Last year saw a record number of acquisitions by Oracle Corporation. Of note was in October 2005 InnoBase (Read Press Release) which had a direct relationship with MySQL providing the InnoDB Storage Engine. It’s too early to tell what the impact to MySQL will be if any.

I’ve been in Singapore, and have not read any news in the past few days, but all information I’m receiving from those collegues in the know is that Sleepycat Software (the company behind Berkley DB, and the MySQL BDB Storage Engine) is now firmly in the sites of Oracle Acquisition. The rumors of JBoss is also definitely on the …

The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has created a partnership with the open source community to ensure that patent examiners have improved access to all available prior art relating to software code during the patent examination process.

In December the USPTO representatives met with members of the open source software community, which provided an opportunity for members to discuss with the USPTO prior art access issues related to software patent quality. The meeting focused on getting the best prior art references to the examiner during the initial examination process.

As a follow-up to their December 6th meeting, USPTO representatives will hold another meeting on February 16th, 2006. This meeting will be open to the public and will focus on further developing previously discussed initiatives as well as any new prior art initiatives offered at that time.

All members of the open …

Yesterday I ran into an old collegue that now runs quite a successful computer store chain and highly successful web store here in Australia. Long story short he was having some MySQL problems, so I offered to pass my eye over it. Now, given that they had some data corruption in stock levels not being correct (e.g. getting to an inventory count of -1), my first split second thought was inappropiate transaction management.

In thinking last night, what would I do as part of auditing an existing MySQL Installation and application quickly for reference and also to highlight issues etc, assuming I would have no access to any administrators or developers.

So what would you do? I made some preliminary notes, here’s the full account of what I did do.

Audit Steps

OS Specifics

$ mkdir /tmp/arabx
$ cd /tmp/arabx
# keep a quick copy of stuff
$ script
# Linux generals
$ hostname
$ uname -a
$ uptime
$ …

What with the hoopla around the possible JBoss (and other) acqusitions in the near term, it set me to thinking about how open source companies should be valued. Once they "grow up," of course, like Red Hat, they're valued in a somewhat rational (P/E) fashion.

But how does one value the frontier of open source business models? How does one value downloads? (I remember Kevin Harvey of Benchmark and David Skok at Matrix both telling me that part of their investment calculus in open source companies/projects hinges on downloads, but how do these factor into an acquisition?) Do downloads equal "community" and, if so, is "community" something that can be valued? (In my conversations with IBM, they certainly seemed to think so, though they didn't share with me how they'd do so.)

And what about …

These are my first impressions of MySQL WorkBench 1.0.1. Rant and rave you may say, but a new user, or an experienced modeller would probably observe these points. Also, given that (with a poll?) I suspect a good number of users will be previous DBDesigner users, some level of functionality that may not be considered initially in a new product, should be considered for this migration path of legacy users.

I’ll take the time to review the Forums adding my points, and review Bug System but for now, just blogging is easier.

Conclusion

Note: Generally a conclusion is at the bottom, but I’d suspect most readers will switch off …

Still in "ponder" mode on the possible Oracle acquisition of JBoss, and came across this interesting tidbit from the Enterprise Open Source Journal (worth a read, if for no other reason than to see Julie in "pensive mode :-). Mark Driver from Gartner writes [PDF download]:

"The [Oracle acquisition of InnoBase] has left many of us scratching our collective heads. On the surface, the motives seem obvious. Oracle, with a clear history of aggressive acquisitions, buys out a critical component of MySQL in order to kill off its commercial support channel. The problem is, we don't actually know the motive yet because Oracle has been mysteriously silent about the acquisition, citing "license negotiations" as the reason. By the time you read this, the issue may be resolved, but I fear it's a lose lose situation for …

I can comment on these rumors, because that's all they are to me: rumors. I have no inside knowledge on this. But there has been a growing cacophony of noise that JBoss is going to be acquired. What started out as an HP rumor, turned into a Novell rumor, and has comfortably settled in to stay as an Oracle rumor.

So, let's just pretend Oracle buys JBoss. What would be the result?

On the Oracle side, it's a chance to shore up the company's open source credentials. It's also the opportunity to pillage IBM, something which Oracle is wont to do. (JBoss, of course, makes money for itself, but it also takes money from IBM and BEA - lots of downloads that would otherwise be forking out cash to these BigCos.) Oracle also would get the chance to lower …

I must admit I’d given up trying to get MySQL Workbench working under Linux. I guess I’d spent at least 4 or 5 days full time at it, and it was just out of my league, with GTK and C++ errors. It had seemed like a loosing battle, I’ve had 3 detailed documented goes at 1.0.0. Last Post 19th Jan, and 2 with 1.0.1 Last Post 31st Jan.

Anyway, the good news is I now have MySQL Worbench working under Linux. I’ve been working with MySQL AB on a number of specific problems and you should expect a release from MySQL AB soon to address these. Here is a summary of my experience.

• 1.0.1 removes the requirements for java dependancies
• 1.0.1 provides a README.linux with configuration requirements, and a subset list of minimum library …

BusinessWeek delivers an online-only report on Open Source this week.

Taking On the Database Giants
Can open-source upstarts compete with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft? It's an uphill battle, but customers are starting to look at the alternatives

Nuclear War over Software Patents?Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation wants radical rule changes for open-source code. Others disagree. Can diplomacy save the day?

Linux Everywhere?
It's quickly -- and usually quietly -- spreading into more and more services and devices, from e-mail to cars

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One reason that I'm an Apple fan is that the customer support has almost uniformly been exceptional (as was IBM's when I used to use ThinkPads). When I call Apple technical support I almost never wait on hold, always get someone who actually uses a Mac and can answer my questions, and get a fast turnaround on any repairs that are needed.

Except this time. My laptop has been stuck in technical support limbo since I called Apple on January 21. My PowerBook sat, as near as I can tell, at Apple for days before they formally began to work on it, and now they've ordered a part and I've been waiting for that to come in. I'm not happy (nor is my wife, as I'm using her PowerBook in the interim).

The experience reminded me of a recent technical support experience where I was on the delivery side. We bumped into a problem in the Alfresco system which, upon further analysis, turned out to …