As I have seen some concerns about the release schedule of MySQL Community Server and the availability of MySQL Enterprise Server sources, let me recap and detail some of the plans, which haven’t changed since the introduction of MySQL Enterprise Server in October:

1. MySQL 5.0 Community Server sources and binaries are available from our download pages. The latest version is 5.0.27, released in October.
2. MySQL Enterprise Server is released more frequently than MySQL Community Server. This means that we’ve seen also 5.0.28, 5.0.30 and 5.0.32 being released for MySQL Enterprise Server. Even numbers are for Enterprise, odd numbers for Community.
3. MySQL Community Server gets all bug fixes from MySQL Enterprise Server. This means that the next MySQL Community Server will contain all bug fixes from the most recent MySQL Enterprise Server published at that point. If we’re releasing a MySQL Community Server right after MySQL Enterprise Server 5.0.34, it will be labeled 5.0.35 and contain all 5.0.34 fixes plus any community patches applied at that point in time.
4. The higher release frequency of MySQL Enterprise Server provides added value for our commercial customers. We intend to deliver predictable monthly Enterprise releases. Providing and verifying frequent binaries is a paid-for service for those who want to spent money to save time. That said, MySQL continues to provide new community binaries from time to time, as said in item 1 above.
5. MySQL Community Server additionally includes what we call Community Enhancements on top of MySQL Enterprise Server. However, we’ve been slow at applying these enhancements. Jeremy Cole and others have been contributing patches, and we are looking at getting several of his enhancements and those of others into the tree ASAP. We are also looking at improving our processes so that contributors won’t have to wait as long in the future.
6. MySQL Enterprise Server is available in source form for download from our ftp server at ftp.mysql.com. We don’t highlight this much, as we would like to encourage our community users — including Linux distributions — to use our community server.
7. The MySQL Community Server tree is updated frequently with the bug fixes from the Enterprise tree. Our users can access both Community and Enterprise server from BitKeeper. However, we expect most users to want to work from tagged, numbered releases, no matter whether they use Community or Enterprise server.

One area where we feel the need to improve is the release frequency of source tarballs from the Community Tree. This will alleviate some of the burden put on a couple of Community users. Our current plan is to have the next MySQL Community Server source tarball release happen late January or early February.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 12:48 and is filed under MySQL, MySQL Server, Release Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.