Some time ago I was asked to do a study of our most popular open source projects to assess 1) what governance models are out there and 2) if the governance model has any effect on the project's success (such as size of developer community) on the one hand and on the other hand on the business of the related vendor(s). Some of the results are quite remarkable and have general applicability, so I wanted to share them here:

read more

Last week I announced internally that after my paternity leave ends next year, I will not be returning to Monty Program.

When I joined the company over a year ago I was immediately involved in drafting a project plan for the Open Database Alliance and its relation to MariaDB. We wanted to imitate the model of the Linux Foundation and Linux project, where the MariaDB project would be hosted by a non-profit organization where multiple vendors would collaborate and contribute. We wanted MariaDB to be a true community project, like most successful open source projects are - such as all other parts of the LAMP stack.

read more

There has been a lot happening in the MariaDB community recently, and there has been growth. Here are some of the highlights. Thank you to all our current contributors, and to others that want to contribute, shoot community[at]askmonty[dot]org an e-mail.

MariaDB 5.2.3 binaries for Solaris and Debian Sparc

Our Sparc community contributor, Mark, has continued to make popular binaries for Solaris 10 and Debian Sparc. He’s kept up to speed with MariaDB 5.2.3, so please visit him and download the binaries.

MariaDB 5.2.3 on the openSUSE Build Service

Community contributor Michal Hrušecký has packaged MariaDB for openSUSE and its available via the …

Dear MariaDB users,

The development team have been busy bees, and have freshly released MariaDB 5.1.51. MariaDB is a branch of the MySQL database which includes all major open source storage engines, myriad bug fixes and many community patches.

This release of MariaDB 5.1.51 includes MySQL up to version 5.1.51. It also includes XtraDB up to version 5.1.51-12. For more information, do not hesitate to read the release notes, and for more detailed changes, do hop on over to the changelog.

MariaDB is available in source and binary form in a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, CentOS 5, and Solaris x86. These are …

I am happy to announce that MariaDB 5.2.3 is now released as a stable release.

During the gamma period we did not receive any serious reports for issues in 5.2, so we are relatively confident that the new code is of decent quality.

You can read about the features of MariaDB 5.2 in my previous blog entry or in the fast growing MariaDB knowledgebase..

What is most interesting about MariaDB 5.2 is that most of the features came from the MariaDB/MySQL community, not from Monty Program Ab!

Without the community it would not have been possible to do a stable release so soon after the last release. Virtual columns, …

Dear MariaDB users,

MariaDB 5.2, a branch of the MySQL database which includes all major open source storage engines, myriad bug fixes and many community patches, has been released. It has all changes up to MySQL 5.1.51.

For an overview of what’s new in MariaDB 5.2.3, please see the release notes (5.2.2, 5.2.1, and 5.2.0 also).

MariaDB 5.2 includes a number of user enhancements including:

• Improved user statistics which help understand server activity better …

You maybe already noticed, that MariaDB folks released their new stable version 5.2.3 today. And as we’ve got our great openSUSE Build Service, we already have this version packaged and you can install it easilly on openSUSE. I didn’t had much time to test it deeply, I just tried that it runs, and that I’m able to connect to it, so it is currently in server:database:UNSTABLE repository, but after some testing, it will proceed futher If you want to try it, make sure to backup your data first! So talks on openSUSE you can use one click install to get MariaDB 5.2.3. For others, you …

I’m stoked to be going to FOSSASIA this week. It is in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam from 12-14 November (thats this week on Friday-Sunday). There’s a pretty large amount of activities going on, including a MiniDebConf. There also seem to be a huge amount of topics being covered and some pretty interesting speakers, so I can’t hardly wait.

If you’re into MariaDB or MySQL, come catch me at:

• Friday, 10.15-10.30am: 15-minute lightning talk on MariaDB
• Saturday, 3.30-4.30pm: talk on MariaDB
• Sunday, 9.00-11.00am: a hand’s on workshop introducing you to MariaDB/MySQL

I come into Saigon in the evening on the 11th, and depart in the morning on the 15th, but if you have time and want to catch up, don’t hesitate to drop me a line at colin AT askmonty DOT org.

Related posts:

1. …

Earlier this week Giuseppe Maxia blogged about joining Continuent as Director of QA.  Creating high quality systems for distributed data management is a hard but fascinating problem.  I have been hooked on it myself for many years.  Guiseppe brings the creativity as well as humor our team needs to nail this problem completely.  I'm therefore delighted to know he will be focused on it.

That said, I'm even happier for another reason.  Beyond solving any single problem, Giuseppe strengthens an already strong team.  Ed Catmull of Pixar gave a great speech a few years ago about managing creative teams and why successful companies eventually fail.  Among other things he asked the question whether it is the idea or the people …

A catchy headline, and I believe more accurate than Oracle Puts the Squeeze on SMBs with MySQL Price Hike (Network World) and MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle’s wallet love [MySQL Jacking up MySQL Prices] (The Register). Slightly more realistic is Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support (again The Register).

First, let’s review what Oracle has actually done: they ditched the MySQL enterprise Basic and Silver offerings. For Oracle, that makes sense. Their intended client base is “enterprise” (high end, think big corporates) and their MySQL sales and cost structure reflects this. It’s not a new thing that came with MySQL at Oracle, because MySQL at Sun …