Sun begins to close MySql

I was initially hopeful that Sun was fully embracing the concept of open source with their acquisition of MySQL, but it appears I may have been wrong. Open source is a great way to kick start the services business. It looks like Sun hopes to use it to kick start the closed software business instead. This will only discourage volunteer devolepers and testers while diminishing the user base.

MySQL will start offering some features (specifically ones related to online backups) only in MySQL Enterprise. This represents a substantive change to their development model — previously they have been developing features in both MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise. However, with a shift to offering some features only in MySQL Enterprise, this means a shift to development of those features occurring (and thus code being tested) only in MySQL Enterprise.

As I’ve discussed before, the size of the user base for MySQL Enterprise is much smaller than for MySQL Community. That means these critical features will be tested by only a few of their customers. So, in effect, they will be giving their paying customers real, true, untested code. How is this supposed to work? In addition, this means that they are changing their internal development model, splitting the relationship between the two trees, and overall going even further down the path of getting the RHEL/Fedora model backwards. (jcole’s weblog)

Sun has had great difficulty remaining relevant in a changing IT world for quite some time. I have to conclude that Sun is still completely out of touch with the open source community and that Postgre SQL will have a huge spike in growth.