Microsoft's embrace of MySQL could kill it

For those who have fret about Microsoft fighting against open source, I have news for you: Microsoft's impact on open source may be worse as a friend than as an enemy.

Now with MySQL inside! Yes, we can.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Over the past few years, Microsoft has steadily warmed to open source, to the point that it now hosts its own open-source code repository and has seen its Microsoft Public License used more often than venerable licenses like the Mozilla Public License or the Eclipse Public License, according to new data released by Black Duck Software.

The open-source world should be worried.

After all, as IBM's Savio Rodrigues points out, an open-source-friendly Microsoft no longer has qualms about embedding open-source software like MySQL into its products. In particular, Microsoft supports MySQL as part of its Azure cloud service...without paying Sun a dime for the privilege.

It's a completely legitimate way to offer open-source value to Microsoft customers, and is very similar to what Amazon is doing with MySQL.

However, as Rodrigues notes, it's not necessarily good for MySQL, or other open-source projects that could be used this same way:

The larger point is if Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google, Cisco, EMC/VMware, or Oracle/Sun offer a simple and supported cloud service for running MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss, Mule, or Apache HTTP instances, what reason do customers have to acquire "enterprise subscriptions" from the vendors developing these open source projects? Until now, the value of an open source "enterprise subscription" has largely been access to support and access to administration and management tooling. In the case of MySQL, the former is provided by Amazon RDS and Azure SQL as part of the per-hour service. Again in the case of MySQL, the latter is rendered unnecessary or replicated through Amazon RDS and Azure SQL tools.

Consider it a super-friendly, and super-dangerous, bear hug.

For those who think that this affects commercial open source and not community-led open source, think again. Money and open source don't grow on trees.

The explosion of open-source development has directly correlated to the explosion of cash investments into open-source projects, starting with IBM's $1 billion commitment to Linux. MySQL, the database, would be a pale shade of what it is today without MySQL AB, the company that has funded the overwhelming majority of its development.

So, is this cause to castigate Microsoft? No. After all, it's really no different from what Amazon, Google, Apple, and others do with open source.

Rather, Microsoft's move should serve as a reminder to open-source companies that they need to upgrade their business models or risk being rendered irrelevant by the cloud and all that it enables vendors to do with open-source software.

After all, the protections that the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open-source licenses offer in the traditional software world are essentially meaningless in the networked world, where software is used to create services, but isn't actually distributed.

This is as true for Red Hat as it is for open-source start-ups like Openbravo and Talend. Imagine if Amazon decides to start offering JBoss as a cloud service. Or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for that matter (minus the trademarks).

It could happen. Actually, I'll go one step further: it will happen. It's just a matter of when.

This is why companies like IBM, Google, and increasingly Microsoft strategically invest in open source, but don't try to directly monetize open source. It's also why the "open-source companies" need to figure out a Plan B before Plan A gets taken from them.

[finalfanoffkey]

In the open source world, people who spent tens of thousands hours writing the actual code fixing the actual bugs could be inrelavent and having a big risk of receving no money from their work. Other people who make a little extra change over the original may make profit from their insignificant work. Until this flaw is addressed, open source will always be manipulated by those giants rather benefits the community or people. But who actually cares anyways.

[dowell100]

Open source has always been a losing proposition. It was supposed to be "noble work" but it was all for nothing.

[odubtaig]

Wow, I think you guys have just lowered the standard of intelligence on the internet.

[jgodse]

You are correct that there is no reward for writing open source code, because a better marketer will always get better financial results. But there is a reward for funding it. IBM paid a billion in developer time to help write Linux, Apache, etc. However, it reaped ten times that much in savings for writing a good operating system that is widely used.

Also, much open source code is compiled using gcc, ruby, perl, python, lua, java, etc which itself is open-source. So even open source writers write code, they benefit from those who went before them to define languages, libraries and compilers.

These days, there is benefit in hosting open source code and application data. Look at what any of the cloud vendors are doing. They host the software and the data, and do so very cost-effectively. That is the new model. Funding open-source software is just a loss-leader for them to get a royalty-free software base to run their cloud platforms.

[Random_Walk]

Err, Matt?

I think you (and the folks you quoted) are only seeing one side of the coin.

Let's say for simplicity that only Microsoft and Amazon used MySQL, and no one else did anymore. The improvements and code changes would still have to have their respective source codes and diffs published, and licensed under the same free license. MySQL AB would certainly not be making a whole lot of bank, but in a way MySQL development would still be funded: changes, improvements, bug/security fixes, and most importantly, tech support - all of those are going to have to be done by someone, and that means either paying MySQL AB to do it, or hiring in-house talent (programmers, DBAs, admins) to do it. Custom jobs? Sure - but the code still has to be openly published IIRC, and the money will still flow to whoever writes that code.

Also, consider that nobody who uses MySQL on the scale that, say, Google does... wants all the talent being concentrated at Microsoft, Amazon, or Oracle - they want to insure that the product is useful and flexible to their own specific needs, and that no one company controls it completely.

Either way, MySQL (the code) wins, even if MySQL (AB) went up in a puff of un-funded smoke.

[Ebraheem]

"Custom jobs? Sure - but the code still has to be openly published IIRC, and the money will still flow to whoever writes that code."

Nope, they don't have to publish the source code unless they distributed the compiled program. They can modify it and use it on their own servers without giving the source code. Affero GPL was created to address that particular issue. See:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html

[Matt Asay]

Actually, neither Amazon nor Microsoft need to contribute anything back, as they're not distributing the software. So, while they may gain from it, the code does not.

As to your second point, it's a good one, but it sure hasn't borne out in practice at Google. Google contributes very little back to Linux, MySQL, and other projects, and is content for others to employ the core developers while it has its own staff forking the code and doing super-gee-whiz stuff with it.

[mquag]

@Random_Walk

You clearly do not understand how open source works. Specifically, you said:

> The improvements and code changes would still have
> to have their respective source codes and diffs published

That is completely wrong. Under the GPL you only have to return your changes to the community if you are DISTRIBUTING the changed code. Neither MS nor Amazon would be distributing code in the scenario described in the article.

That is what Matt (the author) was referring to when he said:

> The protections that the GNU General Public License (GPL) and
> other open-source licenses offer in the traditional software world
> are essentially meaningless in the networked world, where
>software is used to create services, but isn't actually distributed.

The perfect example of this is Google. They run a very custom version of Linux in their data centers. We all benefit from this work when we use Google Search. But Google is not required to share their changes since they are not distributing the changed code.

Go read the GPL.

[jgodse]

Many suggest that Google and Amazon don't contribute back to the open source community. That depends on how you look at their contributions. If you just measure it by code, then they don't contribute as much as they "should". However, they did engineer their cloud computing environments to be very fine-grained and cheap. It's a great place for open source developers to host their applications without paying an arm & a leg for hosting.

Of course, this means that open source developers can't just make a living from coding. They must also deploy applications, get users, and monetize them. They must also take things into account such as load balancing, stability, scalability, recovery, data backup, schema changes, etc.

In the past coding was profitable, and running a hosted software business was very expensive. Now coding is less profitable, but running a hosted software business is very cheap.

[dotwhynot]

>In the open source world, people who spent tens of thousands hours writing the actual code fixing the actual bugs could be inrelavent and having a big risk of receving no money from their work. Other people who make a little extra change over the original may make profit from their insignificant work.

Sounds remarkable similar to the media industry complaint against Google.

[jrepenning]

I started to say "irrelevant, because the last thing you want in a data-heavy app is to have the db far from the app itself."

Then I thought, "say, a free DB license would make a great come-on for moving an app into the cloud."

Guess that Affero Clause is lookin' pretty good right now.

[Matt Asay]

Yes, it does, except that I think the AGPL simply will steer people not to use the software at all. Google has been very clear on that point: if it's AGPL, it won't touch it. Maybe that doesn't matter, but....

[odubtaig]

That's what was always said about the GPL but, oh, wait, this is you isn't it.

[ducttape36]

oh microsoft, damned if you do, damned if you dont.

[Matt Asay]

No, in this case, Microsoft is not doing anything wrong. The point of the article is that the open-source companies need to figure out their models. Microsoft is absolutely within its rights.

[Ebraheem]

Heh, when I read the title, the first thing that came to my mind was "embrace, extend and extinguish". I wonder if that was intentional.

[Matt Asay]

Yep. It's the new "embrace and embrace" model...with the same result. :-)

[rapier1]

What you are describing is *not* a problem with the commercial world embracing open source but with how they are using open-source to move compute resources to the cloud. So if you really look at it, your article is saying that the cloud is the biggest threat to major open source projects and not commercial adoption.

[pzb2]

It is a threat to projects that depend on "copyleft" licenses, as most licenses are based on the transfer of software. In the cloud, the software is simply available via APIs, the GPL and brethren do not require publishing changes.

As an earlier poster mention, the AGPL addresses this, but few projects have adopted it at this time.

[Matt Asay]

Yes, I think that's a fair assessment.

[pentest]

So the biggest threat to OSS is a meaningless buzzword?

Companies have ALWAYS had the option of running their services on third party servers. Smaller companies often do this, but large companies do not need to.

[odubtaig]

Pentest: flogging a dead horse since 2002.

Yes, Pen, companies have always had 3rd party options, just not at this scale or cost. Could you for once stop focussing on meaningless semantic deconstruction given that NO-ONE BUT YOU GIVES A **** and look at the actual product that is actually being offered?

I've been suspecting for a while (especially after that 'databases are too complex' remark) that the reason you focus so heavily on such insignificant things is that you don't actually know what you're talking about and this is reinforcing that suspicion.

[Stomfi]

But everyone who is educated in computing trends and long term development goals, will know that the cloud is just another client server milestone on the way to a Universal Computing Grid. This knowledge is especially relevant to FOSS developers who will know a UCG offers unlimited computing power for programming their wildest dreams. Supporting the use of the cloud especially for a FOSS program that could become an open standard, is to their and the World's long term benefit. Long term benefit is something FOSS developers embrace in their fight against slowed innovation for short term shareholder returns.

Another point about MS adoption of MySQL, is that this may be a shot fired at Oracle. Even if Oracle wanted to change the MySQL license to protect their own cash cow, lawyers at MS will know a fork is legal. Imagine the mess if MS, Google, et al each forked the code for their own purposes. Oracle is now forced not to let this happen and keep maintaining the code base in the public domain in order to keep its competition all on the same manageable track.

Destroying a free resource does not make good business sense. I expect MS and Google and the rest who use the free version of MySQL, obtain a tax concession by donating to the project to keep it afloat.

[pentest]

"I've been suspecting for a while (especially after that 'databases are too complex' remark) that the reason you focus so heavily on such insignificant things is that you don't actually know what you're talking about and this is reinforcing that suspicion."

What remark is that?

There is nothing new in cost or scale in "cloud" computing.

Unless you are running a small company, there is little savings in using "cloud" services, but there is a lot more risk.

Well, since i am so stupid, I guess I will go back to my thesis to finish my Masters of Science in Computer Science, so I can start my PhD program in the fall.

[odubtaig]

Ooh, PhD programme. I looked into doing that but then I realised I didn't want to spend 3 years doing all of someone else's research for them and getting none of the credit while working myself into the ground. May you live to regret it.

[kojacked]

Ha Ha! Open Source fail! Well comrads I hear Cuba has offered to shelter us...

In all seriousness open source is great for little projects or code examples but in the bigger picture it dies on the vine if it can be monitized. Big apps take a lot of time and effort to develop and support. While some are willing to do the work for free that generosity dries up eventually.

[stickfu]

Man are you Effin stupid, hear Cuba calling? maybe you just like marching beneath that MS swastika. Since you obviously have some form of internet connectivity (as well as reduced mental function due to gene chipping) being a string and a cup or dial up going into that trailer you call a home I strongly suggest you research what platform is most widely used in banking, telco, aerospace, securities, data centers and super computing (hint not MS) but then again some bare foot slack jawed yokel like yourself is still probably overwhelmed with using flush toilets and all YEE-HAAAA,

[odubtaig]

No Stickfu, you're stupid for replying to an obvious troll.

[kojacked]

Oh!!! My open sores!!! They hurt!!! Can you make them feel better with your kind words of wisdom, stickfu?

[odubtaig]

See sticky? This is why we can't have nice things.

[Henrique_M]

I agree on that. I am professional developer and my applications are not that big, but I can't rely on open source. To have full control of my app, I have to build my own libraries, modules and everything else. There are many cases of developers who build over open source and later they have problems to solve bugs, to extend the project, or simply to backup and/or move to another server. There are also many cases that the simple instalation of the apps is much more expensive than building a new one reliable and extendable/scalable.

[kiwibuntu]

It is precisely for these sorts of reasons that I am only releasing the SOFA Statistics analysis, reporting, and statistics package (http://www.sofastatistics.com) under the AGPL3. We may start to see more projects take a similar stance now that the risks of ignoring SAAS and the Cloud are shifting from the theoretical into the actual.

[richard993]

There is nothing wrong about Microsoft embracing open source. BUT we have to understand a few things. Microsoft has already been caught out using open source in their products and violating the license agreement (unintentionally). When Microsoft does open source, they open source either because they have to or because it does not really add value to the other parties who may be relying on open source (such as open sourcing wrappers and plumbing code such as the Enterprise Library).
So how would the community benefit from open source from Microsoft? At the moment, they don't benefit. Microsoft benefits more than the community. What Microsoft needs to do is open source their core products such as Windows, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Exchange and Office. Until Microsoft truly embraces open source, its just a silly little game that they are playing.

[KimTjik]

So we might loose some code up in the cloud, but it all depends on the license used? If I understand it right then the solution isn't all that complex, or is it?

If we're loosing code we're only talking about enhancements and improvements, right? Hence it competition as usual, giving anyone or any community the possibility of beating the ones who took free ride, isn't it?

Personally I haven't even started to see any real advantages in using the big guys' cloud solutions, while using our own small scale "cloud" solutions. We don't know for sure how "clouded" business will get, and what trust we can put in it.

[Henrique_M]

The cloud servers are interesting in several ways. First their are like cluster servers or grid servers (this is not the correct definition). For instance if you build an application now, you have to rent an hosting service, and if you have many more users than the expected number your server will crash (happend with an European Union online encyclopedia). Now the app is stopped, the users loos interest, and you have to add new servers to your app. Next month you have many servers, and to little visitors (you are throwing away your money).

Cloud servers are great, because you pay-as-you-go. You can start with little capacity (let's say capacity for 1000 users), and next week you can scale up (with a click of a button) and pay a little more, next month you have just 500 visitors, and you scale down you app and pay less.

Other great thing is that you don't have to worry about server security, software updates and with the compatibility issues, it's all taken care seamlessly. Today if you have PHP 4 apps with MySQL 4.1, of your host supplier decides to upgrade the server to PHP 5 and MySQL 5.1, it's almost certain that your open source apps will stop for a while (compatibility issues) until you upgrade them.

[Patprimate]

@ kiwibuntu

I had recently stumbled upon SOFA while investigating open source statistical solutions (so that I may finally due away with that accursed SPSS/PASW). I was very impressed by the user friendliness of the project and the fact that it was coded in python. Now that you tell me its AGPL, I am positively thrilled. I will make some serious efforts to investigate adopting SOFA for my statistical needs. Thanks for your visionary efforts to bring free and open statistics and statistical education/computing to the world.

Pat

[aleoncini]

I think you described a real scenario but on the other hand I don't think that would be so bad for companies which the business model is based on open source. look for instance at jboss, I don't think that amazon or google or microsoft have interest in developing or fixing bugs for jboss, that's not their business, they simply want to offer a service to their customers, and they want an enterprise level of software, not the community, so, in my humble opinion, what will happen is that customers using amazon cloud won't buy subscriptions but amazon will, for red hat or other companies like red hat will be more or less the same.

andrea

[pentest]

This assumes that many corporations will dive into "cloud services", which will not be the case.

Not everyone shares your love of meaningless buzzwords and relatively few are stupid enough to tie up their business into a mainframe(yes, this is what "cloud" computing is) they do not control.

[odubtaig]

Again, reinforcing that view. Go learn the difference between a mainfram and a cluster. Then you can talk to others about misuse of words. [CNET editors' note: Personal attack deleted.]

[pentest]

I know the difference between a cluster and mainframe because I write programs to run on clusters nearly every day.<br /><br />What you fail to grasp is that the "cloud" works in the same manner as a mainframe/thin client system. What the mainframe actually is, is irrelevant.<br /><br />[CNET editors' note: Personal attacks deleted.]

[odubtaig]

That's like saying "I know the difference between driving a car and a truck because I drive a car every day" even though you've never even seen a truck. You have _got_ to do better than that. I'm well aware of the client/server nature of things but that's like saying Big Blue's the same as a Cray 1 or a Model T's the same as a Hummer. There are general similarities but it's not the same beats as you'd know if you'd actually dealt with both.

[arjenlentz]

Indeed, many of those enterprise services are just paper, like insurance. It's a tickbox some companies (in particular those who define themselves with the tag 'enterprise') need to have.
What real companies need is real services, such as remote DBA with anything from architecture to tuning. It's real value all the time, rather than merely an insurance policy or an emergency phone#.

Amazon RDS caters for fairly simple user since it's not really tweakable and doesn't support replication.
Not sure on the Azure specs.
Open Query has various customers who run on the regular Amazon cloud (and other clouds) where they have decent control over their systems, and they want our services as well.
It makes sense, economically and strategically.

[jgodse]

I totally agree with your first paragraph.

For the second paragraph, it's not quite so simple. A lot of apps never need to scale beyond what Amazon RDS offers. For them, that is good enough. Also, with the price point of Amazon RDS, it may just make better business sense to throw more RDS instances at a scaling problem than tweaking and engineering.

[lachlanmulcahy]

As Arjen said, Amazon RDS caters for a fairly simple user. Heck, you can't even get at the INNODB STATUS information because they don't grant you a user with the SUPER privilege. That is pretty key for any remotely serious MySQL DB usage these days.

While Amazon and even Microsoft might provide "support" for MySQL and even host it for you, I don't think you're going to get anywhere near the level of service you get from the Enterprise offerings (nor some of the boutique consulting groups).

The quote in the article poses the question as to what customers would want with the "Enterprise" offerings of the companies that develop the software, such as MySQL.

Well, simply better service. Do you really think that the support line at Amazon or Microsoft is going to be much help in diagnosing in-depth performance issues? Will they review your queries and schemas and help you tune them? I doubt they will -- They are more likely to help you with simple deployment and config tasks at most.

If all the company cares about is checking a box for support and they are unconcerned with what they get, then Amazon or Azure might fit the bill and they are probably not a strong prospect for Enterprise services anyway.

Also, what's to say the MS or Amazon won't strike a deal for L2/L3 type backlining support?

To me the motivations of MS/Amazon are to compete on providing the hosted/cloud services with each other. Without the survival of the development teams that make the building blocks on which their services depend, they will have to support/develop the software themselves. I don't really think either company has an interest in doing that.

I think the article is alarmist.

"Despite all the new clouds, the sky is not falling" *groan*

[storm14k]

AGPL will kill FOSS. I can see it now. I get a client that wants a public web app. I tell him we can build on top of Drupal and then tell him now we have to make the source available to everyone that visits the site. Next thing I know someone is building it for him in .Net using .Net Nuke.

For the life of me I can't understan why people are so obsessed with Googles enhancements to Linux. They are well within the right of the GPL and please don't tell me no one thought companies would ise Linux for what its made for....servers. Server usage is not distributing code so why in the world are poeple just now figuring out there is a so called loophole in the GPL. On top of that Google has given back an entire mobile OS and a desktop OS.

If this thinking keeps up I'm going to end up seriously rethinking the value of open source. It certainly adds no benefit over closed source if in many situations I'm forced to avoid modifying the code so I don't have to give away confidential ideas and information. I lose all benefit to being able to modify the code.

[odubtaig]

So, basically you're upset that your free lunch may be taken away from you. Boo-hoo. Go back to paying through the nose then.

[CurtainDog]

You know there are licenses beside the GPL, right? How is AGPL any different?

[storm14k]

@odubtaig - How do you know my lunch is free? How do you know what I have done? You don't. However isn't this what FREE software (in both senses) is about? Why is it when someone does something you don't like with the FREE software all of a sudden you take your ball and go play eslewhere. In that case its not FREE and when people realize this they won't care to use it anymore. In some cases they simply WON'T be able to use it. If it can't be used then it serves no purpose and is a waste of time.

So much for code reuse. We all just have to build our own code bases from now on smh.

[storm14k]

@ CurtainDog - I don't understand your question. If all the licenses were the same the there would only be 1 right? If you mean why complain about this one when its just another license then I ask why complain about the BSD license.

In a nutshell the license came about because people felt there was a "loophole" in the GPL that allowed GPL projects to be used as services and modified without being shared back to the community. My question is what did you think was going to happen from the get go with projects like Linux and Apache? They are servers. They are meant to be used for services. If not there would be no point in distributing them. But now all of a sudden you're supposed to share your modifications simply because you used the software as intended. It simply doesn't make sense for everyone to share every change made to a software package being used as a service. And in reality it really doesn't give you the FREEdom to use and modify the code as you want which is what I thought this was all about. Now it seems to just be about jealousy of companies using the software as intended to make money.

[pentest]

There is odubtaig talking through his bulbous arse again.

[odubtaig]

"However isn't this what FREE software (in both senses) is about?"

No, it's not. Haven't you got why the end user is always exempt from the GPL so long as they don't modify or redistribute? No? Just because GPL software doesn't have an upfront monetary cost, doesn't mean it's not supposed to have any cost at all. You're supposed to give as well as take. I would have thought the statements of Stallman on this subject (you know, the guy responsible for both licenses) would have been enough of a tip-off.

In the meantime, complaining that you can't have all that code, and all the work required for it, without having to give anything at all is just whining.

[doubtthat]

Hmmm, open source is supposed to be open yet you complain when a corporation actually uses it for free. Seems like you want your cake and eat it too. You can't say it is open and then want to stop MS or others from using it.

[vikinzer]

Matt, given some of the posts you've made in the past about how open source isn't important in a cloud services world and the AGPL is not important, how can you put that bit at the end of this article pointing out how much the protections of open source licenses disappear in a networked world with a straight face? Or at you legitimately beginning to see the light.

[snaidamast]

I have always thought of pure open source as a losing proposition in terms of introducing it to the commercial IT world as it increasingly lowered the value of those attempting to making a living on developing software. If you are going to give software away for free than why go into it as a career. And for those of us that want to develop software and sell it, the open source model has hurt this part of the field. For for companies that are developing such software, unless they make a significant profit on alternate revenue sources such development can only be seen as "overhead"...

However, open source does not necessarily mean simply giving software away for nothing but that it is an added bonus for a payment for a particular application. This is done for either support services or the actual procurement of an application or both.

Now that major corporations are taking open source and implementing it into their own offerings which will yield financial gain what are the developers of such products to do for their own financial rewards? There is not much they can do.

Open source was promoted by younger technicians, academia, and scientifically based organizations all who had little need for financial reward at the same level as those more mature technicians that have existing financial responsibilities. However, little thought was given to the actual business model of creating such a new technical implementation in terms of financial survival. And when open source first gained recognition this was a concern for numerous professional developers.

As a result, in my view, what the open source community should do is partially reverse their methodologies whereby the developer community can still receive the software freely or at substantially reduced\discounted cost but production implementations and use within business are charged and at different levels based upon whether the purchaser wants the source code or not. A good example of such pricing can be found at www.sqlmaestro.com, a German company that charges different prices for personal and business use of their software tools...

You cannot make money giving things away freely and many of us in the technical communities need to put "food on the table". However, there are compromises that can be made to allow for the furthering of the open source model while also maintaining a level of financial independence based upon it...

[jeffromiller]

Hate to tell you @snaidamast, but software development is becoming a commodity. Remember when if you knew how to build a website you could bring in $100 an hour? Now you can find a web developer on every corner - just like a gas station or a McDonalds. I'm not saying this is a good thing - the result is a lot of garbage software out there and a bunch of folks running around saying they are in IT yet they think "state" is California instead of a crucial web development construct.

Just like the musicians complaining about "free" downloading (not that open source equates to free mind you!), it's only a matter of time before we hear the same whining from software developers. I'm both a musician and software developer and have found plenty of ways to monetize both. It's inevitable...but the trully talented software developers will find a way to monetize software - whether it's open source or not.

To this article - I wonder if Matt would have written the same article if it was Red Hat's embrace of My SQL ; )

JM