I got a couple of questions and comments about OpenSQL Camp in the past week, and I thought it would be worth noting down the history, because I think there is some difference in perception and memory about this series of events. The following is only my point of view.

What is OpenSQL Camp?

I can say what I had in mind when I created the original event, but this is bigger than me, so I don’t get to dictate anything. I wanted a free technical event created entirely by and for a community of open-source databases, in an inclusive sense. Not created or heavily influenced by someone employed by a corporation whose job title includes the word “Community,” but really by a community themselves. There’s nothing wrong with Community So-And-So employed at a corporation, but they are by nature a liaison with that company, and it’s not the same thing. My original …

Peter and Arjen will be at DrupalCon SF 2010. Peter specifically for the event, Arjen staying around the SF area after the MySQL Conference last week.

Specifically, we’ll be talking with people about using the OQGRAPH engine to help with social graphs and other similar problems, easily inside Drupal. You may recall that Peter already created the friendlist_graph extension for the friendlist Drupal module.

From the MySQL Conf and other earlier feedback, OQGRAPH is proving to be a real enabler. And since it’s free/GPLv2 and integrated in MariaDB 5.2, there’s generally no hindrance in starting to use it.

While the majority of Percona gang travelled to California for the MySQL event of the year, I headed in the opposite direction to Moscow for RIT++ 2010 conference where I presented a talk on Sphinx. You can get the PDF file here - Improving MySQL-based applications performance with Sphinx.

I have been invited to talk at Open Source Data Center Conference in Nürnberg, Germany in June this year, so I hope I can meet some of you there.

Entry posted by Maciej Dobrzanski | …

I just got word that a talk about iSCSI High Availability with Pacemaker and DRBD, which I submitted for LinuxTag 2010, has been accepted by the selection committee.

The presentation is entitled Storage Done Right: Building a Resilient, Distributed, Highly Available Open Source iSCSI SAN and I will talk in the Storage track, in English. Questions in German, of course, won’t be a problem.

As the conference organizers have asked speakers not to publicize the temporary schedule (for obvious reasons — hey it’s temporary), I can’t give the exact time and location yet. But if you want to hear about how you can replace your six-figure SAN with something much more open, much less locked-in and much less expensive, plan a trip to Berlin in early …

I’m looking forward to traveling to San Jose for this year’s MySQL Conference. If there’s anything that can trump the drama of conf two years ago, where we observed how Sun would handle its new property, and then the drama of last year, where we observed how Oracle would handle the pending acquisition, it’s going to be the drama around this one — the first MySQLConf since the Oracle/Sun merger has been finalized and approved.

I think there is some finality to the changing of the guard this time, since there aren’t really that many companies that could conceivably swallow up Oracle itself! (Maybe I shouldn’t say that — next thing you know they’ll spin it off heh.) But regardless, I am looking forward to getting to know Edward Screven and getting a sense from the keynote and other communications exactly what he’s planning to … DO … with …

Walter and I are giving a tutorial on Monday morning, MySQL (and MariaDB) Dual Master Setups with MMM, I believe there are still some seats available – tutorials are a bit extra when you register for the conference, so you do need to sign up if you want to be there! It’s a hands-on tutorial/workshop, we’ll be setting up multiple clusters with dual master and the whole rest of the MMM fun, using VMs on your laptops and a separate wired network. Nothing beats messing with something live, breaking it, and seeing what happens!

Then on Tuesday afternoon (5:15pm, Ballroom F), Antony and I will do a session on the OQGRAPH engine: hierarchies/graphs inside the …

Last week I presented “From support services to software services – the evolution of open source business strategies” at the OSBC event in San Francisco.

The presentation was effectively a work in progress update on our research into the various strategies employed by technology vendors to generate revenue from open source software.

It included a partial explanation of my theory that those strategies do not exist in isolation, but are steps on an evolutionary process, and also introduced our model for visualizing the core elements of an open source-related business strategy.

I provided a number of examples of how the model could be used to compare the strategies of various open source businesses. …

Here’s what Pythian is cooking up for MySQL Conference this year.

Monday, April 128:30am: Get out of bed lazy bones and head to Ballroom B

… because you’re going to want to attend Sheeri K. Cabral‘s tutorial in two parts:

MySQL Configuration Options and Files: Basic MySQL Variables (Part 1)

Unlock all the information the MySQL server can give you! MySQL has many status variables that show how well your environment utilizes its resources. There are many system variables that can be set and changed to tune the server.
Read more.
Add to your personal schedule at …

Marten Mickos joins Eucalyptus. Novell rejects Elliot. Perspectives on OSBC. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Mårten Mickos was named CEO of Eucalyptus Systems.

# Novell’s board rejected Elliot’s takeover proposal as inadequate, will review other alternatives.

# North Bridge Venture Partners published the results of its Future of Open Source survey.

# Rob Bearden was appointed executive chairman of the board of Pentaho.

# The Eclipse Foundation …

Many Percona employees will be at the 2010 MySQL conference. We'll be giving a lot of informative technical talks on various topics. Here's a list:

• Morgan Tocker, Baron Schwartz: Diagnosing and Fixing MySQL Performance Problems
• Peter Zaitsev: Scaling Applications with Caching, Sharding and Replication
• Baron Schwartz: EXPLAIN Demystified
• Vadim Tkachenko: An Overview of Flash Storage for Databases
• Matt Yonkovit: …