Ask MySQL's CEO About Running a Free Software Business

There have been so many articles written about the perils, pitfalls, and possible rewards of running a business based on free or open source software that we can't possibly link to them all. Instead, let's ask MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos how to make money with a company based on free software, because he runs a company that is almost always touted as one of the world's greatest free software (business) successes. You may want to read some of these interviews with Mårten before you come up with your own questions in order to avoid duplication, but other than that suggestion and the usual Slashdot interview rules, ask whatever you like, however you like.

Biggest Problem?

[eldavojohn]

In your eyes, what's the biggest problem with MySQL? More specifically, what leaves market share room for Oracle & your competitors? Do you even see yourself as having any competitors since your product is free?

Perception of low quality for 'free'

[OakDragon]

How do you fight the perception that MySQL is not suitable for 'the real world' because it is free?

R&D Directions?

[eldavojohn]

In a market where people are just looking for stability, simplicity & scalability, where do you turn for innovation in your products? Is there a lot of research and development towards new features and completely new products in MySQL's community or do you aim primarily to do one thing well? How do you influence the direction of this research in such a large open source project? Do you attempt to add direction at all?

Defects per KLOC

[eldavojohn]

Your website [mysql.com] touts you as having the lowest defects per KLOC by up to 12 times the industry standard, what do you attribute as the leading factor to your success in this respect? Since cold cash is the traditional method, how do you incentivise code quality in an open source product?

Achievements & Fallout

[eldavojohn]

In your five years as MySQL CEO, what has been your proudest moment? Do you find it difficult to lead a company based on a product that belongs to a community? Do you ever experience any fallout/backfire from running your company on such a business model?

Roadmap Decisions

[Gunfighter]

When you plan your software product roadmaps, what feature requests do you pay more attention to? Enterprise customers want scalability, reliability, redundancy, and security; but some database programmers are looking for features such as solid transaction support, stored procedures, and more functions. How do you rank which feature requests get attention first?

Re:Biggest Problem?

[CastrTroy]

They still have competitors like PostgreSQL that are also free. MySQL currently has a huge following, and is "the" database offered by most shared hosting companies. What is MySQL doing to ensure that they stay in that position. As far as I've heard, PostgreSQL is a much better database, the only reason why MySQL is the DB used by webhosts is because many tools (phpBB and others) depend on MySQL to function properly.

GPL protocal

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is MySQL's justification of claiming the GPL applies to the MySQL wire level protocol itself?

MySQL trade coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me start by stating that I use MySQL for numerous intensive "enterprise" applications, so I don't intend this question to sound as critical as it probably does, but . . .

Does MySQL AG pay for the intensive promotion it receives in Linux Journal similar publications ? By this I mean the fact that every single article about anything that uses a database mentions MySQL, when you would expect an occasional sqlite or PostgreSQL, even disregarding technical advantages MySQL might have.

It might be that the publications lean towards MySQL without your direct influence, because you advertise with them or simply due to the preferences of editors and authors, of course. But if it is a conscious and organized bias I would like to know.

Again, this question is asked out of curiosity and not meant to be critical -- I work as an independent contractor, and I will spend the next several weeks helping a customer upgrade dozens of mysql servers to version 5, and migrate data -- I like MySQL, and it makes it possible for me to make money while playing with computers !

MySQL business model for niche products?

[MarkWatson]

Hello Mårten,

First, congratulations on MySQL's market capitalization! My question is:

I have been working part time for about 6 years on software for text/data mining and general semantic information extraction. Almost all of my development is in Common Lisp, but I have ported little bits to Java and released that under the GPL in the past. I view this as a small, niche market, not like MySQL. What do you think that chances are for making money on GPLing a niche product?

MySQL is very widely used so if you capture commercial use icensing costs for a small percent of users, you do very well. For my software, with luck perhaps a few hundred companies a year might start adopting my product. Does it seem like wishful thinking for me to use a GPL based business model like MySQL's?

I want my customers to have my source code for a lot of reasons, but I would also like to capture revenue. I might just end up going to market as a proprietary product that incidently includes source code, with licensing that prohibits redistribution to non-customers.

Thanks for your help,
Mark

Re:R&D Directions?

[bzipitidoo]

A few questions, only one about the biz. For those of us who like designing and researching and wish to spend our time on that, and don't like the thought of spending time on sales and promotion, or begging for money from VC vultures, or figuring out tax forms, stock options, and such, or sifting through thousands of resumes trying to find a few good people to hire, or knowing when a deal is a bad one to be avoided at all costs, or all the other aspects of business, what are wannabe independent software developers to do? If I try to start a business, it'd be so I can make some money doing what I like, not sink time into the business of business. How'd MySQL handle that when it started?

The parent's R&D question reminded me of another question. A goal of future versions of ReiserFS is to make database programs unnecessary and obsolete. Reiser asserts the only reason you even need a database program is because current file systems cannot do things like efficiently store, access, and query thousands of small records. File systems should be able to do everything a database can do. Apart from the bit about being in jail, is Reiser crazy, or is he on to something?

Anyway, do you recommend or favor some file systems over others for best performance from MySQL?