Two recent articles, Commercial open source, a misnomer? and Free Code For Sale, may be the beginnings of a backlash against the "commercial open source" model. One challenges whether commerce and open source mix at all, while the other asks whether other models of open source development may be better for users.

It's inevitable that any major change would have its detractors. First open source was out to destroy capitalism. Now is commercial open source out to destroy open source? Is this capitalism's revenge, a case of the empire striking back? Let's look at some of the common arguments.

Commercial open source is not open source.

"Open source software" means software which is available under a certain license, as defined by the …

I spent a bit of time today organizing myself for a bunch of trips next month.

Contrary to my blog posting earlier, I will be at the MySQL Users Conference 2006, which is on the 24th-27th April. But I’m getting into San Francisco in the week before, so if you’re up to meeting me, don’t hesitate to drop me a line. I have a feeling that I’ll actually be staying in Santa Clara as opposed to San Francisco proper, but there should be public transport, right?

I should also be with my colleague, Arjen, who’s speaking at the Free OSS Forum Day, organized by Open Source Tasmania. He tells me that Pia should also be there, which should rock. So Hobart, here I come on …

Is PrimeBase XT (PBXT) just another transactional engine for MySQL? I think (hope) not! But, even if it was, it would still be justified considering the current lack of an independent (i.e. not owned by a monopolist) transactional engine. But I started developing PBXT at the beginning of last year for a much more basic reason, after all I had no idea what Oracle was about to do.

I started programming PBXT simply because it was there!

But wait, you say, "we climb mountains because they are there, we don't program software because it is there", because it isn't (before we start). Well I think many programmers can relate to that statement anyway. Programming is much like climbing a mountain. You start out with great enthusiasm, wanting to do things better and quicker than before. But as you get higher, the air gets thinner. You struggle on and as you approach the top it gets tougher and tougher (we …

First day back from the Developers Conference in Sorrento, and the first post to this blog (thought I might just as well get started, I've been thinking about it for a while but always been distracted). Since I've been to Italy before, I knew part of what was waiting: excellent food, terrific coffee, and nice friendly people. What I wasn't prepared for was the intense discussions that were continously going on. The last year, in Prague, it was to a large part just the down-to-earth work of getting the code ready for the 5.0 release; this time, however, the conference was vibrant with ideas for the future and ways to leverage the skills of the people in MySQL to produce even better services.

Before the conference, I was mostly busy with getting the row-based replication in shape for shipping. All it all, I would say that it holds up very well. Since it's a fresh feature, there's (of course) a list of bugs, but these are mostly annoyances like …

MySQL is now offering a brand new course. It?s called ?MySQL 5.0 New Features?. It is designed to teach experience MySQL users about the new features of the latest release. So, if you are using MySQL 4.1 and want to know more about views, stored procedures, triggers and much more, sign up for a class. There will be lots of them in the near future all around the world.

Right now, I?m teaching the very first class in Tokyo at a customer?s site. We have a new format for the new courses that include more material for students to take home and study after the class is over.

Read more about this and other courses at http://www.mysql.com/training/

From time to time, I have found that companies are most interested in asking me the following questions when giving a job interview:

1. Oracle: Is it possible to recover data from cold and hot backups.
2. MySQL: When is it OK to use MyISAM table type?
3. When should one use InnoDB table type?
4. Linux: How can you find the exit status code of a program
5. Linux: What does the output of ipcs show?
6. What are the different MySQL table types? Comment on each one. [Also see: MySQL …

The MySQL Phrasebook, by Zak Greant and Chris Newman is now available from Amazon. Book Description: "The MySQL Phrasebook is a pocket guide that is jam-packed with useful and essential code "phrases" for the MySQL developer's everyday use. Packed with pr