Kickfire and 10gen obtain new rounds of funding. BusyBox developers drop lawsuit against Supermicro. OpenLogic and EnterpriseDB release open source survey findings. (and more)

Kickfire Raises $20 Million in Series B Financing, Kickfire (Press Release)

10gen, New Cloud Computing Firm, Closes $1.5m Series A, 10gen (Press Release)

BusyBox Developers and Supermicro Agree to End GPL Lawsuit, Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) (Press Release)

OpenLogic Releases Survey on Enterprise Open Source …

Hooray! The MySQL reference manual has a new search system. It now uses a Google Appliance and the results should be a lot better. The old system was not very helpful. It used to break config variables into multiple words and search on them individually and give a billion results I didn’t care about. I’ve just tried to search for some things like key_buffer_size and got results I think are very useful.

I love the MySQL manual. It is a great example of quality software documentation. As someone recently mentioned, it is not released under a Free license though — that would be a great improvement, too!

When did this change happen, by the way? Maybe it’s been there for a while and I just missed it because I grew accustomed to using Google search instead.

Edit: I actually would suggest a …

So it seems MySQL got on the radar of the monopolist, but the quotes that came from that event are more interesting .

Over at Oscon2008 Oscon people started realizing that the old monopolist definitely isn't the one to be afraid of.. there's new ones out there..

I already got quoted in a local magazine on the fact that new startups are more looking to Google than to redmond, but it also seems that Apple is the new kid in town to envy.

However, when looking at the Linux desktop I think we shouldn't be trying to imitate anybody .. we should be trying to head the pack, just as we have already done with Vitualization and other technologies.

I didn't get a chance to go to OSCON 2008. Bummer. But I can live vicariously through google. So, along with all of the announcements you've heard from OSCON, I know present the OSCON 2008 - Google popularity contest. This is a completely unscientific survey of google hits. I was searching blogs and news. I started with just news but the blogs hits really upped the numbers.

To run these searches, I use "oscon 2008" and the search term, for example:

"oscon 2008" mysql

In the case of open source, I also quoted "open source".

I'm using google's about number. I didn't sit and count each hit. ;-)

Last week I wrote about whether Google’s potential acquisitions might be stifled by its focus on its own infrastructure software projects but noted that by releasing App Engine the company was encouraging a wider ecosystem of applications based on its platform.

What I didn’t discuss at the time was the potential risk of application vendors finding themselves locked-in to the App Engine platform. Of course Amazon also has this issue, the potential impact of which was …

It seems almost churlish to wonder whether Google could be even more successful than it already is with a different strategy, but the company’s approach to open source and open development has come into focus in recent weeks.

On last week’s podcast we discussed whether the company should see the AGPL as more of an opportunity than a threat following Jay’s post about the company releasing more code under open source licenses.

Nik Cubrilovic over at TechCrunch, meanwhile, has written an interesting …

Phew....People ask what the first week at Google is like... I cannot find one word which can describe it but I'll try throwing together a few adjectives:Exciting. Exhausting. Fun. Delicious.The reason for the first adjective is obvious. The second adjective - simply because its like going back to school with stuff to learn. The third - I met a lot of interesting people and they are all fun to

Yesterday, I became a Google employee.I know that there has been quite a hiatus in my MySQL related activities but it wasn't all without good reason. The first proper holiday I have had in a few years.Tomorrow afternoon, I hope to spend some time with Mark Callaghan ... It would be a nice break from the new-employee orientation and tutorials and hopefully a chance to meet more of my new

I think this is going to be really neat: you walk around the streets of San Francisco, for example, with your Android powered phone, en route to your destination 20 blocks away.

You whip out your phone, go to Google Maps, pull up the StreetView (remember this?), which zeroes in on your location using a built-in GPS, and then changes as you move the phone around using the built-in compass.

You then virtually walk the city, looking around, without actually moving an inch (looking for the closest ATM, restaurant, etc, hint-hint?).

Without further ado, let's have a look at this video from Google's I/O Conference for a demonstration?

    This video …

MySQL is featured on the Google Open Source Blog
Just after leaving JavaOne, Leslie pinged me on IRC to inform me that the MySQL project was featured on the Google Open Source blog. Go on, read Moments of Inspiration.

In other news from mentors, Colin Charles, former mentor and 2008 organization administrator for MySQL dropped a note to let us know that their Community Bonding period is moving along swimmingly. So well, in fact, that their students are already delivering weekly status reports. Colin mentioned that …