MySQL moves are troubling

Sam Varghese
Monday, 18 December 2006 02:34

Opinion and Analysis

The two moves - one, a tie-up with Microsoft and two, a move to delay production of binaries of its enterprise product for Debian GNU/Linux - are not remarkable in themselves. But when taken in conjunction with what the company did last year - making a deal with the SCO Group to support its database on some versions of SCO's Unixware operating system - it makes for a disturbing trend.

Some background first: MySQL makes an open source version of the database and also sells a proprietary version. It is the most widely used open source database, far ahead of the next contender PostgreSQL. In fact, an acronym has been created solely to describe a vast number of websites which are based on what is called LAMP - the GNU/Linux operating system, the Apache web server, MySQL and the scripting language PHP.

The deal with SCO, in September last year, angered many in the free and open source software community. At the time, MySQL's chief Marten Mickos defended the act, arguing that what he had struck was just another business deal. However, the details of the deal have never come to light - neither Mickos nor SCO were willing to reveal details then. What makes this deal notable is the fact that in 2004, MySQL had stopped supporting SCO's Unixware in 2004.

SCO is the same company that filed a breach of contract case against IBM in March 2003, charging the latter with adding code belonging to SCO to the Linux kernel. There have been a couple of cases filed against SCO after that, one by Red Hat and the other by Novell. In May 2003, it emerged that SCO had sent letter to about 1500 of the world's largest corporations warning that they could be liable for using GNU/Linux.

The SCO-IBM case is still in court and is likely to come to trial only in 2008.