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

…

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 …

I’ve never used Federated. I’m waiting for the JDBC version capabilities so I can connect to a non MySQL Server (specifically Oracle). In reading the docs, I see that the syntax includes a CONNECTION String.


CREATE TABLE federated_table (
id INT(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
name VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
other INT(20) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY (id),
INDEX name (name),
INDEX other_key (other)
)
ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='mysql://root@remote_host:9306/federated/test_table';


I’m surprised in the state of the syntax for two reasons.

• First, there are hardcoded variables in the string, this sort of breaks the rules of seperating syntax from authentication specifics
…

We had the privilege of Brian Aker Director of Architecture for MySQL speaking at the Brisbane MySQL Users Group this week (28 th Jan 2006). After the initial discussions on various topics, Brian got into his discussion on MySQL 5.1. I was surprised that only 2 people (myself being one of them) had 5.1 installed and being used in any way.

Here were some of the highlights of the talk. Should have taken some more notes.

MySQL 5.1 Features

Partitioning Will include Range, Hash, List and Key handling and Subpartitioning. …

Let’s review the problem. I’ve got this on a number of occasions and different libraries. Here are some typical error conditions.

./mysql-workbench-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.5' not found (required by ./mysql-workbench-bin)
Error: Missing Dependency: libstdc++.so.6(GLIBCXX_3.4.6) is needed by package glibmm24

Special thanks to my new Guru friend Alfredo who put me on the path.

$ su -
$ cd /src/rpm
$ wget ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/extras/4/SRPMS/libsigc++20-2.0.11-1.src.rpm
$ rpmbuild --rebuild libsigc++20-2.0.11-1.src.rpm
$ cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/
$ rpm -Uvh libsigc++20*.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:libsigc++20            ########################################### [ 50%]
   2:libsigc++20-devel      ########################################### [100%]

Woot! It was that simple, download the rpm source, …

Since joining Alfresco in November, I've been surprised by the quality (and size) of the companies trying out our products. That said, I've also been equally surprised by the sometimes negative feedback the company gets. This is typical of any company, but the difference in open source is that you get it earlier, louder (perhaps), and more publicly (on the company's forums, etc.).

It's aggravating at times - of course as a human being, you want to hear the positives, not the negatives. But I've actually come to appreciate the "grousers" as much, and in some cases, more, than the silent majority that love us and buy from us without logging a single complaint. One example is a Fortune 1000 company that I'm not sure will ever buy from us, and has "cost us" a fair amount of time/resources. The upside of that engagement is that we've had fantastic feedback from a large company that is using Alfresco in a quasi-production environment. Excellent …

Following my earlier post of MySQL Workbench 1.0.1 for Linux and logging a MySQL Bug, I’ve had the Bug verified, and the a further update of a compiler success. Details of compile from Bug #16880

Compiled with:

- glibmm-2.8.1
- gtk+-2.8.8
- libsigc++-2.0.11


I’ve got:


libsigc++-2.0.17
glib-2.6.6
glibmm-2.6.1
atk-1.9.0
pango-1.8.2
gtk+-2.6.9
gtkmm-2.6.5
lua-5.0.2


So starting with the obvious downgrading of libsigc++


$ su -
$ cd /src
$ wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/libsigc++/2.0/libsigc++-2.0.11.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz libsigc++-2.0.11.tar.gz
$ cd libsigc++-2.0.11
$ ./configure …

I talked with a prominent open source developer - Gianugo Rabellino of Apache/Cocoon fame - today, getting his feedback on the business models of Red Hat, Alfresco, MySQL, SugarCRM, JBoss, and others. He made it clear that the open source development community (if it, in fact, exists) strongly prefers pureplay open source projects, rather than "mudblood" open source companies.

No surprises there.

I then spoke to a group of architects (quite senior) from Fortune 500 companies at a recent OSDL advisory meeting. I asked them the same question: do you care if your software is open and, if so, how open is open? Almost universally, I was told that everything should be 100% open (and they …

Well this is low. I’ve just been spammed on my Wiki. And it was cunning, I just found it by accident. An enterprising hacker embedded into my Home Page hidden links that were not visible via normal page view, but ultimately would be via a search bot or some other means.

Even better the pricks even deleted content on one page. Here is an example diff of pages. I even posted a few days ago What makes your blood boil? and that was just an article on a news site with misleading dated information. I could see the opportunity for more blood boiling articles, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is, I don’t know how to solve the problem.

So what can you do other then clean up this hacker …