the conference this year. They are certainly a player in the ecosystem, though for the most part a silent one. From an engineering stand point I believe they have one hell of a challenge. How do they continue to provide MySQL services without a deep technical bench and a roadmap that will allow them to adopt new versions of MySQL? They don’t shape the MySQL universe in the ways that others do. They do not provide code, and they do not influence the direction of the product in any manner that allows them to influence beyond the scope of their own service.
Their service though? Amazon could be setting a stage where we see the MySQL interface solidified. If a large portion of MySQL apps are shaped by the question “will this app work in the Amazon cloud?” then they will have their say.
Are there others? There are plenty of others. Canonical and Redhat will shape the Linux distributions, and that in turn will shape what users first see. There are players like Infobright who will shape the analytical market.
Postgres continues to make progress. When I ask folks who study the market how they see Postgres I never get a response that it is on their radar. But when I ask operation folks? There I hear about its growth. At some point an application is going to come along that will change the view of the market.
The MySQL codebase? It is GPL. Nothing has changed about that, and nothing that we are seeing, or that is talked about in private conversation, leads me to believe that is changing. There was some hubbub at the conference about Oracle removing the FLOSS exception from the codebase. There was talk that this created a situation where at any moment Oracle could change the exception and squeeze someone via a license gotcha.
When it was brought up it made me suspicious as well.
The thing is? Its up on the website still, and the page has been recently updated. It has also been cached and stored by Google. Removing it from the source code doesn’t mean much.
Its good to be suspicious, but I suspect that all the removal was, was a simple mistake made by a blanket policy about communication. Oracle’s open source behavior, its table manners, are haphazard. I don’t believe you can expect anything else.
In the end?
The MySQL Ecosystem is doing just fine. There are challenges, but there has always been challenges.
*Drizzle I leave Drizzle out of the discussion because I both feel like it is inappropriate to mention it because of my own involvement, and because I actively debate our involvement in the MySQL Ecosystem. I’d rather push for our own environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment