Travelling to Hongkong and Taipei has made such an impression on me, that I couldn’t help but add two new blogs to my homepage kaj.arno.fi:

• http://blogs.arno.fi/guanxi/ is (or pretends to be) in Simplified Chinese, written on the Chinese mainland
• http://blogs.arno.fi/yilingyi/ is (or pretends to be) in Traditional Chinese, written here in Taiwan

Guanxi means “relations”, as in “Community Relations”. It’s also a very common word describing how to get things done in China. It even has its own English language Wikipedia entry.

Yi-ling-yi means one-oh-one, as in Taipei 101. This number sequence also means “special” in Chinese. Taipei 101 is the world’s highest completed skyscraper. Needless to say, that merits another Wikipedia entry, not to mention a blog entry in Traditional Chinese.

Tomorrow, I’ll make another attempt at giving a short MySQL speech in Mandarin. Well, technically speaking, it’s already today, as it’s 3:30am in Taipei. My internal clock has gone awry.

A new start always provides an opportunity to reassess your way of doing things:

• “Am I doing the right things with my life?”
• “Which habits could I change — in order to be a better neighbour?” 

Since Karen Tegan Padir took over the MySQL product from Mårten Mickos, we at Sun have taken a thorough look in the mirror.  The result of this introspection allows us to publish our conclusions and new community commitments this week in conjunction with the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara. 

For those who don’t yet know Karen, let me state a few facts: 

• Karen is VP of Sun’s newly-founded MySQL & Software Infrastructure group
• She describes herself as a geek and a straight-shooter, and I can attest to both 
• She was deeply involved in Sun’s decision to acquire MySQL, as well as the subsequent integration work throughout 2008 

In my previous blog, ”MySQL Culture and Business Philosophy Goes Mainstream at Sun“, I stressed that the key point to remember is that Sun is completely committed to building a big open source-based business, and very much supportive of the various communities that Sun is engaged in. That may sound a bit abstract, so I have worked with my new boss, Karen, to spell out for the MySQL community what it actually means in practice: 

First: We shall now start releasing MySQL Community Server binaries as frequently as we release the MySQL Enterprise Server. We want everyone – community and customers — to get the best bits first from us. This is why future Monthly Rapid Updates of MySQL 5.1 will remain available for the community. Moreover, future MRUs of MySQL 5.0 will also become available for the community. 

Second: We shall focus even more on our traditional core product values of stability, Performance and Ease of Use. Like you, we hate bugs, we hate slow, we hate waiting for fixes, and we hate awkward usability — even more than we love new functionality. The MySQL 5.4 performance release, which is considerably faster than MySQL 5.0 or 5.1 in most use cases, is a case in point.

Third: We shall allocate additional resources to the health and well-being of the MySQL Community. We focus both on users and developers. We shall now devote a greater portion of our internal MySQL Engineering Team resources to reviewing and eventually merging architecturally-compatible features written by external contributors, even if those features weren’t on our own roadmap.

Finally, fourth: We shall do more to improve our internal software engineering practices. We will brush our teeth every morning and evening, exercise several times a week, and eat (mostly) healthy food. Some of us may at times still take a vodka shot, but if so, then only to be social and to provide an excuse for singing badly, but not while writing code. 

In the spirit of open-ness, please give us ideas on how we can implement these changes. Let the MySQL community team know what you think. For those at the show this week, stop Karen in the halls and introduce yourself. Above all, enjoy!

Jetlagged from transatlantic travel, I woke up in the middle of the Californian night thinking about what has changed since I arrived at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara on Sunday evening. I was pondering all the questions MySQL users and Sun colleagues were asking at the event, and what the user base was thinking out loud on Twitter yesterday.

What has changed is obviously that Sun Microsystems and Oracle announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun.

What further changes we will see as a result of that is a different story. Evidently, I don’t sit in with a crystal ball predicting what will happen next. Nor do I have insight into Oracle’s plans for MySQL, once the deal is closed. Nor am I even in a position to comment upon the acquisition, so I won’t do it.

However, what I do know and what I can say is what has not changed with MySQL:

1. There still is a huge base of MySQL users out there. They have economic interests that are independent of whoever owns MySQL. The users in the MySQL community come in all flavors, ranging from casual users to those who intimately know the inner workings of MySQL and have contributed to the code base.
2. There still is a huge talent pool of MySQL experts in Sun Microsystems, in Support, in Consulting, in Training, in Engineering, in other parts of Sun. They have a strong loyalty towards the MySQL users they have served over many years.
3. MySQL is still licensed under the GPL. The GPL license used to form a safety net for the users not certain about whether MySQL AB would follow the spirit of Open Source. It continued to be so with Sun Microsystems. And the Open Source license continues to provide a safety net for its user base, regardless of the owner of MySQL.
4. MySQL has founders, one in particular, who still haven’t fallen off the face of the planet. Moreover, their passion for MySQL and its users continues.
5. Sun Microsystems still is a separate legal entity, practising what’s known as “business as usual“. This is familiar to MySQLers from the time between Sun’s acquisition of MySQL was announced mid-January 2008 to the closing at the end of February 2008. During the period between announcement and closing, we continue to behave as separate entities, even competing with each other.
6. Part of Business as Usual is a number of product announcements at the MySQL Conference this week. I’m looking forward to these!

While I cannot and will not personally speculate about what happens next, nor about Oracle’s intentions with MySQL, I think our users are looking to what the names most inimately associated with MySQL are saying — even if they no longer work for Sun Microsystems:

• First, Mårten Mickos, MySQL AB’s former CEO and long-time SVP at Sun, has several positive comments in his Forbes interview “Why Oracle Won’t Kill MySQL”.
• Second, Michael “Monty” Widenius, MySQL AB’s co-founder, also finds many positive things to say in his blog statement “To be (free) or not to be (free)“.

My humble suggestions: Keep using MySQL! Follow the announcements from the MySQL Conference this week! Keep helping each other within the MySQL community!

Go MySQL!

As Colin revealed last week, Google has accepted MySQL for the Google Summer of Code 2009.

We’ve already participated in GSoC 2007 and 2008, so this is our third year running. We know more than before about what’s waiting for us, and so does our mentors and perhaps even some of our students. And in particular, Colin Charles has been our GSoC program coordinator all of these years, so he is quite seasoned by now.

The basic idea for MySQL to participate in Google Summer of Code is to provide students with an opportunity to contribute to MySQL, in return for some attention by our mentors. Or highly qualified and committed mentors of others who develop software tightly coupled with MySQL, for that matter. Well-known community members such as Marc Delisle, Sheeri Kritzer Cabral and Paul McCullagh have been MySQL GSoC mentors and we’re hoping to be able to accept more non-Sun mentors this year. 

We’re now in the phase where mentors and students from inside and outside Sun Microsystems can enter their MySQL related project suggestions to our Google Summer of Code MySQL ideas page.

However, if you’re a potential mentor, you’re in a hurry. The student application opens still today! So while we’re still accepting mentor ideas, beware that the student application deadline is Friday next week (3 April 2009). Not much time for juggling ideas, entering them into the GSoC framework, and preliminiarily discussing with students.

The matching of mentors and students then goes on for a good week, until 15 April 2009. Decisions are announced 20 April 2009.

The coding itself begins 23 May 2009, or more precisely, that’s when Google begins issuing initial payments for students who are “in good standing”.

Mid-term evaluation is 13 July 2009, and work has to be done by 17 August 2009. Final evaluations happen, and final results are announced 25 August 2009.

If you’re a student, here’s what to do:

1. Identify an interesting project in the MySQL GSoC Forge Wiki page http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/SummerOfCode2009Ideas
2. If you have a great idea that you think Sun (or somebody else) is willing to sponsor, suggest it on that Wiki page
3. Look at the Google SoC FAQ page at http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/faqs

If in doubt, email Colin at MySQL.com. But do read his blog entry first!

Looking forwards to an interesting (Northern Hemisphere) Summer of Code 2009!

Two down, one to go! Last week, I went to Gothenburg and Stockholm for the Sun Nordic Software Roadshow. This week, it’s Helsinki coming up.

These roadshows are a set of presentations and form an opportunity to interface with Sun customer and partners, and lots of MySQL users. It’s about MySQL, Glassfish, Open ESB, Open SSO and identity management.

For Gothenburg and Stockholm, the first keynoter was Ola Ahlvarsson. He’s a serial entrepreneur that survived the dot com boom and now makes a comfortable living talking common sense about Internet, and hosting the Scandinavian Interactive Media Event (SIME) each November in Stockholm, boasting big-name speakers from all the world coming to Stockholm. Ola is a great presenter and from him, I will with pride steal the best description of a digital native that I’ve heard so far. I liked it so much that I posted a blog about it, in Swedish, German and English. (The blog includes a picture of my first Nokia from 1967).

In Stockholm, I got the opportunity to visit with one of the biggest and most advanced users of MySQL in all of Europe: the Swedish Police. I blogged about their current use and future plans.

For Helsinki on Wednesday this week, one of the speakers I’m looking forward to is Petri Vuontela, in charge of IT customer systems at the bank where I’ve been a customer since I got my first bank account (now Aktia, then Helsingfors Sparbank) talking about identity management. And personally, I will be talking about “MySQL, Powering the Web Economy”, like in the venues in Sweden.

Links:

• http://se.sun.com/sunnews/events/roadshow/
• http://se.sun.com/sunnews/events/roadshow/agenda_se.html
• http://se.sun.com/sunnews/events/roadshow/agenda_fi.html
• http://www.sime.nu/
• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2009/03/12/do-as-the-swedish-police-save-money-on-open-source/
• http://blogs.arno.fi/fib/2009/03/16/en-digital-infoding/
• http://blogs.arno.fi/efib/2009/03/16/eine-digital-eingeborene-und-mein-erstes-nokia/
• http://blogs.arno.fi/isit/2009/03/16/a-digital-native-and-my-first-nokia/

Given the changes announced this week, I have updated my original plans for my presentation on Sunday. I was going to talk about Social networking, but am now changing it to a very interactive Q&A session.

I expect people are asking themselves

• What has changed?
• What will happen now?
• What are the consequences for the MySQL roadmap?
• Are there other consequences for the MySQL community?

and I will attempt at answering these questions interactively during FOSDEM.

Towards the end of next week, after internal coordination, I plan to share some further thinking on the “what will happen now” front with my blog readers.

What also I plan to do during tomorrow’s FOSDEM session is to get plenty of feedback on internal thoughts about what the community expects from us. My aim is to ask the right questions. My aim is to listen. My aim is to be able to use the FOSDEM feedback in our own planning at Sun. My aim is not yet to give answers to what Sun will do to accommodate your feedback, not even in the blog towards end of next week. At least partial answers can be expected at the MySQL Conference & Expo 20-23 April 2009 in California, though.

Summary: Travel to Brussels, come to FOSDEM, follow the signs for the “AW Building”, and go to the MySQL room AW1.126 in time before the start 13:15 tomorrow Sunday 8.2.2009. And tell us what you want Sun to do with MySQL!

MySQL is undergoing some organisational changes as part of Sun. Mårten Mickos (MySQL AB’s CEO 2001-2008 and SVP at Sun 2008-) is moving on in his life, outside Sun. This is independent of Michael “Monty” Widenius’ recent departure.

I’ve worked for Mårten ever since joining MySQL in 2001, in various capacities (VP Training, VP Consulting, VP Services, VP Engineering, CIO, and since 2005 VP Community Relations). I will obviously miss working with him. At the same time, I can understand and respect his decision to move on to something else, and wish him all the best, whatever his upcoming pursuits will be.

I owe Mårten much of what I’ve achieved in business during this century. I’ve known him since 1981, and counted him as a close friend ever since. Even if the era of working for the same company has come to an end, I look forward to spending some non-business-oriented time with him.

While parting ways can be very painful, I am certain that MySQL’s culture and business philosophy will live on in Sun, thanks largely to Mårten’s contribution. In fact, you could say MySQL now becomes mainstream at Sun. Former MySQLers continue in key positions, in some cases with a mandate to generalise and apply MySQL related learnings on other Open Source products. In fact, the newly formed organisation that MySQL now is part of includes GlassFish, Open SSO and Open ESB, thus making us part of the industry’s by far largest open source based group. It is a natural evolution in becoming a regular product at Sun — as opposed to being treated separate and different as we have for the past year. That time has been important for us to be “grafted” into Sun, but now it is time to move forward.

As anytime when the person at the top changes, other changes will certainly follow. The key point to remember here is that MySQL, the product, remains alive and well. Sun is completely committed to building a big open source based business and very much supportive of the various communities it is engaged in. In another blog, I will expand upon what this means for the future.

Now being back from last week’s trip to Ukraine and this week’s trip to Russia, it’s time for an overview.

MySQL was prominently present at both Sun events, the one in Kiev on 26.11.2008 and the one in Moscow last Tuesday 2.12.2008. It was good to discuss with local Sun guys, and to meet MySQL community people and colleagues in both places.

The two first pictures in this post are from the community event at a university of economy in Moscow.

Like elsewhere, I started in the local language (which, perhaps surprisingly, frequently seems to be Russian also in Ukraine), followed by a “MySQL in the Web Economy” presentation in English.

Russia and Ukraine are interesting places, so I blogged quite a bit about the event. But I don’t want to spam Planet MySQL with travel tips and reports of Russian saunas, Russian taxis and Russian food. So here’s a short overview of the other blogs I wrote.

In Swedish:

• A report about the comfortable overnight (18:23-08:25) train journey from Helsinki to Moscow, on the Lev Tolstoy.
• A How-to study on using local metro (subway) to get from Leningradskiy station to Holiday Inn at Lesnaya.
• An account of a Russian banya (sauna), involving steam, birch and oak twigs, kvass, tea, and a special treatment called parit. Including a note about the Italian-Japanese anime Calimero.
• Some tips on taking a black taxi to get from A to B in Moscow.

In German:

• A few ideas on how to learn Russian by simultaneously reading Fandorin in German and in Russian
• The same banya (sauna) story, but from a German, rather than Scandinavian, perspective

In English:

• Out of Ukraine: On sequential interpretation, non-smoking and the concept of “Europe” as interpreted in Ukraine and Finland
• A comparative study in dress code at airports, with Istanbul, Ankara and Kiev as examples
• A nostalgic note to fellow Moscow traveller Zack Urlocker called Moo-moo: Russian fast food
• A self-centered description of food I like, introducing the concept of “kajsher” in Russia serves kajsher food at Elki Palki

In Russian:

• An attempt to describe my Helsinki-Moscow train ride in Russian

Let me conclude by sharing some of the pictures found in the detail blog postings, in miniature format:

More good news on Ivan Nikitin!

Yesterday, I got an email and some fresh pictures from a happy Andrii Nikitin, Ivan’s father. He met with a Danish doctor last week, and it seems as if everything is ready for Ivan and the rest of the family to move from the German clinic to Denmark at the end of November. The Nikitin family is settling down in Denmark and Andrii is already employed by Sun Microsystems Denmark.

Andrii, the proud father, says Ivan looks like any boy now. Sure, Ivan still gets tired a bit faster than other boys his age, and sometimes, he has a small nose bleed. However, the Nikitin family is now able to live as most families do.

The generous donations by the MySQL community and Sun employees were enough to cover the expert treatment Ivan got in Germany. It wouldn’t have covered a transplantation, but it looks increasingly unlikely that one will be needed. The Nikitins and all MySQL guys at Sun are very, very grateful for the donations.

So to sum it up: Ivan Nikitin’s future is painted in much brighter colours than ever before!

Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the three Baltic countries for Sun Microsystems, talking about MySQL powering the Web economy. The tour started on Monday and Tuesday in Vilnius, Lithuania, followed by Riga on Wednesday and Tallinn on Thursday. Many similarities between the countries, which are externally often seen as one unit and which internally sometimes view each other as siblings.

I was joined during the trip by Dutch Sun colleague Martin de Jong, who observed that each of the countries have a larger area than the Netherlands, whereas the combined .lt .lv and .ee population isn’t even half of that of the Netherlands.

But the economic importance of the Baltics is increasing. The Sun Microsystems activities are being managed through Sun Finland, whose country manager Hannu Nyländen accompanied Martin and myself through most of the tour.

I’ll offer some country specific observations, but let me start by saying that the countries don’t share a mutually intelligible language. While Lithuanian and Latvian are related and share some words, they are at least as far apart as German and English. They’re both very old Indo-European languages, with Lithuanian being the older one, with one well-informed Vilnius attendee claiming close relationship between Lithuanian and Sanskrit. Estonian isn’t Indo-European at all, but related to Finnish. Probably a bit closer to Finnish than German is to English (but quite a bit more distant than, say, Danish is from Swedish). At any rate, this leaves young Baltic people speaking English to each other, a bit older ones speaking Russian, whereas a generation or two prior to that, many would likely have spoken German to each other.

The trip started in Vilnius. Sadly, long-time MySQL colleague Domas Mituzas was in the US, so I didn’t meet with him. Instead, we were hosted by Sun Microsystem’s local Business Development Manager Rolandas Kymantas, who had gathered perhaps 60 Lithuanians into Reval Hotel Vilnius, where the venue was held.

I was very challenged to give the first five minutes of my speech in Lithuanian, as pronunciation is non-trivial and the stress was very challenging, on a par with Russian.

To continue my habit of writing blogs in languages I don’t speak, I started a blog also in Lithuanian. The blog is at http://blogs.arno.fi/laisvas_zodis/, where Laisvas žodis means (or at least is supposed to mean) “Free speech”.

The second destination was Riga, familiar to many MySQLers from our Developer Meeting two months ago. Here, we were hosted by Evijs Taube, Sun’s Business Development Manager for Latvia. The event was in Reval Hotel Riga (the one with the bar on the 26th floor), and coincided with the Latvian Open Technologies Association’s event. LATA (for Latvijas atvērto tehnoloģiju asociācija) and its sponsors (among them Sun) had managed to collect a whopping 350 participants to the event.

I was happy to note that my attempt at speaking Latvian was greeted by the audience. One attendee, Janis from Daugavpils (also known as Tvinky), posted a recording of it online. And my Latvian blog is live on http://blogs.arno.fi/labrit/, named Labrīt! for “Good morning!”. I’m curious to see whether there will be any reaction to them, by MySQL’s Latvian friends, such as Michael Dexter, who helped us a lot in September and whom it was a pleasure to meet again.

Estonia and Tallinn was the third and final destination. Again, the hotel belonged to the same chain. Reval Hotel Tallinn is somewhat of a double name, as “Reval” is the old Swedish and German name for Tallinn.

Martin de Jong and I were alone here, as Hannu had left for Finland. Our host was Sun’s Estonian BizDev mgr Maidu Harjak. He had collected roughly as many attendees as Rolandas in Lithuania. On account of knowing Finnish, the Estonian speech wasn’t quite as difficult as Lithuanian or Latvian. Creating an Estonian blog was a bit harder, though, as Google Translate doesn’t help me with that. Instead, I had to resort to Aivar Joonas, my Estonian friend and reconstruction expert working at my country house in Finland. With his help, I chose to host the blog on http://blogs.arno.fi/vaba_lava/. Vaba lava is what you say when it’s time for anyone to speak up, “The floor is open”.

My blogs in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian so far only contain my speeches in the respective languages. And realistically, I won’t post very frequently to them (in particular, Estonian is not supported by Google Translate). Nonetheless, I hope there is some benefit from having my local presentations online.

Links:

• Vaba lava: Kas Kaj räägib eesti keelt? http://blogs.arno.fi/vaba_lava/
• Labrīt! Vai Kaj runāt latviešu? http://blogs.arno.fi/labrit/
• Laisvas žodis: Ar Kajus kalbu lietuviškai? http://blogs.arno.fi/laisvas_zodis/
• Blog aggregator for all my blogs, across languages: http://kaj.arno.fi/