[Koha-devel] Oracle nerfs MySQL, calls it MySQL classic, and charges $2, 000+ for features like InnoDB

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Chris Nighswonger
<cnighswonger at foundations.edu> wrote:
> 2010/11/4 Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com>:
>> It looks like I jumped the gun. This looks like it's about commercial
>> support, not features, except where marked on the linked page.
>
> That's not how I read it. It appears to me that your first assessment
> was correct.
>
> The first row of the chart shows support availability. Classic has no
> support available.
>
> The subsequent rows compare features. Clearly InnoDB is *not* checked
> in the MySQL Classic column.

InnoDB and the InnoDB plugin are still present in the MySQL "community
edition" source download.  I imagine that very few Koha users actually
purchase "MySQL Classic" or another other version with a support
contract from Oracle.  (In fact, individual libraries *can't* purchase
the Classic Edition, as it is only available to ISVs, OEMs, and VARs.
The cheapest supported version that an ordinary user could purchase is
Standard Edition).  Nothing that Oracle does could cause InnoDB
support to be, say, yanked from the Debian packages of MySQL.

I don't think that Oracle price changes for MySQL support yesterday
have any direct bearing on Koha users right now -- we can still get
MySQL with InnoDB.  Of course, Oracle can easily do things that would
make MySQL very unattractive in the future, for example, by not
releasing updates to the community edition, and I'm not defending
their handling of their purchase of MySQL AB and Innobase Oy and their
treatment of the MySQL project.

We need to be prepared for all possibilities, and I will be porting my
test database to MariaDB this weekend and seeing how that goes.
However, I think we need to be clear on one point -- nothing changed
yesterday that would prevent a new Koha library from being able to get
MySQL with InnoDB.  I can't speak about tomorrow.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
gmcharlt at gmail.com