I'm not going to pretend that it was easy to nail this Q&A with the CEO and Co-founder of MuleSource. The company has been hiding in plain sight for about 2 months and my quest for an interview has been nothing short of Indiana Jones meets Get Smart.

Nonetheless, I persevered and bring to you a delightful Q&A with myself.

Q&A with Dave Rosenberg, CEO, MuleSource Inc.

Just what is Mule?
Mule is the leading open source ESB (enterprise service bus) and integration platform. Mule has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and is in production at more than 100 companies and governments worldwide.

The open source Mule project was founded in 2003 by Ross Mason, CTO of MuleSource …

The Lafarge group, a global leader in building materials, has selected the MySQL® database to operate the real-time management of the different sales and dispatch phases of its Aggregates & Concrete business. The system is already installed at over 100 quarries, with plans to service up to 250 production sites in Europe by the end of autumn 2006.

The Lists of MySQL Certified Candidates now also include the new Certifications for MySQL 5.0 - Certified MySQL 5.0 Developer and Certified MySQL 5.0 DBA:

http://www.mysql.com/training/certification/candidates.php

Also new is that you can now find some statistic figures. You can see how many have passed each individual Certification and on the detail page you also find how many people have passed this particular Certification in each specified country. So you can for example easily say: I'm one of eight Certified MySQL 5.0 DBAs in Germany.

Looks like we have a new version. From the announcement:

MySQL Connector/Net 5.0.1 Beta has been released. MySQL Connector/Net is an all-managed ADO.Net provider for MySQL. While this release is suitable for any version of MySQL, it is strongly encouraged that this release not be used on any production data. This release is feature complete with the exception of DTC support in System.Transactions.

It is now available in source and binary form from the Connector/Net download pages at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/5.0.html and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time - if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

The following major changes are listed:

• Support for ADO.Net 2.0 interfaces and subclasses …

I’ve been working, on and off, for the past few months on a solution that really pulls together most of the major functions of our platform into an entire solution.  The SQR uses a little bit of the entire Pentaho Platform including Action Sequences, Kettle ETL, database structure initialization, Mondrian OLAP definitions, summary tables, JFreeReports, Pentaho Analysis views, user prompting, custom report rollups in Excel, etc.  It looks, feels, and operates as an entire solution, soup to nuts, running on Pentaho.

The SQR doesn’t aim to replace reports provided with Bugzilla.  Bugzilla is a good database schema for running an application (ie, Bugzilla) but it’s sometimes difficult if not impossible to ask some important analytic questions.  Questions such as:

and “Open vs Closed with a trend over time”

and the ability to build some of your own dashboards

The …

MySQL Connector/Net 5.0.1 Beta has been released. MySQL Connector/Net is an all-managed ADO.Net provider for MySQL. While this release is suitable for any version of MySQL, it is strongly encouraged that this release not be used on any production data. This release is feature complete with the exception of DTC support in System.Transactions.

It is now available in source and binary form from the Connector/Net download pages at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/5.0.html and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time - if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

Highlights in this release:

Support for ADO.Net 2.0 interfaces and subclasses
(this release now includes foreign key support)

…

bit, bitwise operators, boolean performance

Boston October MySQL User Group: see full event listings at:

http://mysql.meetup.com/137/calendar/5118339/

Tuesday, Oct. 10th at MIT, free pizza and soda (thanks to MySQL, AB and the MIT community). Please RSVP!!

To RSVP anonymously, please login to the Meetup site with the e-mail address “admin at sheeri dot com” and the password “guest”.

Plenty of free parking (you can park in MIT lots after 3 pm); 1 block south of the Kendall Square T stop.

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Most of …

If you are used to open source products, chances are you have gone through this routine more than once. Search for what you need, find a suitable product, go to its web site, download it, test it. Then, if you like it, you start using it right away, otherwise you dump it without a second thought.
The whole process takes less than one minute for small packages. But anyway, even for larger packages, the total time that this whole business requires your attention is very low. Even if it requires a huge download, it can be left unattended and you can resume the testing task when you feel like it. The bottom line is that we got used to a quick try-and-use process of open source products.

Sometimes, though, while performing the above routine, there is a unexpected obstacle. The product maker requires a free login. You don't have to pay anything, but you have to go through the motions of filling a form that asks you everything about …

This is just a hypothesis at this point, but my experience with Lineo, Novell, Alfresco, and the companies I advise is pushing me toward the following:

An open source company's sales model should be "low-touch" until the point that companies are buying your product more for its intrinsic qualities than because it's cheap/open source.I need to figure out a more concise way of saying that, but wanted to get it up on the web so that others could see if it matches up with their experience.

The thought behind that statement is this: When companies are willing to pay parity or a premium for your product, it means they're no longer primarily interested in you because you're open source. Some companies will download your product solely because it's open source. They may initially be interested because they think they want an open source widget, and your product fits that bill. For such interest, a low-touch, inside sales approach is …