The LXer Interview: Ulf Sandberg, CEO of SkySQL

LXer Article

Recently SkySQL announced itself to the world with its focus being on former Sun MySQL customers. This comes in the aftermath of Sun being bought by Oracle and the subsequent departures of former Sun executives and engineers before and after the purchase. I recently had a chance to talk with Ulf Sandberg the new CEO of SkySQL for a few minutes.

Q: It looks to me that most, if not all of the original architects of MySQL are either invested in or an active part of SkySQL.

A: Yes, both co-founders and OnCorps as well as Open Ocean Capital, which is comprised of some of the founders of and investors in MySQL Ab as well. – OnCorps being major investor, they wanted the most for their money and they will be involved in keeping us focused on sales and revenue. Bob Suh, CEO and Founder of OnCorps who used to be at accenture wanted to be in on it. We have almost all of the core developers and support team and we are selling that to our prospective customers. Knowing that most of the people you used to get support and service from are here at SkySQL makes it a much easier choice for them.

Q: I take it you are actively selling your services to all your old customers at Sun and MySQL then, how is that going?

A: “We’re back”, we are telling people that MySQL took a break but now we’re up and running again. To our customers, they have an alternative for pricing and services as compared to Oracle and can decide for themselves what is best. I think everyone can see what is going on with Oracle and with us in the market now they have a choice as to who they want to get their support and services from going into the future.

Q: So having already done business with them as Sun they were familiar with you and you philosophy correct?

A: The ecosystem and partners want to talk to people they know, along with the commitment to open source and keeping the code open. Most companies do not want to be hostage to one vendor, especially one that charges a lot for their products and service. They now have an alternative in SkySQL and we have already received a number of requests from companies that would rather be with the original MySQL team and our reasonable pricing model and not hand cuffed by Oracle. They also do not trust that Oracle will supoort open source and MySQL down the road but will try to upsell them as soon as they can to more expensive but typically not needed product.

Q: It seems obvious that the takeover of Sun by Oracle lit a fire to make this happen. A lot of people think it was Oracle’s attitude towards the developers that did it, MySQL started bleeding execs and devs even before the sale to Oracle was official.

A: We saw what was going on and decided it was best to go in another direction. The deal took a long time to close and some MySQL folks were already leaving prior to completion. We did expect Oracle to continue with the acquisition, similar to what they have done to other companies they bought. They have no prior experience of open source nor interest as evident from how OpenSolaris, OpenOffice and as of lately Java has been managed by Oracle.

Q: Is Oracle really committed to MySQL?

A: Depends on who you ask, they are really focused on sales..

Q: Isn’t the writing on wall for MySQL?

A: Sun had soft gloves, maybe too soft. Oracle is much more about “Here is what you are going to do and how your going to do it.” and it just is not how we feel it should be done. How could Oracle balance both their enterprise database offerings which are very expensive with the popular MySQL database in their accounts? Their sales people just don’t want MySQL in their accounts and become a threat to their high price. They might say they are supporting MySQL externally but in reality, there is such an internal conflict that it likely can not happen.

After reading this article by Henrik Ingo and talking to Ulf I think that there is more than enough room in the ‘MySQL” world for SkySQL to not only survive, but thrive as well. If there is one thing I have learned it is that there is a ton of talented people who can code SQL and if you can find and keep them, you’re going to be alright.

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LXer Weekly Roundup for 05-Dec-2010

LXer Article

In the LXWR this week we have part 1 and 2 of Steven Rosenberg’s farewell to Fedora. why Glyn Moody is rooting for Microsoft, a long overdue look at XFCE, Dr. Tony Young’s final (or is it?) installment in his switching to KDE 4.4 adventures and the Linux foundation releases their annual list of who writes Linux. Enjoy!

Goodbye Fedora, welcome back Debian, Part 1: I really did like Fedora 13. I liked it enough to solve more than a handful of problems. I liked it enough to use a proprietary graphics driver for the first time (didn’t like that; not only was it outside the package-management system and hard to update, it didn’t perform so well either). I love the Fedora community, the openness that’s everywhere, the lack of pretense. But just as everything was roses, furry kittens and such when I first ran Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33 Linux kernel, it started to go dark with the change — in mid-cycle, mind you — to the 2.6.34 kernel.

Open Source Does Not Need Monetising: It’s common to hear commentators and business leaders justifying practices that wouldn’t be recognised as “open source” by many of us on the grounds that they have to make money somehow. Actions that deny the software freedoms of end users – and even developers – appear like a fungus, spuriously justified by the need for profit. Phrases like “we can’t give everything away” garnish the thought, and it’s easy to be drawn into sympathising with them. But they are wrong. Open source itself is not about making money – that’s the job of its participants. Open source is the pragmatic product and projection of software freedom.

How a “Welded-to KDE 3.5 User” Began a Move to KDE 4.4 – Part 2: In this second part of a two part guest editorial and tutorial Dr. Tony Young (an Australian Mycologist by trade) shares his trials, tribulations, successes and disappointments in working with the new version of KDE. In this installment he configures media players, K3b, Crossover Office, Lucid and Post Script and his final thoughts on his adventures.

Why I’m Rooting for Microsoft: It will not have escaped your notice that the patent system has been the subject of several posts on this blog, or that the general tenor is pretty simple: it’s broken, and nowhere more evidently so than for software. Anyone can see that, but what is much harder is seeing how to fix it given the huge vested interests at work here.

The bad guys are worried – did we win?: Recently two pieces of first class anti-free software diatribe hit the headlines. The first is Microsoft’s “please don’t use OpenOffice.org” video and the second is Steve Jobs’ anti-Android rant. Both are pretty shallow attempts at deflection and have been rightly called out as actually endorsing the subject of the attack as a valid opponent. In both cases it does seem to say that Microsoft and Jobs are concerned enough about OpenOffice.org and Android respectively that they need to tell the rest of us how bad they are.

6 Best Linux Terminal Applications for Linux: A Quake-style terminal is a drop-down terminal which can be shown/hidden just like the console in Quake (and most of the first-person shooter games out there), using the press of a key (~ in Quake). Guake is a terminal application written in GTK which uses the F12 keyboard shortcut by default to show or hide it.

Goodbye Fedora, welcome back Debian, Part 2: Review of Debian Squeeze: I’ve been keeping my eye on Debian Squeeze (and Sid) for the past few months via live images, and in the course of the release’s life there have been changes in the application lineup. Notable inclusions in the now-frozen Squeeze are the Ubuntu Software Center as an alternative way of managing applications. Yep, you read right: Debian is using the Ubuntu Software Center. It looks like Debian’s developers are in a more cooperative mood than they get credit for. I for one am glad to see such cross-pollination between Ubuntu and Debian.

A Long Overdue Look at XFCE: Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve covered Linux desktop issues of all kinds, and we’ve examined desktop environments both well known (Gnome and KDE) as well as somewhat obscure (Window Maker, LXDE). For some reasons, we’ve never taken a close look at the very popular XFCE desktop environment. It’s nearly as feature-rich as Gnome, but with a smaller footprint. As it’s been a big name in the Linux desktop world for quite a few years now, it seems we’re long overdue to check out this polished and useful collection of software.

World Wildlife Fund WWF format cracked!: I heard about the new .WWF format this morning. It is an initiative of the World Wildlife Fund to prevent people printing .PDF files. As a matter of fact, it is a .PDF format, but slightly modified and with the “no printing” flag enabled. But I don’t like it when people are forbidding me something. It is sending the wrong message. So I set out to crack it.

Who Writes Linux?: This is an annual report published by The Linux Foundation that measures the the rate of Linux kernel development, who is doing it (developer names) and who is sponsoring it (company names). It has become an annual check on the state of the world’s largest open source project and collaborative development effort.

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LXer Weekly Roundup for 28-Nov-2010

LXer Article

In the Roundup this week we have all kinds of Open Source goodness for you including the news that Novell has been acquired by a company that may or may not have ties to Microsoft, how to wake up a Linux server remotely, Part 1 of how a KDE 3.5 user moved to KDE 4.4, ARM’s co-founder says Intels days of dominating the desktop are numbered and on a personal note today is the 5 year anniversary of the day my relationship with Linux got serious. Enjoy!

What’s Microsoft’s role in the Novell-Attachmate deal?: Seattle-based Attachmate Corp. is buying Novell for $2.2 billion, the companies announced on November 22. At the same time, Novell announced the “concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash.” So far, Microsoft is saying little about its role in the deal.

Novell Agrees to be Acquired by Attachmate Corporation: Novell, Inc., the leader in intelligent workload management, today announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Attachmate Corporation would acquire Novell for $6.10 per share in cash in a transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion. Attachmate Corporation is owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. Novell also announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation, for $450 million in cash, which cash payment is reflected in the merger consideration to be paid by Attachmate Corporation.

How a “Welded-to KDE3.5 User” Began a Move to KDE4.4 – Part 1: In this first part of a two part guest editorial and tutorial Dr. Tony Young (an Australian Mycologist by trade) shares his trials, tribulations, successes and disappointments in working with the new version of KDE. As a long time KDE 3.5 user he decided to see if he could get KDE 4.4 to look, feel and work the way he was used to KDE 3.5 working. Hang on everyone, its going to be a bumpy ride..

Linux Backup Server: Remote Wakeup, Automatic Shutdown: At last I can write this up for you, my fine readers. Today we’re going to learn about using Wake-on-LAN to wake up a server remotely, and automatic shutdowns. My master plan for my backup server is to automate everything– wake it up, run backups for all the computers in my house, and then everyone shuts down for the night.

Wayland VS X – Some Perspectives: The Linux world has been very talkative for the last few weeks with the news that Ubuntu plans on switching from the classic X server to Wayland for it’s graphics environment. What is Wayland exactly and why the change?…

Top Five Linux Deployment Mistakes: The days when Linux is an unknown quantity in a business are largely over — but that doesn’t mean that every organization has tons of experience deploying Linux. Even if your organization has deployed Linux before, there are some common mistakes to be aware of. Here’s five things you need to watch for when planning a new Linux deployment.

The best open source netbook distro of 2010 revealed!: Linux User & Developer magazine reviews four of the best netbook distros currently available in a bid to uncover the ultimate open source user experience for your netbook computer…

Intel Is Dead on the Desktop, Says ARM Co-Founder: Its days are numbered and the downfall of the Wintel monopoly has been forecast for some time. Intel has indeed lost significant ground to ARM chips, and Microsoft faces equally annoying competition from the likes of Google’s Android, which is climbing onboard practically every computer that isn’t a desktop PC or server.

Moving Desktop Windows users to Linux: More than a year ago I wrote a post concerning my personal experience. I manage our computer systems at work and never tried to convert user Pc’s to Linux, instead sometimes I showed them some of the nice stuff and played with them when their windows system crashed, or simply because network printers stopped working.

Goodbye Fedora, welcome back Debian, Part 1: I really did like Fedora 13. I liked it enough to solve more than a handful of problems. I liked it enough to use a proprietary graphics driver for the first time (didn’t like that; not only was it outside the package-management system and hard to update, it didn’t perform so well either). I love the Fedora community, the openness that’s everywhere, the lack of pretense. But just as everything was roses, furry kittens and such when I first ran Fedora 13 with the 2.6.33 Linux kernel, it started to go dark with the change — in mid-cycle, mind you — to the 2.6.34 kernel.

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LXer Weekly Roundup for 21-Nov-2010

LXer Article

The big stories this past week included an update on how far away Chrome OS is, a Ubuntu vs.Fedora comparison, 5 unusual games for Linux and a 200 line kernel patch that makes your desktop snappy. Enjoy!

Ubuntu vs Fedora: which is best?: Linux is always in a state of flux. On any given day, millions of lines of new code are being written, tested, double-checked, merged, packaged and downloaded from software repositories delivering another dose of opensource goodness. Unlike most desktop operating systems, release schedules are based on months rather than years (well, for most flavours of Linux) and so the experience of using Linux is one of trickled iterative change.

Schmidt: Google Chrome OS ‘a few months away’: Google boss Eric Schmidt has said that Chrome OS will be available “in the next few months” — which may be an indication that the company’s browser-based operating system has been delayed. Since unveiling the Chrome OS project last year, Google has said that systems using the operating system would be available by the end of this year. But the end of the year is a mere six weeks away. As he dropped the “a few months away” line at this week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Schmidt said that Gingerbread, the new version of Android, was “a few weeks away.”

Tensions Between Ubuntu, Fedora Mount Over New Website: In an ideal world, free-software developers would happily get along and cooperate towards the same ends. But the world’s far from perfect, as rising tensions between the Ubuntu and Fedora camps have made clear recently in the wake of the founding a new website intended, ironically, to promote “respect” within the open-source ecosystems.

The ~200 Line Linux Kernel Patch That Does Wonders: In recent weeks and months there has been quite a bit of work towards improving the responsiveness of the Linux desktop with some very significant milestones building up recently and new patches continuing to come. This work is greatly improving the experience of the Linux desktop when the computer is withstanding a great deal of CPU load and memory strain. Fortunately, the exciting improvements are far from over. There is a new patch that has not yet been merged but has undergone a few revisions over the past several weeks and it is quite small — just over 200 lines of code — but it does wonders for the Linux desktop.

The Linux desktop may soon be a lot faster: Linux is fast. That’s why 90%+ of the Top 500 fastest supercomputers run it. What some people don’t realize is that Linux is much better at delivering speed for servers and supercomputers than it is on the desktop. That was by design. But over the last few years, there’s been more interest in delivering fast desktop performance. Now there’s a Linux kernel patch that may give you a faster, much faster, desktop experience.

Alternative To The “200 Lines Kernel Patch That Does Wonders” Which You Can Use Right Away: Phoronix recently published an article regarding a ~200 lines Linux Kernel patch that improves responsiveness under system strain. Well, Lennart Poettering, a RedHat developer replied to Linus Torvalds on a maling list with an alternative to this patch that does the same thing yet all you have to do is run 2 commands and paste 4 lines in your ~/.bashrc file.

The Perfect Desktop – Linux Mint 10 (Julia): This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 10 (Julia) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 10 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.10 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.

Fixing Akonadi’s warning of the non-existing leap second table: Ever since I installed Kontact 4.5, it has been showing an MySQL warning when starting. The exact error in the logs is:

Can’t open and lock time zone table: Table ‘mysql.time_zone_leap_second’ doesn’t exist trying to live without them

While it’s only a warning, I don’t like to have my logs filled with warnings. Hence, I went on a hunt to prevent this warning. Lots of posts said this issue is fixed in newer versions (certainly not for me!), or it doesn’t matter. But that wasn’t good enough for me..

5 unusal games for Linux: We often hear that there are no games on Linux, or that are much worse than their counterparts for windows, so today I want to show some unusual games that run perfectly on our favorite operating system. Caph Caph is a sandbox game, based on physics. The game target is to make contact red object with green object. You can use various objects, solid, wire (rope), and bendable objects. Gravitation will help you.

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LXer Weekly Roundup for 14-Nov-2010

LXer Article

In the LXWR this week we have why Wayland is good for the future, Apache tells Oracle they are leaving the JCP, a music player with an ugly name, does Linux competing with Windows matter anymore? and 24 things we would change about Linux. Enjoy!

Why Wayland is good for the future…: The recent announce at UDS about the fact that the venerable X server & protocols will not be the default choice for Unity and as a consequence Ubuntu was a shock for some, it is clearly a relief for me…

Is it time for Free software to move on?: A remarkable continuity underlies free software, going all the way back to Richard Stallman’s first programs for his new GNU project. And yet within that continuity, there have been major shifts: are we due for another such leap?

24 things we’d change about Linux: If you use Linux long enough, you’ll soon discover a list of things you wished were different. Here are 24 things that we wish were different.

Linux: Does Being Competitive with Windows Matter?: How many times have you heard this statement: “It’s the year of the Linux desktop.” Not recently? Then how about “Linux is making gains on the Windows desktop”? Still leaving a bad taste in your mouth? Bet I know why. For years, both the statements above have been over-used to the point that either idea is now completely meaningless. Not due to anything negative with the Linux desktop, mind you, rather due to inherent differences in how Linux is marketed to the world, who its intended audience is and whether mainstream adoption even matters in the first place.

Apache to Oracle: We’re leaving the Java Community Process: The Apache Software Foundation is usually a nice, quiet organization that supports the development of quite a lot of open source software. Unlike the Free Software Foundation, it doesn’t usually get political or controversial. But the ASF is calling Oracle out over its handling of the Java Community Process (JCP).

What can all managers learn from Free, Open Source Software?: The 2010 edition of the Free/Open Source Software in Academia Conference (fOSSa) was an interesting event, with several talks that are quite relevant for everybody who cares about effective business and human resources management in ANY sector, not just in the software industry.

Two Features Wayland Will Have That X Doesn’t: While the discussion surrounding the Wayland Display Server and Canonical’s plans to deploy Ubuntu atop Wayland continue to be ongoing within our forums (here, here, and here) and elsewhere, some new technical capabilities and plans for Wayland have been discussed. Here’s two features that Wayland is set to have that is not currently supported by the X.Org Server.

DeadBeef – Simple, Lightweight Music Player for Ubuntu Maverick, Lucid: DeadBeef is probably the simplest and the most lightweight music player I have ever used in my Ubuntu. If you are someone who loves to keep it simple and useful at the same time, DeadBeef is one music player you definitely don’t want to miss.

Just Stop It, Microsoft: We all know that Microsoft doesn’t like people messing with their stuff. For example, Microsoft really hates the amount of piracy that surrounds Windows and Office. The company frequently releases updates that make piracy of those products harder and harder. This is completely legal considering that only Microsoft owns Windows and Office. You pay about 300.00USD to have MS Office and MS Windows, and those would be introductory versions of each. Now, apparently, the company wishes to control things even more.

Distro Developers Need Dollars!: Distro developers work hard and could use your financial support. These are hard times, and a lot of people are hurting financially. Jobs and money are hard to come by, and many folks are just getting by. It turns out that even your favorite distro developers could use a few bucks to help them keep churning out new & updated distros for desktop use.

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