Future of MySQL: How serious is Oracle about open source?

During the last days, the the fight over MySQL’s future has heated up. The European Commission still hasn’t approved it, and Michael Widenius is calling upon all MySQL users to help “save” the popular open source database from Oracle. As a response, Oracle has published some promises about MySQL’s future that were meant to provide some counterweight to this call for help. I think these provide some interesting insights into what Oracle has planned.

Let’s start with the fact that they are not promising to keep all API’s open. They just promise this for the Storage Engine API, but most storage engines also use other API calls. And they are not saying anything about good documentation; they only agree to keeping the documentation at the same level as the documentation currently provided by Sun. It would have been easy to say “All currently available API’s”, but they didn’t. Even more important is the licensing issue. They announced that the requirement of publishing new storage engines under a GPL license will be dropped. So MySQL is heading for closed-source storage engines, possibly using undocumented API’s.

The rest of MySQL might be heading down the same path. Just read this “promise”:

Oracle shall continue to enhance MySQL and make subsequent versions of MySQL, including Version 6, available under the GPL. Oracle will not release any new, enhanced version of MySQL Enterprise Edition without contemporaneously releasing a new, also enhanced version of MySQL Community Edition licensed under the GPL.

It all sounds very nice, until you realize that they don’t say the Community Edition will have the same enhancements as the Enterprise Edition. The Community Edition will receive improvements, but Oracle doesn’t promise how many or whether these will be of the same order of magnitude as the enhancements for the Enterprise Edition.

And finally, there will be two advisory boards that can provide “guidance and feedback”. No, they don’t have a final say about development priorities. It’s just “guidance” that Oracle can choose to ignore. Oh, and these will consist of customers.  If you use the Community Edition you’re obviously not a customer; so they’ll be gathering feedback on the Enterprise Edition.

It this is the best Oracle has to offer in terms of promises for MySQL users, I feel the European Commission is absolutely right in blocking the Oracle’s acquisition of Sun (and thus MySQL). Everything they “promised” so far points to a further separation of the Enterprise and Community editions, and a trend towards a closed-source system that starts with the storage engines right now, and will continue with the rest of the codebase as new features are added to the Enterprise Edition.

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