I wonder how many people will attend a session at a tech conference where the start of the description reads as follows:

Hey You! Yes, You! Manager, marketeer, sales professional: are you tired of 98lb weaklings kicking silicon in your face?

I am thinking this way because my friends at MySQL AB are putting on another MySQL User Conference - this time from April 23 - 26 in Santa Clara, California.

The Call for Participation went live a few days ago and, as always, I am proposing a session. I don’t really need to go, but I definitely have a soft spot for the event, as I chaired the first two MySQL UCs. Also, I had a good deal of fun working on the …

Our web team informed me that we received a few comments from users about MySQL AB supposedly shutting down the development of the MySQLFront utility. I?d just like to clarify that this was not the case at all ? we merely asked the developers to stop violating our trade mark as outlined in our Trade Mark Policy. As I wrote some time ago, our trade marks are a very important asset to us as a company and we need to take action, if our marks are being violated.

We did not ask or force them to stop the development or to remove the program from the market completely ? this was their very own decision. In fact, we actually encouraged them from the beginning of our discussion to continue the development of the product under a …

Our web team informed me that we received a few comments from users about MySQL AB supposedly shutting down the development of the MySQLFront utility. I?d just like to clarify that this was not the case at all ? we merely asked the developers to stop violating our trade mark as outlined in our Trade Mark Policy. As I wrote some time ago, our trade marks are a very important asset to us as a company and we need to take action, if our marks are being violated.

We did not ask or force them to stop the development or to remove the program from the market completely ? this was their very own decision. In fact, we actually encouraged them from the beginning of our discussion to continue the development of the product under a …

Just to remind you: tonight at 19:00 we'll meet at our usual place - please see me previous announcement for details. According to the RSVPs I received, we should be around 20 people. Paul McCullagh will talk about the PBXT Storage Engine, so this sounds like a fun evening. See you there!

Just to remind you: tonight at 19:00 we'll meet at our usual place - please see me previous announcement for details. According to the RSVPs I received, we should be around 20 people. Paul McCullagh will talk about the PBXT Storage Engine, so this sounds like a fun evening. See you there!

Two days ago we added the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License to the list of licenses in the MySQL FLOSS license exception. In my opinion exception is actually a badly chosen word - extension would probably be more sufficient here as it actually extends the scope of the MySQL client libraries license. From the introductionary text on top of the document:

We want specified Free/Libre and Open Source Software ("FLOSS") applications to be able to use specified GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries (the "Program") despite the fact that not all FLOSS licenses are compatible with version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the "GPL").

In other words, the license exception allows the distribution of a derived work including the MySQL Client …

Two days ago we added the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License to the list of licenses in the MySQL FLOSS license exception. In my opinion exception is actually a badly chosen word - extension would probably be more sufficient here as it actually extends the scope of the MySQL client libraries license. From the introductionary text on top of the document:

We want specified Free/Libre and Open Source Software ("FLOSS") applications to be able to use specified GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries (the "Program") despite the fact that not all FLOSS licenses are compatible with version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the "GPL").

In other words, the license exception allows the distribution of a derived work including the MySQL Client …

While the MySQL Server source trees are maintained using the BitKeeper revision control system, several other MySQL projects (Connectors, GUI-Tools and the Manual) use Subversion instead.

To make it easier for external developers in getting familiar with the code base of the respective project, we now installed the FishEye SVN repository browser, which provides a very nice interface to the hosted repositories and boasts an impressive number of additional features like searching, diffing and RSS feeds. …

Yesterday I sent out the invitations for our third MySQL User Group Meeting in Hamburg, which will take place on Monday, 4th of September (which is the United MySQL Meetup Day). As usual, we will meet at 19:00 in the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao" - the food is excellent and we can use a separate room with a video projector there. If you happen to live around Hamburg, Germany and would like to join, please RSVP and join our mailing list!

Currently I am still pondering on the topic of the presentation - I suggested to invite Paul …

Some years ago (as penance for working at MySQL during some temporary corporate brain-damage about Free Software licensing) I began volunteering at the Free Software Foundation.

For the most part, I have spent my time providing support on Free Software licensing questions for the FSF Compliance Lab and helping out on the GPL v3 effort.

While both activities are quite rewarding, the work at the compliance lab tends to be most interesting. We serve a wide variety of people and organizations who have a correspondingly wide range of experience, views and questions. This leads to rewarding experiences, as well as experiences that are more …