As followers of Free / Open Source Software know, there are several ways of being free.

As for free as in speech, look for Wednesday’s keynote at the MySQL Users Conference here in Santa Clara on the US West Coast. It’s by Rick Falkvinge, party leader of the Swedish Pirate Party. Or download MySQL Community Server, it’s free as in speech.

As for free as in beer, sure, again, just download MySQL Community Server, install it, and use it. Old news.

But what if you’re lazy enough not to want to download and install MySQL Server? What if you just want to use an instance of MySQL Serer, installed and provided by someone else, with a simple command like

mysql -h db4free.net -P 3307 -u [username] -p[password] ?

Well, in that case, register for a free MySQL 5.1 plus a free MySQL 6.0 at http://www.db4free.net/

Like it says on DB4Free’s first page:

The db4free project provides a platform for database users and developers from all over the world to exchange experiences, give hints to each other or to discuss. This offer also gives you the chance to learn to deal with databases without having to rent a server for money.

You just create an account, perhaps browse the db4free.net blog, and off you go.

You can run MySQL 5.1 (now in RC) and MySQL 6.0 (still in Alpha; includes Falcon).

Thanks for the beer, Markus Popp!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 6:24 and is filed under Falcon, MySQL, MySQL Users Conferences. 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.