Last week I was at OSCON (more on that later) and I was surrounded by a mix of laptops - most of them running Ubuntu or OS X. This caused an internal dilemma I’ve been having for years to resurface: is using a Mac “selling out” from your OSS ideals? I still use a PowerBook and last fall I purchased an iMac (guilt included). Previously I had been running Slackware Linux on a wide range of desktops and laptops (this was since 1995). I switched because I was tired of dealing with all those little pesky hardware compatibility issues, especially on laptops, and I thought the time saved there would be a good tradeoff for new development. Well, I don’t think I can use that excuse anymore. Ubuntu is pretty slick and takes many of those issues away. A few laptop manufacturers are even shipping with Linux now. There is even an argument using OS X for development is more difficult now (try compiling large applications like MySQL or Drizzle). How do you …

Hot on the heels of news that SquareSpace is using Oracle, comes news that LinkedIn is going whole hog with MySQL.

Actually, you could say that LinkedIn is buying into Sun. They are buying the MySQL Enterprise subscription and they'll be running MySQL on Sparc servers and Solaris 10. They've signed up for Sun Professional Services, MySQL Professional Services, and …

Tim O'Reilly talks about the value of data and lock-in READ MORE

Last week I asked for more case studies, and I heard back from a range of companies that recently had significant customer wins. In an effort to spread the good word, here are a few new places that open source is releasing customers from the shackles of proprietary lock-in:

• LinkedIn has selected Sun's MySQL database

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Unless your in the desert under a rock (where rain is clearly needed), you will have heard of Drizzle - A Lightweight SQL Database for Cloud and Web. My company 42SQL is sponsoring the BuildBot for the Drizzle project. BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes.

Check out Installing Buildbot for what’s necessary to get a working installation. This is necessary for the Master and Slaves.

Configuration was a little more complicated then expected, due to lack of accurate documentation, and reading old docs at sourceforge. Be sure now to read …

As of today, Proven Scaling has launched an official blog, which we’ll all be writing entries on. Check it out and subscribe!

Whether an online comic, or not, the New Straits Times is one of the three English dailies, that still cost some amount of money in Malaysia. Their Computimes pullout, now better known as Tech&U, featured Raj Kissu, a Summer of Code 2008 participant for MySQL. While the article itself, fails to mention MySQL, he describes what he’s working on:

I?m doing a project on binary large objects in database. Basically, it is aimed at allowing people to file or stream files online. The program is based on open source.

Kudos to Raj, kudos to Google, kudos to phpMyAdmin, and kudos to MySQL. As for the reporter, as usual, old medium journalism tends to be somewhat of a fail….

I had a great time at O'Reilly's 10th annual Open Source Convention aka OSCON08.  I will post later about the conference itself including the podcasts I did, the announcements we made etc.  For now, here are some pics I took from the Sun Zend bash that was held in the Double Tree parking lot (which actually isn't used as a parking lot).

Above -- Row 1: (L) Tim Bray all dressed up with no place to go; (R) …

The MySQL Community version is different in theory from the Enterprise version in relation to the following points:

0) It’s free
1) It has community patches
2) It is released less often
3) It is tested less strictly

In reality, the first two differences are not applicable — the binaries and source code for Enterprise can be freely and legally downloaded at http://mirror.provenscaling.com/mysql/enterprise/. The process for adding community patches to the MySQL source code has not been changed sufficiently to be able to actually add community patches and encourage more community development.

I understand that MySQL (and now Sun) needs to make money. I also understand that development takes a lot of effort, and seeing an ROI is important. The Community/Enterprise split was designed to have tradeoffs on both sides. …