At a user conference in London, MySQL announced MySQL Enterprise, a departure from their existing business and development models.
Essentially MySQL will have two versions of the core product: Enterprise and Community. This is very much like RHEL and Fedora—an approach that I support. I will let Matt dive further into the business aspects, but I am in the camp that it's OK to make money from open source, at least if you are paying for the development. I would expect a bit of squawking from the community about the MySQL change, but the community version remains good news. Marten Mickos said "we'll have many things that will make the Community version have features and functions that may or may not ever make it to the Enterprise version."
MySQL Enterprise is available as an annual subscription in four different tiers (Basic, Silver, Gold, Platinum.) Existing (and new) subscribers gain access to new management tools which Marten described as "leading edge." The new tool is an on-premise application that communicates with the MySQL mothership to get access to various rules—which can be database specific, like checking indexes; or can be custom developed by users. There is real potential value in the rules and the rules development as users can enhance and tune MySQL for their infrastructure. When I asked about ease of use Marten claimed he was able to get the new monitoring up and running in about 30 minutes despite his non-technical background. The product is in final beta right now with plans to ship in the near future. There is "no effect on pricing just more value to the existing offering" according to Mickos.
I think it's a great move for MySQL as a business and do believe the community continues to benefit from the great work that MySQL has done and continues to do.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on October 16, 2006 10:43 PM
