MySQL forks: Monty splits from Sun

Sometimes open source projects "fork." Disagreements over direction cause a splinter group to hive off and maintain their own separate code base. This is going to happen with well-known heavyweight FOSS staple, MySQL, after the original author quit Sun Microsystems earlier this month.
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MySQL is a major piece of open source software. Sure, Linux gets most of the attention but MySQL is no less than the “M” in “LAMP” – the acronym given to the powerful and productive free web-oriented application platform that consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

The MySQL AB company was famously purchased for $USD 1 billion last year by Sun Microsystems – of Solaris UNIX and Java fame. The company had been founded in 1995 and up to the time of its acquisition MySQL AB was one of the largest open source companies in the world with 400 employees in 25 countries. Remarkably, around 70% of these employees worked from their own home offices.

MySQL AB was considered a champion of “second generation” open source companies. Like the so-called first gen companies, MySQL derived revenue from selling support, consulting services and training for their products.

Where second gen companies differ, however, is in dual licensing their software. MySQL – the product – is available under the GNU Public License (GPL) for any person to use without cost or restriction, as usual. Simultaneously, it is also available under a traditional paid license to clients who do not find the GPL suitable for their purposes; this is most typically companies who wish to include MySQL technology in a closed source product.

One of the original authors of MySQL is Michael Widenius, commonly known simply as Monty. Not even a month since the Sun acquisition Monty announced this month he had quit the company, citing dissatisfaction with the release of MySQL 5.1 being of perceived insufficient quality.

Late last year Monty blogged that there were crashing bugs in MySQL 5.1 despite having being released as GA (“General Availability”.)

He listed a series of expectations users should keep in mind when using version 5.1. His list included several damning comments.

“If you plan to use any of the new features of MySQL 5.1, regard these as if they would be of beta quality,” he said.

“We still have 20 known and tagged crashing and wrong result bugs in 5.1, 35 more if we add the known crashing bugs from 5.0 that are likely to also be present in 5.1.”

“We still have re than 180 serious bugs ... in 5.1.”

Monty also listed some example of older bugs that he believed definitely ought to have been fixed in 5.1 prior to it being marked as GA. Additionally, he listed a specific replication bug that he claimed “is such a serious issue that it should have stopped a GA release!”

It was pretty clear Monty was unimpressed with Sun’s marketing machine listing MySQL 5.1 as ready for business when he strongly felt this was not the case. In fact, he even went on to criticise his employer’s press release saying that an announced feature, “new SQL diagnostic aids and performance utilities” did not mean anything and lacked substance.

Monty explained his view of why the project went off the rails. Some of these problems were due to core developers leaving the company and new programmers coming in without sufficient in-depth product knowledge.

Yet, his most insightful criticism is to do with Sun Microsystems itself. Monty states, “We have changed the release model so that instead of focusing on quality and features our release is now defined by timeliness and features.”

“Quality is not regarded to be that important,” he said.

When Monty announced his resignation this month he conceded he was dissatisfied back in August and September last year but was still trying to work something out with Sun.

This was due to his anger over the 5.1 release being labelled as GA. He did not believe this was warranted and that the product was strongly lacking.

He continued to work with Sun hoping for change that did not eventuate.

Consequently, Monty has founded a new company called Monty Program AB. This, he says, will be a “true” open source company. He will begin working actively to produce a new MySQL code tree with “stable patches” and “some restructuring of the MySQL code to make it simpler, faster and with fewer bugs.”

Technically, Monty says this is not a fork but rather a “branch” because he intends to pull in all changes from the official code tree coming out of Sun. Although, he admits, “some of the changes will probably be reworked.”

Nevertheless, what this yet means for the future of MySQL is unclear. Without doubt Sun have the vaster set of resources and the commercial backing to keep the MySQL machination propelling forward.

Even so, if Monty Program AB can develop – and importantly, deliver on – a reputation as making a stable, higher quality product then it is feasible many installed MySQL servers will eventually migrate to the Monty version.

Additionally, Monty Program AB have plan to hire themselves to customers who need specific features or fixes in MySQL. These programming changes will be included in the general source base and hence available for all but there is no guarantee they will become part of the MySQL canon over at Sun, further differentiating the two products.

Of course, for proprietary software vendors who wish to use MySQL with their solutions Sun are still the only outfit in town selling a non-GPL license, and this alone delivers a hefty chunk of change to Sun in fees.

Either way, the future will be interesting. And, let this be a timely lesson to all open source developers that no project is immune from disharmony and forking.

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BY David M Williams
Source：iWire