This sucks big-time -- from The Register:
Sun may shut off high-end MySQL features
Pay-to-play fires up grassroots hoots
Less than two months into Sun Microsystems' MySQL acquisition, Sun has succeeded in upsetting the grassroots types with plans to close off features to the community.
It's emerged Sun may release extra data back-up features in the Enterprise Edition of the next version of MySQL, due in Q4, to paying enterprise subscribers only.
The news slipped out at a partner meeting during the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, California, and was flagged on former MySQL employee Jeremy Cole's blog. There'd been no hint of the change during earlier conference sessions on the MySQL roadmap.
This paragraph sums it up about right:
The move is seen by some as a betrayal of MySQL's open source roots and, by others, as part of an evil master plan by Sun to commercialize open source development. Mickos strongly denied both accusations and claimed the decision was made before the Sun takeover.
MySQL powers this website and a couple others that I maintain. I love it. I once worked for Microsoft and was in their SQL Server department for two years. I like working with databases and MySQL is an awesome SQL database -- rock solid, nice feature set and fast as the dickens. I was happy when Sun bought them out as this would mean that they would sponsor and continue to develop this awesome product (sort of like IBM's relationship with Wietse Venema's excellent Postfix mail processor) but no -- only two months into the game and the suckage starts...
