The latest from the MySQL community

Malaysian Airlines has impressed me, yet again. Last week, in The Star, they reported that Sharul Isahak, a MAS employee, has helped save the airlines close to RM70 million (about USD$21 million), thanks to his use of open source software.

The software is meant to help airline maintenance, i.e. to keep track of parts and records of maintenance works. The web-based solution, is E-Promis (read the blog entry, its pretty interesting, as he takes you through the planning stages - it also seems like he’s still the only developer).

?This meant looking at open-source solutions. Instead of platforms such as Microsoft or Sun, we chose LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP)?

I couldn’t help but grin …

I'm off in few hours to attend DebConf 8 in lovely Mar del Plata, Argentina.  The only bummer is that its winter down there so this seaside resort is going to be a bit chlly and as a result Im not able to pack as light as I usually do.  That being said, getting away from the string of 100 degree days that we've been having here in Austin isn't such a bad thing.

I had a great time at DebConf 7 in Edinburgh, particularly since it was a homecoming of sorts for me.  This time its exciting since I've never been to Argentina before and have heard great things. Like last year, Sun is a Silver Sponsor of the event.

On the …

I'm off in few hours to attend DebConf 8 in lovely Mar del Plata, Argentina.  The only bummer is that its winter down there so this seaside resort is going to be a bit chlly and as a result Im not able to pack as light as I usually do.  That being said, getting away from the string of 100 degree days that we've been having here in Austin isn't such a bad thing.

I had a great time at DebConf 7 in Edinburgh, particularly since it was a homecoming of sorts for me.  This time its exciting since I've never been to Argentina before and have heard great things. Like last year, Sun is a Silver Sponsor of the event.

On …

I'm off in few hours to attend DebConf 8 in lovely Mar del Plata, Argentina.  The only bummer is that its winter down there so this seaside resort is going to be a bit chlly and as a result Im not able to pack as light as I usually do.  That being said, getting away from the string of 100 degree days that we've been having here in Austin isn't such a bad thing.

I had a great time at DebConf 7 in Edinburgh, particularly since it was a homecoming of sorts for me.  This time its exciting since I've never been to Argentina before and have heard great things. Like last year, Sun is a Silver Sponsor of the event.

On …

Matt Asay writes today about the prospects for open source vendors going public or, more likely, being acquired, and wonders whether open source vendors should “hold out for an IPO” or “capitulate” and be acquired.

The latter seems far more likely, especially in the current economic climate. We have written before about the open source vendors most likely to go public in the next couple of years.

Looking at the list of contenders again it is easy to imagine that they could all be snapped up before they make it public thanks to the fact that 1) open source vendors are very attractive investments 2) it is difficult for open source vendors to build the momentum to do so.

I spoke recently with …

I don't even remember how I ended up on the Akademy site this morning .. but luckily I did.

Akademy takes place in Sint-Katelijne-Waver , ages a go my grandparents lived there to, that's Belgium if you didn't notice yet.

Now the weird thing is that there seems almost no fuzz about it in the Belgian Foss Community , nobody talks about it.
Also on Upcoming.org the event can't be found. :(

Honestly this worries me, why isn't there more talk about a rather big FOSS event in Belgium, don't we care anymore ? Or do we just not care about KDE. (apart from the people organizing the event ?)
There's lots of Drupal, MySQL and Gnome activity going on in our little country but somehow less KDE. Hopefully Akademy changes that.

Sadly I have already a fully …

So it seems MySQL got on the radar of the monopolist, but the quotes that came from that event are more interesting .

Over at Oscon2008 Oscon people started realizing that the old monopolist definitely isn't the one to be afraid of.. there's new ones out there..

I already got quoted in a local magazine on the fact that new startups are more looking to Google than to redmond, but it also seems that Apple is the new kid in town to envy.

However, when looking at the Linux desktop I think we shouldn't be trying to imitate anybody .. we should be trying to head the pack, just as we have already done with Vitualization and other technologies.

Sparse notes from the talk, I noticed Sheeri recording some video, so sitting through that at some stage might make sense. There were no slides, this was a panel discussion. Suggested reading: Organic vs. Non-organic Open Source.

Does Open Source need to be “Organic”?
Brian Aker, Rob Lanphier, Stephen O’Grady, Theodore Ts’o

Taking code, and slapping a certain license on it, doesn’t a successful software project make.

Blurring the distinction, by marketing. Not doing any work to get external contributions.

Open sourcing a product one plans on “genociding”, its really bad.

“Corporate sociopathic Druckerism” — Brian Aker

“As long as the source code is …

Dana Blankenhorn asks whether open source is hurt by piracy, prompted by comments made by Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun’s community manager for OpenOffice.org at OSCON.

Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?”

He also notes that “On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to MySQL and Ingres.”

However, one need only remember …

When Sun acquired MySQL and announced that it would invest the resources necessary to position the open source database for mission-critical deployments, I think everyone assumed that the database would eventually become bigger and heavier.

Few would have predicted that we would also see a project that would make the database smaller and lighter, but that is exactly what Drizzle, a new project from Sun’s MySQL director of architecture Brian Aker, is all about.

Drizzle is taking a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to refactoring MySQL by ripping out much of the additional enterprise functionality that has gone into it since version 4.1 and focusing on the demands of a core set of applications.

As Brian …