MySQL users are upset about plans Sun Microsystems disclosed this week to keep some strategic planned features — and the source code — closed. Only paying customers will get access to the new database features.
Sun acquired MySQL in February and confirmed the new online backup capabilities that are under development will only be available to MySQL Enterprise customers. Most of the software’s users have the free MySQL Community edition.
The details emerged this week at MySQL’s annual user conference in Santa Clara, Calif., where Sun also revealed it will delay the release of MySQL 5.1, the latest upgrade, until June to fix bugs.
“This represents a substantive change to their development model — previously they have been developing features in both MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise,” long-time MySQL contributor Jeremy Cole wrote in his blog.
Sun Responds to Critics
The shift means a dramatic change in the number of MySQL users who will test the new features. In effect, Cole said, Sun will give its paying customers untested code.
“How is this supposed to work?” he asked. “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 backward.”
Marten Mickos, formerly MySQL’s CEO and now the senior vice president of Sun who oversees the MySQL project, responded to Cole’s concerns with a post of his own.
“I appreciate your concern for our paying customers,” Mickos wrote. “They are, after all, the ones who pay our salaries and allow us to produce more GPL software. They are also the ones we listen to when we decide what to develop for them, and how.”
“If we happen to develop a feature that we ship only to our paying subscribers, there is nothing stopping others (including…