I don't always agree with Monty but this time he is right. Now is the time to provide feedback on the merger. I wish there were more commentary on plans for MySQL after the merger.
My concern is the documentation license. If we want to improve MySQL at a faster rate than the docs copyright holder, then we must create separate documentation as we cannot publish a modified version of the official documentation. Several people have written about this before including me, Baron, Sheeri, Arjen and Justin.
Despite comments on stage between Karen and Kaj at the User Conference, there have been no changes to the docs license. The lead for the MySQL docs team explained to us that there will be no change and he deserves kudos for his bravery. I am very disappointed that neither Karen nor Kaj have said anything on this topic since then.
What else can you do? Find a different community. Check out the activity on the Drizzle mailing lists. I don't participate in Drizzle but I lurk there and am extremely impressed by the activity on the mailing lists and the changes they make to the code. MariaDB has yet to become active for external developers but it is quickly gaining momentum.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
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Yes. Please. We'd be more than happy to have anyone who wants to work on Documentation over in Drizzle-land!
ReplyDeletePlease don't flame me for this, but this is where implementing standards really helps. For years the official documentation for FrontBase was CJ Date's book, A Guide to the SQL Standard (FrontBase still doesn't have a lot of documentation as far as I know). When I wanted to do something with my FB database and didn't know how to do it, I just picked up the book. At one point, they realized that they had implemented something that was not correct according to the standard, and they changed it in the next dot release!
ReplyDelete"Mark Callaghan responds, 'I don’t always agree with Monty but this time he is right. Now is the time to provide feedback on the merger.' Listen to Monty, he exhorts."
ReplyDeleteLog Buffer #154
MariaDB has yet to become active for external developers...
ReplyDeleteMark, what leads you to this assessment? I assure you, we have accepted quite a few patches from external sources, and have incorporated them into MariaDB.
We would all love to see you apply for membership in maria-captains!
I know that Vadim has submitted XtraDB, but compare the activity on the email lists for Drizzle and Maria.
ReplyDelete@LucasRockwell Not that I am against implementing things based on the sql standards, but the standard itself is neither free as in speech or as in beer. Not to mention every database will add non-standard features of consequence (can you say indexes?)
ReplyDeleteHaving documentation under a floss license (drizzle's gfdl or better postgres bsd docs), is often overlooked, but I think key for anyone who wants to enhance an open source technology.