Another excellent conference of note: the EclipseCon 2006, from March 20th through 23rd, will be held in Santa Clara. Those of you Java-ites out there using MySQL, be sure to check out the speakers and possibly submit a proposal for a presentation. Hopefully, at least one MySQL staff member will be in attendance; I'll let everyone know when I hear who that might be.

BTW, one keynote speaker you shouldn't miss is Joel Spolsky. He's been in the industry for many years (at Microsoft, Juno, and more) and now heads Fog Creek Software. He's also the author of quite a few books, some under Apress, which …

The New York City PHP Conference and Expo 2006 today opened it's call for papers. All you in the community out there, I will probably be attending this conference, so if you're in the area, be sure to stay tuned. If you are a MySQL user with some cool ideas or projects (especially ones featuring MySQL 5's newest features), please submit a presentation proposal highlighting your area of expertise. I'll be doing the same.

Some nifty ideas I think might be great presentation material:

• Exploring the mysqli API interface -- How to migrate and use the newest MySQL 5 features
• Encapsulating MySQL Data Access using Object Oriented programming practices (including PDO for PHP5)
• Demonstrating PHP5/MySQL5 simple AJAX applications

Just some thoughts. Let me know your ideas, …

As part of my next conference presentation Overcoming the Challenges of Establishing Service and Support Channels I’ve been struggling to find with my professional sources, any quality organisations that provide full support for a technology stack, for example a LAMP stack, or a Java Servlet stack.

Restricted to searching via online, I’ve been impressed by what I’ve found at Spike Source www.spikesource.com. An organisation with an experienced CEO, well known in the Java Industry. They certainly have all the buzz words covered in their product information.

Benefits of their SpikeSource Core Stack.

• Fully tested and certified
• Installs in minutes with integrated …

UPDATED (Had to fix some inaccuracies)

And I thought we had grown out of this....

Part of today's SDForum Open Source in the Enterprise executive summit involved some furious debate on where open source is going. I had the interesting luck to sit at a table with John Roberts (CEO, SugarCRM), Mary Coleman (Managing Partner with Walden International, a smart and active (and savvy) open source investor), and representatives from two of software's biggest proprietary vendors, among others.

It's [one of] these last two who surprised me with a willful disregard for facts about open source adoption. I'm actually used to an increasingly sophisticated view of open source from both companies, but what I heard today was an embarrassment to [one of their employers].

It was …

Did I push to much in my last post? I don’t think so, but I guess it’s a fragile balance sometimes in Open Source between those keen end users, and the developers that do give so much towards their own creations (I understand, I’m in that category myself).

I was very proud of my work yesterday, it took a whole day of my time (I do have better things to do, like finish my own Open Source project HTMLtags, while will allow me to build my sample application, which I can then use for my MySQL Users Conference presentation). I learnt to dig around the net a lot, go on the wild goose chase several times, understand some more under the hoods of compiling, libraries and dependencies in the GTK world I would have otherwise not really cared about. But as I said, I got to a brick wall by the end, and it was dishearting.

It …

This post is based entirely on unsubstantiated rumor. Word on the street is that SpikeSource is making the move to a new channel focused strategy. I don't want to gloat, but I told you that the existing business model was not sustainable. Unfortunately, I don't see how a channel model would work either.

There is no channel when it comes to software services. SIs won't give up the revenue to another services partner, it's an inherent conflict. And while channel deals are great for distribution (HP with JBoss or MySQL) there is no precedent on how much revenue can be derived from such deals. SIs will just build their own stack, or get a complete solution, including the OS from a big player like RedHat.

People are hell-bent that open source is all about services, but take a look at the companies that are doing well and you'll see that they also have products. …

One of the great benefits of Open Source, it’s Free, and you can get great support, sometimes even from the developers directly (rather then 5 levels of paid customer support for a commercial product). One of the greatest banes of Open Source, if you have a problem, and nobody has experienced and documented in a forum etc the problem you have with the same OS, libraries etc, you could be totally up the creek without a paddle, boat and for that matter water. (luckily you still have oxgyen)

Well, I’m having this problem with MySQL Workbench. A product promising so much, but if you can’t get the binary working on Linux to even start, where do you go.

You will see via the Forums, I’m not the only person. This is the current …

Would it not be great if on the MySQL website there was a page of stats (updated daily) that provided statistics like number of installations, a breakdown of versions registered (not certain I like that exact word) , OS’s, countries etc. More specifically, some useful stats on the engine types in practical use, avg number of tables per database etc. Of course the types of stats could be limitless, but with the success of MySQL as well as other open source projects, more imperial figures on installations other then just downloads I think would definitely benefit given the current momentum. (Availability of information to competitors could be both a good and bad thing.) Perhaps figures can be shown in percentages, not actual numbers.

Anyway, nice idea you say, we can all come up with ideas, but how could you implement something like this. …

There is a myth out there that open source offers a convenient way to save a dying company's proprietary product, or provides a way to head off the eventual bleeding dry of a successful closed-source product (like Oracle's database, for example). The 451 Group has news for you:

Nope. Sorry. Not going to happen.

In its Cashing in on Open Source report, they make the following point:

Pure plays commodifying new sectors and offering professional support may be profitable - some are remarkably so. Examples include the Linux distributors, JBoss and MySQL. Traditional companies, however, should not expect open source initiatives to contribute substantially to the bottom line. The cost of building a developer community (Eclipse, OpenSolaris, openadaptor, eBay) is a sunk cost. Returns are intangible, such as grassroots …

The 451 Group's Cashing in on Open Source report contains an off-hand comment that I think deserves more comment. It says:

Because human-readable programming languages compile to machine-readable binaries, it'?s possible to sell usable software without the source code attached.What The 451 doesn't point out is that the inverse corollary is also true: because most people don't care about source code, and because compiling from source to a binary executable is work/drudgery, you can make a business out of distributing free and open source code and charging customers a fat fee for a "certified" binary.

Don't believe me? Take Red Hat as an example. It makes its money by charging customers to get the magical, certified Red Hat. In truth, it's the same RHEL you can download for free, but the assurance of certification …