If “trusted” means “it’s worth something because I’m paying for it,” you can pay us to give you our opinion. A lot of people trust that pretty highly. Of course, you can just read our blog and get it that way, too.

Otherwise, you’ll have to make your own comparison. There’s nothing anyone can just hand you that we’re going to publicly say on our blog is trustworthy.

So they don’t include their “patches” like the one made by Percona? http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/07/16/mysql-releases-with-percona-patches/

1) These are the same binaries. ProvenScaling does not rebuild binaries themselves but simply republish enterprise binaries which they allowed to do because they are distributed under GPL license.

2) Yes the Enterprise Monitor is only SOFTWARE though Support is the main value you get with subscription (especially as you’re beginner). There may be other software released in the future for enterprise users only.

3) MONYog is commercial tool as well though it is priced more fairly in my opinion (though the problem is mainly you can’t get MySQL Enterprise Monitor just by itself from MySQL). We use set of open source tools – NAGIOS, CACTI, Maatkit instead.

1. What are the differences between MySQL Enterprise Server downloaded from provenscaling.com and the one bought from mysql.com? Can we download MySQL Enterprise Server from MySQL.com (without buying their MySQL Enterprise product)?

2. I read from MySQL.com, “MySQL Enterprise includes: MySQL Enterprise Server, MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL Production Support”. So the only software that not available unless we buy MySQL Enterprise is MySQL Enterprise Monitor. Is it true?

3. What do you use to substitue MySQL Enterprise Monitor? Do you use MONyog monitoring tool?

How can letter releases count against the four yearly releases. It says right on the download page for 5.0.51b, “This is a bugfix release for the current production release family. It replaces MySQL 5.0.51.” Also, don’t hide behind the veil of security. Only one of the last two letter releases was for security and it wasn’t even due to security in mysql but the bundled yassl library. The other was due to mac os preference pane issues introduced by leopard. In either release _nothing changed_ in the core of mysql. I understand you can change the text of a README file, tar it up, and call it a new release but you’re not being very honest with us in doing so.

Please call this what it is, sunsetting the community release. I understand you’re trying to get the community to start their own releases. I don’t understand why. You already make a release, why force us to fork the code? We’re perfectly willing to work to write patches and make your release better, for _free_. All you have to do is accept some of the patches, keep us informed of your developments, and make releases for consistency and testing.

Absolutely. I’ve made this argument on my personal blog too. And what I said before is still true: I WILL NOT PAY for what they are selling. I’d pay for something that’s good: but I won’t pay to expose my servers to risky, untested software. That’s just stupid.

The thing I just don’t get is that MySQL is turning up its nose at an opportunity to make a lot of money while making people happy and delivering a better quality product. All the blogs, interviews etc say “Our customers won’t pay for something they can get for free. That gives us two options: charge for services, or reserve some things (hot fixes, some features^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H) for paying customers. The charge-for-services model has been tried and doesn’t work.”

This is a false dichotomy that IMO is perpetuated and pushed by the sales and marketing organizations within the corporation. There are more than 2 ways to make money, and the incredibly obvious one the community and lots of pundits have politely suggested time after time has been ignored.

If anyone else wants to make a good business out of this, there’s a great opportunity to do so. Since the source is open, anyone with the skills could do sane branch management and release a tested, stable version of the product. It would be a lot of work. That’s the point. That’s why it’s worth paying for.

1. This is not how Open Source works. OSS projects don’t hide binaries from the community – at least not healthy ones.

Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending that MySQL is OSS. At best it’s source under glass.

(unless this policy radically changes while at Sun).

2. The community is less than happy here. Perhaps someone should host a public vote of no confidence in MySQL/Sun’s management of MySQL releases.

I don’t want to run stale versions of MySQL nor do I want to run versions that haven’t been tested by the community.

Damned if you do – damned if you don’t.

Kevin

Although you may think it’s not appropriate, we count letter releases (triggered by security releases) as releases — towards the at-least-twice-a-year binary target. That’s what I meant by “2. There will be at least two yearly ‘mature GA’ (currently MySQL 5.0) binary builds. They aren’t scheduled, but usually triggered by grave security vulnerabilities.” in http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2007/08/08/refining-mysql-community-server/

As for being on goal, by my comment “Also the four yearly source releases goal is on” in this blog posting, I didn’t mean we’re “on target”, I just meant “we haven’t skipped the goal”. Moreover, I confessed “We may need to improve on their predictability”.

Thanks for prompting this clarification!

I don’t understand how the four quarterly releases is on goal if we’re in Q3 of the year and there hasn’t been a release since last year. Do you consider the letter releases to count against the four quarterly source releases?