Oracle is determined to keep MySQL if it acquires Sun, but the reason likely has little to do with open source and everything to do with Microsoft. Oracle doesn't compete with open source. Not really. Open source is simply a means to an end, and in the case of MySQL, a means to denting Microsoft's rising strength in emerging markets where Oracle's expensive database technology doesn't resonate.
In fact, in a recent survey by Evans Data, over 50 percent of developers in the emerging markets of China, India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America use Microsoft's SQL Server, compared to 46 percent using MySQL.
Oracle database technology? It's used, but not nearly as extensively.
MySQL gives Oracle a club with which to beat Microsoft. It's not about open source. It's about the MySQL developer community and its competitive price point, two things that Microsoft also has going for it. Arguably, though, open source provides Oracle a strong competitive differentiator against Microsoft in these markets.
Even so, I think we'll eventually see open source aiding both sides in this battle, as Microsoft learns to drop its acrimonious stance toward open source and instead strategically embrace it, as IBM, Oracle, and others have done before it.
Oracle can't afford to abandon MySQL. It's the key to unlocking its ability to effectively compete with Microsoft in tomorrow's big markets.
In a new study, Evans Data says that the developer population in established economies is expected to decline by 35 percent this year compared with last year, as InformationWeek reports. Despite this dearth of developers, however, we continue to see an explosion of open-source projects and social-Web applications.
What gives?
It's very possible, of course, that a dwindling number of developers is pushing more of its development work to the public eye of the Web, creating the appearance of more development activity even as the total number of lines of code written declines. Rising unemployment might be contributing to this.
In other words, perhaps that out-of-work Citigroup developer, who used to spend all of her time as one developer among many contributing to a big intranet application, has now launched an open-source project (or two) to ease the burden of unemployment?
(Credit:
O'Reilly Media)
Or perhaps the development tools made available for writing Facebook applications, for example, make it easier to crank out more projects by fewer people. Maybe productivity gains are enabling fewer developers to do more.
I'm not sure. But it does seem that the developer drought, spurred by a sickly economy, isn't having an adverse effect on open-source and social-Web development. If anything, the weak economy may be encouraging more development, not less.
How would you explain the increased number in open-source and social-Web applications, in light of a reported decreasing developer population?
UPDATE @ 11:51 PDT: As noted in the comments below, I inadvertently describe a 35-percent decrease in the developer population, rather than a 35-percent decrease in developer growth. That said, the same quandary/question remains: the pace of new development in open source and the social Web exceeds the growth of the developer population. Your thoughts on why?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Evans Data has published the results of a 360-person survey suggesting that 40 percent of developers working on open-source projects plan to deploy applications via the cloud, as OStatic reports.
The big winner here? Google. Twenty-nine percent of developers surveyed plan to use Google App Engine to deploy their applications, while 15 percent will look to Amazon.com.
Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce.com, and other cloud initiatives? They apparently don't make the grade, netting far less developer attention.
Other interesting data:
- Types of open-source applications being developed: "enterprise business application" (30.7 percent), "developer tool" (20.7 percent), "software infrastructure" (15.8 percent), "enterprise systems management" (6.3 percent), and "other" (26.4 percent).
- Fifty-two percent of developers are using the Linux operating system in a virtualized environment.
- More than 50 percent of the surveyed developers use MySQL as their database of choice.
- Thirty percent of open-source applications are delivered via open-source portals (e.g., SourceForge), the biggest source for these applications.
- However, the report calls out that those who distribute applications through mobile application stores are the most likely to be making money.
John Andrews, CEO of Evans Data, ascribes this shift to cloud computing to a desire to "reduce infrastructure costs but simultaneously increase...computational capabilities."
This makes sense, but one thing that Evans Data should have asked about is licensing. Are these open-source developers worried about keeping their code free (as in freedom, not cost) through SaaS-savvy licenses like the Affero GPL?
Most open-source licenses were written for the old world, when software was distributed through physical media, rather than as a service over a network.
As such, most open-source software--or, rather, its licensing--doesn't translate well to cloud computing, a fact that seems to have been lost on Richard Stallman, creator of the General Public License. Do these developers care? Apparently not.
CIO magazine reports something that many of us take for granted, but which little data has previously been available to support:
The open-source development process is much, much faster at fixing bugs than the proprietary-software development process. Days faster, in fact.
CIO's Esther Schindler reports:
... Read moreThe numbers had been showing a steady clip supporting GPLv3. So, hot, right? But Evans Data ran a survey of developers showing that support for GPLv3 is actually cold. So, which is it?
Probably both.
From the Evans Data survey:
... Read more
The sky is not falling for Microsoft, but it's sure starting to look cloudy. No wonder the company keeps trying to make thunder about patent infringement. The US Supreme Court under Justic Roberts has become less activist than in previous decades, as the WSJ reports: let's hope that the courts won't be the last bastion for market share in the software world, either.
Evans Data, as reported by Paul Krill at Infoworld, just completed a survey of North American developers and found the following:
A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006....
... Read more
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