[Maria-discuss] What is the future of MariaDB
All, Many people were feeling uncertain whether to use MySQL when Sun was bought by Oracle. I was one of those people and that is why I chose MariaDB for my product now. But I need to know what is the plan for MariaDB in the future? Would there be any chance that MariaDB will be sold to another company just like MySQL got sold to Sun? Or would MariaDB always be a community owned? Kind regards, Joshua -- http://twitter.com/projexion
Hi!
"Joshua" == Joshua Partogi <jpartogi@scrum8.com> writes:
Joshua> All, Joshua> Many people were feeling uncertain whether to use MySQL when Sun was bought Joshua> by Oracle. I was one of those people and that is why I chose MariaDB for my Joshua> product now. But I need to know what is the plan for MariaDB in the future? Joshua> Would there be any chance that MariaDB will be sold to another company just Joshua> like MySQL got sold to Sun? Or would MariaDB always be a community owned? Monty Program Ab, who is driving MariaDB is setup as an employee owned company. You can easily verify it from here: http://askmonty.org/wiki/The_hacking_business_model This is reflected in everyones employee contract and in how we work every day. This means, in practice, is that Monty Program Ab is not setup as a company that is to be sold as there is no big profit any owner can get by selling it. Instead our plan for the future is to get enough income so that we can all afford to spend all our time on working on MariaDB development.
From our page of how we work with the community http://askmonty.org/wiki/Working_with_the_community you can see that we are totally devoted to working on Open Source; All code we do for MariaDB will be available under an Open Source license.
There is no hidden agenda, but we instead subscribe to total transparence in everything we do. Personally I never founded Monty Program Ab or MariaDB for the money. (The way the project and company it's setup should prove the without any doubt); I found these to ensure that there is always a free version of MySQL and to ensure that the MySQL core developers who feel the same has a good place to work on this. Hope the above answers your questions. Regards, Monty CEO of Monty Program Ab, Creator of MySQL and MariaDB
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Michael Widenius <monty@askmonty.org> wrote:
Hi!
"Joshua" == Joshua Partogi <jpartogi@scrum8.com> writes:
Joshua> All, Joshua> Many people were feeling uncertain whether to use MySQL when Sun was bought Joshua> by Oracle. I was one of those people and that is why I chose MariaDB for my Joshua> product now. But I need to know what is the plan for MariaDB in the future? Joshua> Would there be any chance that MariaDB will be sold to another company just Joshua> like MySQL got sold to Sun? Or would MariaDB always be a community owned?
Monty Program Ab, who is driving MariaDB is setup as an employee owned company. You can easily verify it from here: http://askmonty.org/wiki/The_hacking_business_model
This is reflected in everyones employee contract and in how we work every day.
This means, in practice, is that Monty Program Ab is not setup as a company that is to be sold as there is no big profit any owner can get by selling it. Instead our plan for the future is to get enough income so that we can all afford to spend all our time on working on MariaDB development.
The content in that URL states that MPAB employees have shared copyright on their contributions. I assume that MPAB has shared copyright on all contributions. Couldn't someone buy MPAB to get shard copyright to all contributions and the MariaDB trademarks? I don't question your intent but I don't see how MPAB cannot be sold or would not have value. -- Mark Callaghan mdcallag@gmail.com
Mark,
On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 5:07 AM, Michael Widenius <monty@askmonty.org> wrote:
Hi!
> "Joshua" == Joshua Partogi <jpartogi@scrum8.com> writes: Joshua> All, Joshua> Many people were feeling uncertain whether to use MySQL when Sun was bought Joshua> by Oracle. I was one of those people and that is why I chose MariaDB for my Joshua> product now. But I need to know what is the plan for MariaDB in the future? Joshua> Would there be any chance that MariaDB will be sold to another company just Joshua> like MySQL got sold to Sun? Or would MariaDB always be a community owned?
Monty Program Ab, who is driving MariaDB is setup as an employee owned company. You can easily verify it from here: http://askmonty.org/wiki/The_hacking_business_model
This is reflected in everyones employee contract and in how we work every day.
This means, in practice, is that Monty Program Ab is not setup as a company that is to be sold as there is no big profit any owner can get by selling it. Instead our plan for the future is to get enough income so that we can all afford to spend all our time on working on MariaDB development.
The content in that URL states that MPAB employees have shared copyright on their contributions. I assume that MPAB has shared copyright on all contributions. Couldn't someone buy MPAB to get shard copyright to all contributions and the MariaDB trademarks?
This is my independent view as one of Monty Program AB employees. Almost anything can be sold. Based on my simplistic understanding of copyright and intellectual property, then, sure, if someone buys Monty Program, they will own the shared part of the IP of the company.
I don't question your intent but I don't see how MPAB cannot be sold or would not have value.
Above Monty wrote "no big value", not "no value at all". To me this means that this company will hardly have such a huge value to make much sense to be sold (as opposed to MySQL AB). If the company is successful, its value for the employees would be that it will be a way for them to have a decent life and do the work they like. This is my simple logic as one of the employees. If selling the company will leave me on the street looking for another less attractive job, then I will strongly oppose that the company is being sold. If the company could be sold with a huge profit, so that I don't need to work in the next, let's say 10 years, or more, then I might want it to be sold. But I may not, based on emotions. I know that at least few others at Monty Program think similar to me. As I understand Monty's point, there is no danger that this company can become so incredibly interesting for investors, that someone would like to pay a big pile of money for it. Ergo, hardly anyone of the employees would be willing to sell the company. If most of us are against a sale, then the only thing that could be sold would be the IP. In this case I believe there will be nothing to sell, because code without the people who know it is dead code. So this is not only about Monty's intent, it is about the collective intent of all Monty Program employees. As I said above, this is my understanding of things, Monty or others may see things differently. Timour
Good questions and discussion. On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 8:00 AM, MARK CALLAGHAN <mdcallag@gmail.com> wrote:
The content in that URL states that MPAB employees have shared copyright on their contributions. I assume that MPAB has shared copyright on all contributions. Couldn't someone buy MPAB to get shard copyright to all contributions and the MariaDB trademarks?
I don't question your intent but I don't see how MPAB cannot be sold or would not have value.
Timour already gave a good answer, so just to add. Regarding the code it's not a big deal. Owning copyright to a patch/delta against MySQL cannot be very interesting. Regarding trademarks you make a valid point though. If MariaDB trademark was sold, I don't know if I have the energy to start over with yet another name. What is absent from Monty's answer is that we are also doing our best in opening up the project so that long term it shouldn't matter what happens to MPAB. To get there, we need to get many more contributors from many more companies. henrik -- email: henrik.ingo@avoinelama.fi tel: +358-40-5697354 www: www.avoinelama.fi/~hingo book: www.openlife.cc
participants (5)
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Henrik Ingo -
Joshua Partogi -
MARK CALLAGHAN -
Michael Widenius -
Timour Katchaounov