[Maria-discuss] [debian-mysql] MySQL's future in Debian and Ubuntu

[Axel Schwenke]

Henrik Ingo wrote:
> 
> For completeness, let me also defend Oracle for a change :-) There's
> also the 3rd option:
> 
>  * Stay with MySQL and blindly apply the updates that Oracle continues
> to release as GPL.

<snip>

> But to put things in context, in MySQL 5.0 series the situation was
> the opposite: The bugs were public but the publicly released  and GPL
> licensed bug fixes would be up to 6 months delayd in favor of paying
> customers getting them instantly. In some ways, the current situation
> is still better than back then.

This is a very weird statement. Oracle does not release GPL versions more
often than MySQL AB did. In fact Oracle does not make any promise to ever
produce GPL bugfix releases. It's completely at their discretion.

But contrary to MySQL AB, Oracle

- does not have a public bug tracking system where one could find a
description of the bug

- does not publish patches alongside with the bug reports

- does not feed patches to publicly available source code trees in a timely
manner

For projects like Debian that build their own binaries and are not dependent
on complete releases (but rather a stream of patches) the current situation
with Oracle is clearly a step back.


XL