The Oracle Contributor Agreement, or OCA (born as the SCA) is a required document before we can accept such contributions and a fairly common practice in open source projects. One important thing that has changed for the OCA is the email address to use for signed contributor agreements. Check this …

Kazuho Oku of Cybozu Labs, Inc., a community contributor to MySQL and SCA signatory, gives a talk on Q4M, a message queue stroage engine for MySQL.

Kazuho Oku of Cybozu Labs, Inc., a community contributor to MySQL and SCA signatory, gives a talk on Q4M, a message queue stroage engine for MySQL.

Kazuho Oku of Cybozu Labs, Inc., a community contributor to MySQL and SCA signatory, gives a talk on Q4M, a message queue stroage engine for MySQL.

A while ago, MySQL developed a Community Contribution Agreement for community contributions to the MySQL source code. While browsing the MySQL Forge Wiki I came across:

http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Community_Contributions

This page shows that the Community Contribution Agreement has changed — it is no longer the document MySQL AB created. It is now Sun Microsystem’s standard Sun Contributor Agreement, which CEO Mårten Mickos recently explained to me was “more accepted than the agreement MySQL had come up with.”

I am happy to see some of the great Sun practices trickle down to replace some issues that MySQL did not handle smoothly. All in all, I agree with Mårten Mickos and think the Sun Contributor Agreement is much better….

….but what do you think?

Sun continues to take a performance pounding, and the rumors of replacements, layoffs and revamps are beyond swirling and now perpetuating skepticism of the company. It strikes me as odd that Sun, which has embraced open source and is also the defacto leading corporate open source software contributor, is continually dogged by doubts about its transitions and tenures despite well-respected technology and participation in open source. Part of this lies in the company’s continuing dichotomy in strategy — a reference to tepid support for Linux and continued preference for and focus on Solaris. This is a large part of Sun’s ‘handicap,’ IMHO when it comes to Linux and open …