One of the greatest things about MySQL is the amount of passion that exists inside the company and among our customers and users. People are vocal in the things they love and sometimes hate about MySQL. But it's all good; we love getting input; it helps us refine our products and offerings.
At our users conference this week, Robin Schumacher presented our roadmap going beyond the latest 5.1 release. There's been discussion about the new backup capabilities planned for MySQL 6.0, so let me put all the cards on the table to explain what we're doing and why.
First of all, MySQL 6.0 is currently in alpha and is targeted for GA release at the end of the year if things go well. Online backup has been a long requested item from our customers and we know that the more business-critical the application, the greater the need for better backup facilities that can operate faster and with less disruption. There are some solutions today in the form of MySQLdump (free), InnoDB Hotbackup (commercial), Zmanda (subscription), but ultimately backup is a capability that everyone needs. And technically, to do a good job with backup, certain core capabilities need to be in the server.
One thing that we didn't explicitly state in the roadmap presentation was that these core capabilities will be published as part of the MySQL server under GPL. Why? Because everyone needs them and we want to continue to be competitive and improve our product both for community users and for our paying customers. You will be able to download the new backup facilities in MySQL 6.05 alpha which should be available in the coming weeks. And this week Chuck Bell, Robin Schumacher and other folks have been describing in more detail how the backup works and some of the enhancements coming in subsequent releases. The new backup facilities will include a SQL-command driven interface for online, non-blocking DML for all transactional engines and point-in-time recovery. Compared to MySQLdump it's faster, easier to use and integrated into the server. Again, all of this is open source, under GPL and available to all our users. And as Marten Mickos has said, the core MySQL DBMS server will always be open source.
In addition, we also look for ways to add further value to our paying customers. In so doing, my rule of thumb is we should never take things away from the community or cripple our community offerings. But if there are capabilities that can deliver more value to paying customers and grow that part of the market, that's a good thing. After all, revenues help us hire more developers, and build more open source software. So in the MySQL 6.0 roadmap our plan is to develop plug-ins to the server that provide additional compression, encryption and so on. Since the server will have a pluggable API for these facilities, this is also an area where the community and our partners can create their own plug-ins, perhaps coming up with their own enhancements that further strengthen the ecosystem.
Since MySQL 6.0 is still many months away, there are plenty of details that are not yet finalized. We have not yet determined how the encryption or compression plug-ins will be licensed, but the intent is to make them available to paying customers. And in our view, many or perhaps most community users will not need these capabilities. But we hope that some commercial customers will find that they can save time with these features and so that's an added value delivered as part of our subscription offering. And so just to be clear:
- MySQL 6.0 backup capabilities are open source
- Add-on modules will be for paying customers
Backup and recovery are hugely critical functions and our goal is to make sure that all of these capabilities are rock solid and high quality, no matter whether it's the core capabilities in the server or the subscription add-ons. So we have committed substantial QA resources in this area to make sure we do it right.
Getting to Lagom
One of the lessons I've learned over the years at MySQL is that we serve two distinct markets. Like normal commercial companies, we have customers who pay us. And like many rapidly growing open source products we have rabid users who love our product, but don't necessarily pay us. Marten characterizes our customers as those who pay money to save time, and our open source community as those who spend time to save money. I think the model is a good one. We may never be FOSSy enough to please the most ardent open source proponents --nor will we ever be as commercially-focused as our profit-driven salesforce would like. But we do try to make decisions to keep things in balance. Or as they say in Sweden: lagom, meaning "in balance." That balance keeps us honest and focused.
Our goal at MySQL is to serve both markets equally well, even though they have different characteristics. And we recognize that both markets are extremely competitive. While it would be easy to optimize our operations for a single variable (say, paying customers) at the expense of the other (in this case, the community) I think that's a mistake.
Why? Because open source is not only a development model, it's also a distribution model. While the number of customers who pay us is much smaller than the number of community users who do not, most of our paying customers first used MySQL because it is available freely under the GPL open source license. And in many cases, we know that MySQL is popular because of the work of the community who are out there using it, blogging about it, creating add-on tools, products or services. MySQL has always had this "dual" nature, since the very beginning when David, Monty and Alan founded the company as a commercial enterprise.
There is a natural tendency to view the relationship between the needs of our paying customers and our non-paying community as a zero-sum game. That is, we can easily consider that the gains of one group come at the expense of the other. Personally, I think that logic is very limiting. Perhaps it is true in some cases, but it need not be that way. Instead, I think the right thing to do is to find ways to benefit both markets at the same time. After all, the two markets are joined at the hip in many ways.
How so? MySQL customers benefit directly from the large scale of the community which has helped create a thriving ecosystem. For example there are many third party tools, books, training courses, consultants created by the open source community and our many commercial partners. And obviously, by having many very advanced community users, there is a lot of sophisticated know-how about MySQL. We are always blown away by the kind of innovation that comes out of our users, the contributions that are made (directly or indirectly), the way they push the limits of our software, test it, make suggestions, write innovative applications for it, the bugs they report and so on.
And the community benefits from the growing revenues contributed by the paying customers. I was speaking to MySQL guru Frank Mash over at Fotolog and he said one of the benefits of commercial focus is that it makes MySQL more legitimate in companies. Perhaps that's not true for everyone, but I suspect it's true for some people. Since there's growing commercial demand, it means that there are more jobs available, which leads to more opportunities for developers and DBAs, which means the community continues to grow.
There's a "virtuous circle" that links the community and the commercial users of MySQL. And MySQL is in the middle trying to make sure we are balanced in our actions and not neglecting the interests of either market. It's not always obvious how to benefit both groups and there are few successful models to guide us at this point. So we are constantly forging new territory, experimenting, trying new things, and listening for input. As we do so, we try to be true to the mission we have declared for many years: "make superior database management available and affordable to all." That mission continues on in 2008 even as we are part of Sun Microsystems.
Feedback, Input Welcome
Going back to the original premise, I think our plans for backup in MySQL 6.0 meet the needs of both our markets by having core capabilities in the community server and additional convenience features for commercial customers. And there's no limitations here to prevent anyone in the community from creating their own plug-ins.
Let me know what you think of the ideas here. Would you use the new backup capabilities in MySQL 6.0? Would you want the add-on modules for compression or encryption? Is this the right balance between the needs of Community and Customers? What suggestions do you have for us?
