Re: best analysis of Oracle-Innobase I've seen

ned(at)nedscape(dot)com (Ned Lilly) writes:
> Don't know if the author knows this to be true, or if it was just an
> overly broad assumption, but the way he described the audit
> capability Innobase (and now Oracle) has over MySQL was surprising:
>
> "One, it gains accurate accounting of MySQL's market share (because
> InnoDB ships with every copy). Two, and more importantly, it gains
> access to the list of MySQL customers who need InnoDB support -- in
> other words, those specific customers who want the enterprise-class
> features Oracle has provided for years."
>
> That's a heck of a licensing agreement; if MySQL agreed to those
> terms, then shame on them even more! In return for letting me
> borrow your technology, here's everything you need to know about my
> customers and my business, as well as a big pile of money.

Why should this seem overly surprising?

In order for InnoDB to respond usefully to bug requests, it has to
have reasonably direct access to the customers that report problems.
That's just pretty obvious.

Likewise, for them to be able to audit that MySQL AB is paying what
they owe, they need *some* information on who is buying the licenses
that they are selling. That may NOT be in terms of detailed customer
information, but the number of licenses is a nice, discrete number
that most certainly will have to be reported.
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