Ask MySQL's CEO About Running a Free Software Business 85
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? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Biggest Problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
PostgreSQL is a *far* superior database, and unfortunately despite various kinds of database abstraction layers for the popular programming languages out there, people still insist on writing open source apps that are soley tied to MySQL. The whole notion of "but it's easier" just goes to show that they don't care abou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know superios can be context specific. Of the two, MySQL is faster. This matters a lot when you just don't need the "functional superiority" of PostgreSQL.
And one thing.. PostgreSQL with its incredibleness, doesn't support something as basic as full text indexing. In My
Re: (Score:2)
> And one thing.. PostgreSQL with its incredibleness, doesn't support something as basic as full text indexing.
False. TSearch2 ships with Postgres, and it requires merely checking a box to install.
MySQL's fulltext indexing is a joke. Let me count the ways:
* Words that are in over 50% of rows are considered stop words, and not indexed. You must recompile MySQL to change this.
* myisamchk resets the indexes to using the hardwired default parameters.
* It does not do stemming.
* It only works with MyISAM.
Re: (Score:2)
False. The only thing you have to do to overrule this 50% threshold is add "... IN BOOLEAN MODE" to your full text query. See the manual [mysql.com].
JP
Re: (Score:1)
It's like Betamax again (Score:2)
I'll admit I'm pretty fickle though, and I use MySQL because I think their documentation site is a lot better and the command line client is far nicer than Postgre's. Poor benchmarks for me to use, but hey.. it's all about the gloss.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a tautology. If it isn't good enough for your needs, then you'd probably use something better like PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc. Of the people who use it, it's always going to be good enough for what they use it for. Myself, I have no experience with PostgreSQL, but I know that just about everyone says it's a better DB than MySQL. MySQL does fit my needs. However, I don't run enterprise level stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
MySQL doesn't suck enough for what 99% of people use it for to make them want to try anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Specifically, I'm interested in the possibility of developing ASP.NET apps with a F/OSS database backend. It looks like both MySQL and Postgre have
Perception of low quality for 'free' (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Strategies... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
R&D Directions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:R&D Directions? (Score:1)
> In a market where people are just looking for stability, simplicity & scalability, where do you turn for innovation in your products?
Actually getting those things would be innovative.
Seriously, most of what passes for innovation is packaging up other peoples ideas, possibly making small improvements if you are lucky, and selling them to a wide market. Then companies claim innovation and people believe the ideas are innovative
Re:R&D Directions? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 de
Defects per KLOC (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They just ignore the errors, and pretend they don't exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's plenty of companies out there that offer support for MySQL. Sure you got to pay for it, but if you used a closed system, you'd be paying for it even if you didn't need it.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL someone on slashdot believes in the "security through obscurity" paradigm.
Achievements & Fallout (Score:5, Interesting)
Roadmap Decisions (Score:4, Interesting)
IPO (Score:1, Redundant)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mickos: We plan to give our investors an exit. When or what that looks like remains to be seen.
Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the most common complaints I've heard about the business model of profiting on support for a product, is that it provides motivation to keep the product from becoming very user friendly. After all, if the product is too easy to use, who will pay for support? In my own experience, I've seen a lot of companies that consider support to be insurance, and don't use it for help with installation, configuration, or to overcome usability issues so much as a way to cover their asses in case something goes very wrong. Do a lot of your customers use support to overcome usability problems and if so, does this de-motivate you to solve other usability issues?
how hard is it? (Score:2)
Help in avoiding duplication of questions (Score:5, Informative)
In Guy Kawasaki's Blog, [guykawasaki.com] he's asked:
1. How do you make money with an Open Source product?
2. What changes in the Open Source community's attitude have you encountered since you decided "to build a company" around MySQL?
3. Do you compete head to head with Oracle or do you have different customers?
4. What's the biggest MySQL DB?
5. What's the weirdest use of MySQL?
6. What's the most "mission critical" use of MySQL?
7. How does a company controls what's happening to its product when the Open Source community is doing the programming and testing?
8. Is Open Source hindering innovation because it's one thing to debug an existing product but it's another to design a new one?
9. Who fixes the most bugs?
10. If MySQL ceased to exist as an organization, would MySQL the product continue?
In InfoWorld, [infoworld.com] he's asked:
1. Recently, a number of open-source developers have expressed their unhappiness with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the second draft of GPLv3. Are you concerned about a potential forking of the license as some people stick with GPLv2 and others move to GPLv3?
2. How do you decide when MySQL needs to develop new features for the database and when to rely on the open-source community for those innovations?
3. So, is open source then a more forgiving environment than the proprietary software world?
4. What's ahead in 2007 for MySQL?
5. What's the latest news on Falcon, the transactional database engine being developed by database architect Jim Starkey who joined MySQL in February?
6. Is MySQL's current dominance of the open-source database market ever a cause for concern?
In Forbes, [forbes.com] he's asked:
1. How is open source software influencing what the bigger tech giants like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft will do in the next year?
2. Do open source firms that sell to large, proprietary software companies risk being dubbed sellouts by the community that's helped them develop their software?
3. How do Oracle's recent open source acquisitions affect MySQL?
4. Is Oracle more of a threat now?
5. What is MySQL's workforce like?
6. MySQL recently took funding from Red Hat, Intel and SAP. What's the strategy here?
7. Is there an IPO for MySQL in the future?
In LXer, [lxer.com] he's asked:
1. What are your short and long term goals do you have for the MySQL database system?
2. Realistically where do you think you will pick up quick conversions to enhance your immediate market share from your competitors? Later, how much market share must MySQL commercial versions have to pick up to have long-term viability?
3. If you see your main opportunity is in the replacement of Oracle installations does MySQL match or exceed the forte of Oracle in the transaction per second processing? Are you now aimed at the lower end of the Oracle market installations? What will it take to be really competitive with Oracle at the upper end of the scale?
4. If you see your natural market as the range SQL Server is now aimed at, small medium business and departmental installations, can you match their ease of administration? If not what is the salient argument for such companies to install MySQL over the competition? Since you are primarily aimed at the market willing to pay for your enhancements and support, do you see any advantage in offering a MySQL product that will undercut MySQL server from below?
5. What trade offs have had to be made to make MySQL 5.0 commercial version more feature rich and robust?
6. Where do you see competition arising from for pursuing the paths to th
GPL protocal (Score:2, Interesting)
Clarification requested and Questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Please mod this up. I wish to understand the rational for this decision as well as a potential commercial, closed source, software developer. Though I can appreciate MySQL's need to make money, I fail to see how this is consistent with GPL, as I understand it. MySQL apparently demands that I either pay up or open source my software simply because it packages and uses the MySQL database (no modifications t
The few, the proud... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your company is one of the few that has made open source into a legitimate business model. What has made you succeed where others have failed?
Heh. I've worked at a number of places in my time, including no less than four companies that develop open source software as part of their business plan. You've probably never heard of any of them. I think you might want to rephrase that as, "your company is one of the most well known companies to use open source development in your business model. What has made y
MySQL trade coverage (Score:1, Interesting)
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 pu
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://chisflorinel.blogspot.com/2006/09/mysql-fr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What's missing (Score:1)
Bank manager (Score:2)
profit! (Score:2)
give it away fro free
????
profit!
open source? (Score:2)
and that its gpld, but in order to get to the mainline, one must agree
to a 'contributors license' which assign all rights to mysql ad.
a bit of a dodge?
Re: (Score:1)
As for whether we are open source, you will hear various parties argue one way or the other, usually coming down to our licensing choice or the fact that 99.9% of the code is developed internally. The fact is, though, that we're committed to open source ideals of access to source code and the freedom to modify and distribute the source code, and we will remain com
Re: (Score:2)
its a bit disingenous to assert that its just about liability, as you demand that
contributors assign all rights, so that you can distribute an alternative license,
including this code, for a fee.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
contributions, which include the right to redistribute. its normally not
necessary to assign the ownership to the parent organization. this is a
direct result of the company asserting its ownership rights over the source
and all derivitives, in direct contradition to the spirit of the gpl. again,
to assert that this is a legal neccessity is duplicitous. you are trying
to keep and eat your cake. great if you can get away with it, but its not
f
Re: (Score:2)
If the contributor did not assign us copyright, we would not legally (in the US), be able to include their code in ours.
Technically, if a contributor is modifying the existing MySQL code, they only have the right to do that by agreeing to the GPL, which includes granting everyone the right to add their code to anything they want that is also GPL. If they are contributing completely new code, like a module or something and they have not agreed to license it under the GPL, then they'd need to agree to some
Re: (Score:1)
First of all, we don't ask users to sign an additional license. We ask contributor's to assign MySQL the copyright to their contributed code. And, for your information the GNU/FSF does: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html [gnu.org] Guys, it's fairly simple, and not some "evil doing". You can see the contributor's license agreement here: http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQL_Contribution_Lic ense_Agreemen [mysql.com]
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, we don't ask users to sign an additional license.
I meant users of the license, but I can see why you were confused.
We ask contributor's to assign MySQL the copyright to their contributed code.
Right, and I asked why. You see having the copyright transferred to you provides you with the opportunity to release that code under a non-GPL license at some point in the future. That means you could take all the work contributed by these people (which admittedly is small compared to the total wor
MySQL business model for niche products? (Score:3, Interesting)
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
What is income per user? (Score:1)
What proportion of active MySQL users pay for service, and what is the average income per user?
Commercial vs free - where to draw the line (Score:2)
With costs for things like this and gold/platinum support also relatively high on a per server basis it seems there's a wide gap between community based support which costs nothing and enterprise support which appears somewhat pricey.
How do you draw the line
the next big thing (Score:1)
Scale Oracle vs. MySQL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)