No, this is not a blog post on the endless battle between end user and developers as a result of them not understanding each other. No, this post is about "what determines the value of a software/service company". Is it the number of end users or the developers/service people?

Lets start off with a made up example: What would MySQL AB be worth if, lets say Microsoft and not Sun would have bought it? Microsoft would have gotten a ton of users this way. Maybe it would have been worth the price just for an opportunity to try and kill a competitor (this would of course only partially work due to MySQL's GPL nature). How many developers would quit their jobs? How would that affect the future of the product? Ultimately I would expect the chances for a MySQL product and related services to go down considerably because key developers leaving would diminish end user trust and they would spearhead the creation of alternatives.

Now what …

Last week, we held a conference for leading financial and industry analysts from around the world. My keynote presentation is below - broken into two parts for ease of viewing. One analyst remarked, "but this is pretty much what you said last year."

I responded with, "That's the point."

If you'd like more specifics on our financial performance (directly from Mike Lehman, our CFO), views from the marketplace (from Don Grantham, our Global Sales and Services) or specific product roadmaps (from the heads of our Systems or Software businesses), just click here...)

I came across this very thought provoking blog post by Brain Aker of MySQL and /. fame. I think he raises some very important points about OSS development and how to create a successful new project. However some of the advice can also be applied retroactively to existing projects. I especially find his comments regarding "old boys clubs" important. Sometimes when you have a successful project it becomes hard to manage the influx of new people. So the old boys start to feel most comfy when they ignore the new guys. Patches are a good basis (though you still need people to have a look at the patches) of judgement to let new guys in. After all with good patches the project should be moving forward. I think in PHP we have a very similar policy to the "Three Commits, Ding, Ding, Ding" policy Brain applies. And that is a good thing.

A bit more on the "old boys club" stuff …

We’ve got a lot of queries recently on the MySQL docs team address about the documentation (particularly man pages) for MySQL on Debian/Ubuntu.

The source of the original problem was reported as a Debian bug. The assumption from the reading of the license in this instance is that you are not allowed to distribute MySQL documentation unless you’ve asked first, and that the documentation is not released under the GPL license.

The original license was misunderstood in this respect.

In fact, the license as originally quoted in that bug does allow you to provide the documentation if you are providing the MySQL software.

In addition, regardless of how you interpret the license, all of our documentation, including installable man pages, has been available on …

Well we are all quite excited about what's going on with MySQL AB. We have read the talk about MySQL 6.0 and the upcoming Falcon storage engine. We have read the news about SUN having bought up MySQL AB and how this is going to improve their abilities. We also took note about Monty's first blog posts and the announcement of the Maria storage engine. But in the middle of this, I wonder if the priorities are sorted properly.

Again, the above mentioned stuff is all big news and very important. But since quite some time I have not heard anything about MySQL 5.1. Wasn't 5.1 supposed to be GA last fall? Aren't we all really excited …

We just had an internal discussion about if sticking with PHP limits your career options. And just now (coincidence?) I noticed blog posts in the PHP and MySQL community noting similar concerns. The issue is that there is simply not enough top qualified talent that knows LAMP well enough to hire. Or maybe its just too hard to find them? It seems all the good guys are already hired. As a result companies end up looking for other technology, not because they actually believe that these technologies are any better or worth the license fees that these usually require to be paid up ..

So whats the problem here? Well I think one of the key issues is that LAMP focus on solving issues with a very non academic way. This implies that …

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We released our official earnings on Thursday last week, after pre-announcing the news one week prior alongside the announcement of our intent to acquire MySQL.

Our second quarter financial announcement came down to this: we doubled our profitability compared to a year ago, with $260 million in net income on revenues of $3.6 billion, while generating $336 million in cash from operations. We also repurchased $750 million of our own shares within the quarter, and reaffirmed our guidance for the full year of low to mid …

I passed the MySQL 5.0 DBA I and II certification tests today with very nice results. Just figured I’d post that so it’s verifiable that I’m not entirely spewing nonsense and general rabble. Today is a good day, and I will celebrate with the finest wines, and choicest of meats.

Exam Date: Monday, January 28, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Candidate: Matthew Reid
Candidate ID: MYSQL005372
Registration #: xxxxx2740
Exam Series: 005-002
Exam: Certified MySQL 5.0 DBA Part I
Validation #: xxxxx5662
Grade: pass

Exam Date: Monday, January 28, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Candidate: Matthew Reid
Candidate ID: MYSQL005372
Registration #: xxxxx7164
Exam Series: 006-002
Exam: Certified MySQL 5.0 DBA Part II
Validation #: xxxxxx5956
Grade: pass

As many of you know I am not very fond of the entire CLA idea. However as of late there have been some incorrect assertions around the entire CLA proposal, which I want to correct before people waste more time on the wrong arguments against the CLA proposal. I will have some better arguments against it at the end of this blog post.

It has been unclear to people if the only companies that were approached were big vendors like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft with MySQL AB tacked on. I know that PostgreSQL was asked from the very beginning. While they did not have someone to step up at the beginning of discussions, they did have someone join the discussion later on. Also for all I hear SQLite was also asked. However Richard did not have time to join the debates, which so far have been mainly about legal topics anyways. Now I dont know if Firebird was …

The following is essentially a repost of what I send to the PDO list. However I felt that since I have discussed this topic extensively on my blog before, I should also put this on my blog. Also it might be a slightly calmer reply than what others have posted. Finally after weeks of waiting we now have a proposal on the table of how the likes of IBM, Oracle and Microsoft feel that they could become code contributors to PDO. I agree we should see this as an opportunity. Getting new people on board is always a good thing (tm). I have read through …