If you’re attending the conference, be sure to stay the extra day (this Friday) for the SkySQL and MariaDB Consulting Lounge and Solutions Day.

You can register for the Free Solutions Day here (just name, email, company, and country):

http://www.skysql.com/mysql-solutions-day

And if you’re around that day, there will be a SkySQL and MariaDB Consulting Lounge open all day long, so feel free to stop by and speak directly with the SkySQL and MariaDB Experts.

More about the Consulting Lounge can be found here too.

For more than nine years, I worked for MySQL AB and its successors, Sun Microsystems and Oracle. I handed in my resignation late June, two days before Sun’s German legal entity ceased to exist. Germany isn’t a country where you quit HP one day and join Oracle the next, so I had a long summer with plenty of so-called Garden Leave. Last Thursday was my last day, and I’m now outside MySQL AB, outside Sun Microsystems, outside Oracle.

Like all the many former colleagues who resigned before me, I did so with mixed feelings. Leaving the colleagues, finding freedom, I think you follow. The topmost feeling I have, the one I want to highlight right now, is gratitude. I’m very grateful for what MySQL AB

After Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle, there has been a large amount of discussions in the business and developer community on the future of MySQL community involved in its development.

A Community Fork?

Interestingly, MySQL community has been able to create a new Database by a fork from the public branch and has revived the project as MariaDB.

On it’s website, AskMonty.org [founded by Michael "Monty" Widenius, the founder and creator of MySQL] states that its aim is,

To provide a community developed, stable, and always Free branch of MySQL that is, on the user level, compatible with the main version. We strive for total

Arjen & Monty @ LCA2009 in Hobart

I did a couple of sessions on OurDelta at the Linux.conf.au database miniconf: an overview of the project, a short delve into the features, and a “hacking the mysql server for dummies” which was found of particular interest. It’s a pity that session didn’t get accepted into the MySQL conference, it even had MySQL-uberguru Antony Curtis as co-speaker.

In the hacking talk in Hobart, I showed people the basic infrastructure of the source tree, then going through one particular patch and which changes it makes inside the server (and why). This is an excellent way to learn, as patches have a neat limited scope yet they do something significant. The good news is that the sessions were recorded, so when the

With all due respect to Monty (and I mean that — much respect is due), I have some serious issues with his portrayal of the 5.1 release.  I hate to make my first entry on Planet MySQL about a controversy, but he encouraged people to blog about their experience with 5.1, so that’s what I’ll do here.

Overall Quality

As a long time user, I am very confident that the quality of 5.1 GA far exceeds that of the initial 5.0 GA release (5.0.15).  In fact, I would go further and suggest that the MySQL organization has if anything been too conservative about declaring 5.1 GA.

It’s obviously true that there are still many bugs open.  However no software is bug free, especially not those with codebase as large as MySQL.  So the question is not if they are bug free,

Smithy commented on my blog post about the rumor of Monty leaving Sun with a pointer to an article on ComputerWorld Finland that mentions:

Widenius told to Computerworld Finland on Friday that negotiations are still on.

Meanwhile, Matt Asay, who seems to think Monty actually has left Sun (even though all other reports have been clear to mention that this is unconfirmed), writes of a new investment Monty has made.

Last week I speculated about the impact of Monty leaving Sun. In the end, if he does stay, it’s wonderful for

ValleyWag reports that MySQL’s Monty Widenius is no longer “MySQL’s”. Some folks have known that Monty has not been happy in his current position; this leads me to believe the rumor is true (though of course an official announcement is the only confirmation).

So what does this mean for MySQL? Well, honestly, if a product falls apart because one out of 300 employees leaves, it was probably doomed anyway. There are plenty of capable employees left, and being owned by Sun means that there are many more resources they can tap as well.

What will the official company announcement be? My prediction is (more…)

My friend Monty (of MySQL fame) has started blogging at http://monty-says.blogspot.com/. After just a day, he already has two posts ? one on the Sun acquisition of MySQL and a longer one on the new Maria engine.

If you are interested in MySQL, you should definitely check the blog out.

For the curious, the slides for the eLiberatica 2007 presentations are now up at http://eliberatica.ro/2007/ - the slides include presentations from eZ CEO Aleksander Farstad, Brian Behlendorf, FSF Europe President Georg Greve, Ubuntist Kurt von Finck and MySQL (http://mysql.com) co-founder Monty Widenius (and yours truly, but the slides are a bit weak - check out my Age of Literate Machines talk for a more developed version of my

This weekend, Monty and I got together for a different kind of hacking session.

Instead of developing software, we were working on developing a set of rough principles and rules for running a Free Software/Open Source business. We both have a good amount of experience working with various FLOSS projects (like Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, etc.) and FLOSS companies (like eZ Systems, Mozilla, MySQL, Zend, etc.) and hope that we can put this experience to good use.

For me, this was a tremendous help - I’ve been putting off working on this for Foo Associates for some months now. It is much easier to work on meeting the needs of customers than it is to work on planning for the future.

The notes are still extremely rough, but both Monty and I want to post them so that people

I’ll be attending the Openmind conference from October 2nd to 3rd and will be giving a keynote at the event.

Openmind is being organized by COSS, an interesting Finnish Free Software and Open Source development agency that helps Finnish and Scandinavian businesses and projects use and develop FLOSS.

Other keynote presenters at the event (that readers of this blog may know) include Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, Aleksander Farstad, CEO of eZ Systems AS and FLOSS researcher Rishab Aiyer Gosh.

I also hoping that since Monty is in the area, he will also be able to attend.