LinuxWorld Magazine (written by Paul Sterne and Nicholas Herring) has an interesting piece on open source venture capital investments. The report focuses on the question: is now the right time to invest in open source? The answer to some is "Of course!!!" But the data might suggest we're in an inflationary period, with smart money waiting for valuations to come down.

From the article:

Starting in the mid '90s, a few brave pioneers like Benchmark invested in an open alternative to proprietary software and made a fortune. By the end of the decade, everyone wanted a piece of the action. A second wave of VCs rushed in at ridiculous valuations and got their clocks cleaned. In 1999 and 2000, over-capitalized, over-valued open source companies burnt through hundreds of millions of dollars. Shame on the dumb money that gives efficient markets a bad name. Then, …

So last night, during a break in the quiz show (where Prokrasti Nation had a good showing, as did the other teams — Recreational Evil, Peeps, and Safe Hex) we bid on the T-shirt that had the signatures of all the speakers at the conference. All the proceeds were to go to the EFF, so it’s a good cause.

They announced it was cash only, so I looked in my wallet. $33. Well, the bidding quickly went over that, and when it reached about $100 they said it didn’t have to be cash only. Around $300 Brian Aker said that they’d give whoever won credits in a new command, SHOW CONTRIBUTORS. Well, when they said that I knew I HAD to have my name in the source code.

I mean, dude, my NAME in the SOURCE CODE!!! But then again, this is an open source application, I could just spend some time and write a patch.

I’ve been saving for my wedding next June (14 months away) so when I bid …

At the MySQL Users Conference I met with Paul McCullough, the developer behind the new PBXT transactional engine.  Paul is a super sharp developer and also a very nice guy and he obliged me by posing in a photo as part of my "storage engine stalker series" of photos including Ken Jacobs of Oracle, Jim Starkey author of Falcon, and Paulo Lubet from Solid. 

It will be interesting to see in the coming months how PBXT and other engines flourish in the community.  We'll do our best to provide more engines, samples, documentation and ideas on the MySQL Forge as well as the …

It's been well mentioned by myself that of late the time I have been able to devote to MySQL has become restricted. Part of this was due to me taking an exciting new job just before Christmas. When I took the decision to close MySQLDevelopment.com down this was in part due to the fact I was using Oracle rather than MySQL and my exposure to real world situations was limited.

However the day after I made the decision and announced it here my boss asked me to take over the running of a MySQL/PHP based website. The good news at least is that it means it might give me something to actually comment on with regard to the blog, even if it doesn't afford me the time to continue with the site.

But it's not just good news for me it's also good news for you out there too, the company I work for are looking to take on some new developers. We are looking ideally for people with PHP and Oracle experience but are willing to train good PHP …

Some of the photos here are kinda dark but they give the idea.

The Procasti Nation team (Sheeri missing)

Brian and Monty auctioning the T-Shirt


Monty holding the T-Shirt

Monty models the T-Shirt


From left to right (Monty, Me and Brian Aker)

Many more photos to come so stay tuned.

…

Google’s GData, MySQL, and the Future of on-line Databases (by Jeremy Zawodny)

“GData is the realization of the future that Adam Bosworth spoke about.”

So damn tired right now... Quickies then something long about MySQL and epoll/kqueue networking:

Book that was recommended/plugged in person. Good so far.
Finally gave money to the EFF
Heikki Tuuri laughed at me during his first talk today: "Do any of the new MySQL storage engines offer online data compression? Any at all?" "Archive!" "Hah. Hahhaha. No indexes! Hahahha." - which was funny, but that's the only new feature he announced, and was the same new feature he announced last year.
Generally interesting/weird things going on.

On tuesday I was chilling my ass off at lunch and whining about having to use a connection pooler for MySQL. Since I'm here I decided to give it some more thought. It'd be sweet if MySQL's connection handler worked more like …

Wow, just got out of a very interesting quiz show at the MySQL Users Conference which took an interesting turn.

Near the end of the quiz show, Arjen announced that the T-shirt signed by all MySQL conference speakers (including me) would be auctioned and the proceeds donated to EFF.

My highest bid was $34 at which my wife was looking at me.

Ronald and Sheeri had other plans. They kept outbidding each other for most part.

Arjen, Monty and Brian kept encouraging the audience to go higher and higher.

Sheeri was very excited once Brian …

… you’ll never have to show up again.

Overheard Arjen telling us this when the MySQL signed 10th anniversary t-shirt was going for $650. At $775, we had to go visit Kaj, and he decided that if its above $1,000, the Community Budget will shell out $800 in addition.

Jeremy Cole will do 10% of the total! Sheeri is now giving $900. She’s getting married, and she figured she doesn’t need flowers for the wedding!

But the ultimate winner, Ronald Bradford bid $1,000. Sheeri paid $900. Jeremy gets to pay 10%. Ronald got the t-shirt… They both get an entry to SHOW CONTRIBUTORS in MySQL 5.1.

All in all, the EFF should be one happy camper from all this :-)

At the MySQL User Conference - MySQL Quiz Show we were asked to Stump a MySQL Guru. Well I submitted a few questions, and the first one stumped the guru, being Jeremy Cole, and my prize was a MySQL tee-shirt.

The Question: What are the current supported languages of the GRT Environment used in the MySQL GUI products?
The Answer: Lua, C, C++, Java, Python and PHP