MySQL forks itself with Drizzle
In most companies, there are prohibitions against creating competitive, derivative works of the company's intellectual property. At MySQL (now Sun), well, things may be a little different.
As announced at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Brian Aker, MySQL's director of architecture, has launched Drizzle, an optimized and trimmed-down version of the popular open-source MySQL database.
In other words, MySQL has forked itself. "The right to fork" is, of course, a cardinal right of open source.
But forking is usually driven by rival factions on a project (e.g., the Adempiere developers forking Compiere). In MySQL's case, its own employees created the fork, a fork that has the blessing of Sun's senior management, according to MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius.
Personally, I find it a bit odd. If the fork was needed, why not work within the company to offer it as a separate product? But then, for those who have worked with passionate open-source developers like MySQL employs, sometimes the best policy is simply to step back and let the magic happen, even if it initially appears not to be in the company's interests. Perhaps this could end up being a supported database for Sun?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
I'd also be amazed if Sun/MySQL didn't keep all IP rights over this branch. So calling it a fork, is incorrect.
I know, I know... sensationalist headlines = more money in CNet/Asay's pockets. ;-)
Anyway, since the work being done and code being written is not by Sun employees, Sun does not own the IP. In addition, they have not signed the Sun contributor agreement foo.
So Drizzle is wholly outside Sun in terms of IP reach. It is already multi-owned now, just like the Linux codebase is not owned by a single person or entity.
And this can be a good thing. Some people are just not comfortable putting a lot of energy into a project otherwise. And active projects need a lot of energy to reach critical mass. It also means that any commercialisation cannot come from dual licensing foo.
To me, a "branch" implies the same CVS/SVN system or a process for synchronizing the code between the two source control systems.
Go to https://launchpad.net/drizzle and look around.
"The code is originally derived from MySQL.". So unless they plan on periodically somehow synchronizing the code with the original derivation, it looks like a fork to me dude.
And I don't think creating a fork is a bad thing here given the goals of the new project.
Oh yeah...and re: your sensationalist headlines point...I would have made it:
"Drizzle to MySQL: Fork you"
:-) I joke...I joke.
(I would think there would be push to synchronize code, patches, etc...)... but wth do I know? ;-)
It allows Sun Labs to do some experimenting on database technology, without impacting/distracting the current version of MySQL.
Steve
One thing about CNET is that they never let facts or even reasonableness get in the way of a story.
You are out to lunch on this.
For an OSS evangelist your knowledge of software and OSS is alarmingly lacking.
It seems obvious that this product which is definitely not a fork, is perhaps a sqlite type of experiment. More info would be needed.
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by t8
July 23, 2008 7:07 PM PDT
- Forking might have been done so that Sun can sell the bigger database and still have the open source one out there for free. Like RedHat Enterprise and Fedora. If they intend on selling MySQL only, then they need to create the free version before someone else does it. Sun may intend on putting in features to rival the bigger databases out there.
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