As reported yesterday from CommunityOne:

• MySQL Server is and will always remain fully functional and open source,
• so will the MySQL Connectors, and
• so will the main storage engines we ship.

In addition:

• MySQL 6.0’s pending backup functionality will be open source,
• the MyISAM driver for MySQL Backup will be open source, and
• the encryption and compression backup features will be open source,

where the last item is a change of direction from what we were considering before.

The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware products.

I’d like to shed some light on the big picture, in two different ways — openness, and the business model.

MySQL’s openness manifests itself in three ways:

• MySQL’s code is open.
• MySQL’s APIs are open.
• MySQL’s data formats are open.

These form a foundation around the MySQL Server and its connectors on which we (Sun), our partners, and the community can all freely build upon. And through this openness, we will always provide a means for our users to easily export their data from MySQL.

Then for MySQL’s business model. To financially support MySQL’s free and open source platform, we have a business model which allows both community and commercial add-ons, and we remain committed to it. We believe the model to be useful for both those who spend money to save time, and those who spend time to save money.

As Mårten mentioned yesterday in the CommunityOne panel, expect Sun/MySQL to continue experimenting with the business model, and with what’s offered for the community and what’s offered commercial-only. We won’t always know the right answer from the beginning, but we want MySQL to be the most popular database for both paying and non-paying users.

Yes, I know. JavaOne is about Duke, the friendly mascot of Java technology. Created and maintained by James Gosling and all.

But MySQL also introduces Sakila to the JavaOne attendees. Sakila is also friendly, and the mascot of MySQL technology. The dolphin was chosen by MySQL founders Michael “Monty” Widenius and David Axmark, as was its name Sakila (which came from a naming contest in the early days).

Together with Giuseppe (in the picture above) and the rest of the MySQL Community Team, I will be handing out incarnations of Sakila (also seen above in the pic) at CommunityOne and JavaOne as follows:

• Monday 5 May 2008 09:30-10:45: CommunityOne General Session: Ian Murdock, Sun Microsystems; Panel: Matt Asay, Alfresco CNET, Mårten Mickos, MySQL, Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation, Ted Leung, Python, Stormy Peters, OpenLogic; Rich Green, Sun Microsystems
• Monday 5 May 2008 12:25-13:20, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297794 Creative Programming with the MySQL Management System, Giuseppe Maxia, MySQL
• Monday 5 May 2008 13:30-14:25, Moscone South - Esplanade 307:
  S297257 Scaling MySQL, Scott Feldstein, Hyperic
• Monday 5 May 2008 16:00-16:55, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297136 Streamlined Web Applications with MySQL Cluster and mod_ndb, John David Duncan, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 15:20-16:20: TS-7813 The MySQL JDBC API Driver, And Making It Do What You Want, Mark Matthews, Darren Oldag, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 16:40-17:40: TS-7814 MySQL Cluster and Java Technology (and Python, and Ruby, And…), Monty Taylor, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 19:30-20:20: BOF-5039 JDBC 4.1 Specification Overview, Lance Andersen, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Mark Matthews, MySQL

Ah, and rumour has it that Jonathan may pop in during Giuseppe’s presentation!

Come, ask a smart question, interact, and get a Sakila!

“Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this presentation regarding the acquisition of the company MySQL AB by Sun Microsystems.”

Since my speech on Sun / MySQL integration for about 400 people in Beijing last week, I have been asked a few times about what it’s like to give a speech in Chinese. Well, I wouldn’t really know, as all I did was read aloud a text for 8 minutes. I remembered what passage was about what topic, and I had noted which words to stress, when to raise my hand etc. But of the actual words, I understood perhaps 5-10 % (based on them being repeated often enough). So I know I am a fuzongcai (Vice President) with Sun Microsystems, I know the difference between a kèhù (customer) and a yònghù (user). I live in Munihei (München), but I am not deguoren (German), I am fenlanren (from Finland). And, nüshìmen, xianshéngmen, that’s Ladies and gentlemen.

So far, hen hao.

I read aloud from this paper (no, not the Chinese characters, just the pinyin).

But the ambition level could really be a bit higher. Not stressing every syllable. Speaking a bit faster. Repeating the tones once (ok, five times) more. And I could memorise more words, not 5-10 % but perhaps 25%. That would be more enjoyable for both the audience, and for myself.

That said, giving a speech in Mandarin was a very positive experience, even at my level of delivery. My ambition was for at least 70% of my message being understandable from a pronunciation standpoint, and I heard estimates of the outcome being 80% to 90%. And I got interrupted by applause at least five times, and laughter at least once (even at the intended spot). So I’m happy. And I recommend using Chinese for more than the mere greetings, for any non-Chinese wishing to be well received in China.

Xìexìe, thank you, xìexìe.

References:

• Kaj Arnö speaks Chinese to the Sun/MySQL crowd: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3036893738929286405&hl=en
• Wikipedia: Pinyin (Chinese spelling): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin

Who’s Barton George?

Barton is a colleague from Sun, who “looks after Sun’s relationships with the various GNU/Linux communities as well as our relationship with the FSF” according to his blog. I spent time with him at the MySQL Users Conference last week. He is a fun guy to be around, and isn’t as US-centric as his remark “Last year, my family and I emigrated from Silicon Valley to Austin, TX.” would lead one to believe.

Barton is also an avid blogger. And, on top, a diligent podcaster.

As for blogging, he has recent MySQL relevant entries on partying (with Mårten of MySQL, and with Jonathan & Rich of Sun at the Pre-Conf Community Dinner), and with pics from the UC.

As for podcasts, he has already posted four entries from the MySQL UC, i.e. interviews with Mårten Mickos, with Zack Urlocker, with Baron Schwartz of Maatkit & Community Award fame, and with Jennifer Venable of Red Hat.

The podcasts are about 10 minutes each. To help you decide whether you want to spend those 10 mins or not, his blog entries provide tips on the contents, such as this one about the Zack blog:

• Exceeding expectations at the MySQL conference
• The availability of MySQL’s 5.1 later this quarter and all the cool new features
• The GA of Workbench - a modeling tool for DBAs
• The morning’s keynotes (here is the video Zack shot)
• The challenges that Werner Vogels, Amazon’s CTO, faces
• Sun’s performance tuning team and how it helps MySQL shine
• Zack’s impressions of his first six weeks at Sun

Barton tells me there will be more podcasts posted soon, with Brian Aker of MySQL (now live!), and with Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock (now also live!).

References:

• Barton George’s blog: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/
• MySQL Conf Kicks off with Parties at Marten’s and Pedro’s: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf_kicks_off_with
  
• Pics from MySQL Conference ‘08: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/pics_from_mysql_conference_08
• MySQL Conf08 - Chattin’ with Zack Urlocker: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_chattin_with_zack
• MySQL Conf08 - Marten Mickos tells all: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_marten_mickos_tells
• MySQL Conf08 - My Interview with Jennifer Venable of Red Hat: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_my_interview_with
• MySQL Conf08 - Talkin’ to Baron Schwartz, Community Award Winner: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_talkin_to_baron
• MySQL Conf08 - Hangin’ with Brian Aker: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_hangin_with_brian
• MySQL Conf08 - Erica Brescia, CEO BitRock: http://blogs.sun.com/barton808/entry/mysql_conf08_erica_brescia_ceo
  

We had over 400 participants in yesterday’s MySQL-Sun event in China! Plus another 30 or so in the press event, happening in parallel.

Beijing, if nobody noticed, is preparing for the Olympics. Here’s the so called Birds Nest, that we passed several times on the way to various meetings — including yesterday’s event.

After initial linguistic difficulties, Larry Stefonic (MySQL VP APAC) found our way to the event.

This was the first MySQL-Sun event with a banner across a street!

Everything takes place in Chinese here. About as much as it’s Japanese in Japan. In Europe, we seem to give way too much way for English.

And to accommodate to the local situation, I gave my presentation (on MySQL-Sun integration) in Chinese. It was about 8 minutes, and I was happy to be several times interrupted for applause. And I didn’t say anything particularly smart — just read aloud my normal presentation, albeit in Chinese. Judging by the warm reception, that’s not an everyday gesture by Westerners in Beijing.

Now, after nearly three weeks on the road, I’m finally going back home. Hence the popular Chinese gesture: the Thumbs Up sign.

Thanks to everyone who arranged the event — especially, Scott Chen at Sun in Beijing, and Yoko Suga-san with the MySQL APAC team!

“We didn’t acquire MySQL to change it, but to learn from it”, or something to that effect, was a line used by Jonathan Schwartz very early on in the Sun acquisition of MySQL. And this seems to be taken seriously. So Sun has appointed teams studying MySQL: our culture, and our way of working from home (70 % of us don’t even have a desk at an office, i.e. permanently work from home, such as me).

I hope to soon share some of the results from the Culture studies. Today, co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius and I were the interview subjects of the “Virtual Work at MySQL” study group under Edel Keville.

We had lots of things to point out, but most things had already been said by the other interview subjects. The two key things that were missing were related to meeting practices: How does MySQL organise virtual meetings? How do we arrange physical meetings?

The first one of those would be worth a blog entry in its own right, but the second one already has one. Called “How to arrange a physical meeting in a virtual organisation“, a blog entry from January 2007 describes a meeting in Berlin in December 2006, which was a bit of a testbed for the large-size Heidelberg Developer Mtg in September 2007.

I stay by my philosophy of being descriptive of how MySQL works (and has worked), as opposed to being prescriptive about how Sun should work. That said, I think the meeting practices documented after the Berlin meeting are probably worthy of a read for several virtual organisations which meet physically from time to time (if it’s politically correct to recommend one’s own blog entries).
References:

• My old blog entry MySQL Heidelberg Developer Mtg: Looking back
• My old blog entry How to arrange a physical meeting in a virtual organisation

The very first UC related parties are over, and the Users Conference hasn’t even started!

The first one was Mårten’s traditional and well-liked MySQL staff party in his garden. The coolest and most community significant one was the MySQL Community Pre-Conference Dinner party, though, as advertised on MySQL Forge Wiki. So we dropped out of Mårten’s party at six, to meet with the community.

There were 48 registered people, and I think even more turned up. And some of the guys who turned up unregistered were from Sun.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz crashes the party and is surrounded by community members and MySQLers alike

Rich Green, Executive VP of Software at Sun, also surrounded by Community Dinner attendees

Given that we’ve got record number of attendees at the UC, I think I will have to speed up my discussions, as I got to talk properly only with Florian Haas and Philipp Reisner of Linbit / DRBD, with Kai ‘Oswald’ Seidler of XAMPP, with Marc Delisle of phpMyAdmin, with Volker Oboda of Primebase, other than the MySQLers, ex-MySQLers and Sun employees. Note to self: Blame the jet lag, as this is my second Sunday 13 April 2008 (having got up in Tokyo at 7, and left Tokyo at 16, and arrived in San Francisco at 9 i.e. 7 hours before leaving).

And it seems I also blew my opportunity of flying Decadence Airlines again anytime soon. I was going to handle the payment using Rich Green’s credit card (Rich had to leave a bit earlier), but the restaurant gave him back the credit card and left me with merely signing a receipt. This isn’t going to buy me any aircraft fuel on Netjets.

Footnote 1: Yes, I was teased all evening for the four days we flew “Sun’s Corporate Jet“, i.e. a rental airplane by Netjets from Dublin via Stockholm, Moscow, Izhevsk, Moscow again, and Kiev to Hamburg in March. But it was good, so I suppose I deserve some teasing.

Footnote 2: I googled for “Decadence Airlines”, and funnily enough, one of the links goes directly to http://www.netjetseurope.com/eng/welcome-to-netjets/. I think I will have to plead guilty to that one.

My Japan trip was full of meetings, as trips to Japan usually are. One of the most interesting ones was at Sun Microsystems K.K.’s site, with a number of people engaged in building Japanese communities for Sun.

Takashi Shitamichi, Yoko Suga, Natsuki Wakabayashi, Jim Grisanzio,
Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Satoshi Kawai, myself, Toshiro Umetsu, Takanobu Masuzuki

From Jim Grisanzio and others, I learned that Japan is Sun’s most active blogging country outside the US, on blogs.sun.com. And I got reminded of the messages heard many times at numerous Sun meetings: That Sun has Community experts both in Marketing and Engineering. On the contrary, MySQL’s Community Team is a separate entity, outside of both Marketing and Engineering, but serving them both.

And that’s an area where MySQL and Sun has a lot to discuss about, in order to understand if there is something to learn from the other party, and how the learnings can be applied and implemented in practise.

There is at least one area where MySQL can learn and contemplate how to implement Sun’s practices: Developer Marketing. We have never used those two words in combination at MySQL, which at times also means that a certain group of MySQL users fall between the cracks — those who contribute to the MySQL community but work for commercial customers. The Community Team socialises with them at Dev Mtgs (such as in Heidelberg last year) and at the Users Conference, and so do the Sales Engineers, Support Engineers and everyone else working for MySQL. Yet, spending time isn’t the same as concerted efforts.

Conversely, the concept of “user” seems to be different at MySQL and Sun. At MySQL, “user” is often used to mean “non-paying customer”. And these users form the core of the charter of the Community Team. We want to smoothen the way for our users, we want them to use MySQL, to expand their usage of and benefit from MySQL, and to share their positive experiences with the rest of the world. And while working on this, the MySQL Community Team strictly does not have an agenda of convincing the users to pay for something, ASAP. Sure, we want our pay check, and sure, we want MySQL (now Sun) to prosper financially. But our main goal is to fill the invisible pipeline of users who may take months or years at the user stage, before even considering to become paying customers.

Some of this forces top management to have quite a strong belief in the good that a community can have for a company. I’m thinking about metrics. It’s not as if there would be ideal metrics for community building. Or rather, there are ideal metrics, such as the number of project wins, i.e. cases where MySQL is being adopted in new projects. That would be highly relevant to know, segmented by various types of organisations. But we don’t have access to those numbers. Forcing people to register won’t work, and voluntary registration gives only a fraction of the new projects as well as a fraction of the relevant data.

My personal conclusion is that I’d rather have a high adoption rate, than know exactly which low adoption rate I have.

And another personal conclusion is that I’d generally rather spend time increasing adoption further, than increasing my level of knowledge of that adoption. That conclusion is less easy to defend, though, as some level of knowledge about adoption rates is essential.

What’s again easier to defend is that exact knowledge about an irrelevant aspect of the adoption rate may fool one to believe that said aspect is relevant. How significant is download rates? Web page hits? Email list traffic? Number of blog postings? Forum entries? And how much of that is directly driven by the efforts of the Community Team, rather than events outside the control of that team (such as new releases, security holes, acquisitions by Sun)?

Looking forward to various discussions on this topic with Ian Murdock and many other colleagues!

Reference:

• Jim Grisanzio’s blog at http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/mysql_meeting_at_sun_japan

Japan is a wonderful place for someone like me.

Not only do I get to have sushi to my heart’s content. I am also exposed to the wonders of the Japanese culture, and — the topic of this blog posting — Japanese cultural imports from the West.

While preparing for the Sun-MySQL event last Wednesday, I was happy to see the back of Toru Takahashi-san’s laptop, featuring a big sticker with Snusmumriken and a small sticker with Duke.

• Toru-san is a Principal Solution Architect with the Software Practice in Sun Microsystems K.K. He was involved in the planning and execution of the Tokyo event in our Sun-MySQL World Tour. You can also meet him at the MySQL Users Conference next week, if you’re there.
• Duke is the friendly mascot of Java technology.
• Snusmumriken, or Snufkin in English (sorry, I wouldn’t know what he is called in Japanese), is a Finland Swedish cultural export. He is one of the Moomin cartoons (Moomintroll’s best friend, who goes south every winter and returns in the spring), and I did know from earlier travels to Japan that the Moomins are about as popular in Japan as Victoria and David Beckham (exposure in random unrelated ads in the metro or on the streets). Ah, the humble cultural imperialist in me was happy to note that it’s not only IT (Linux, MySQL) which is spreading from our tiny group of 300.000 people in Finland, but also my favourite children’s stories, written by Tove Jansson (1914-2001).

My Finland Swedish ego trip got a further highlight later in the evening, when I noticed that the scissors I borrowed at Larry Stefonic’s place (MySQL’s VP Sales in APAC) were made by Fiskars (in the consumer goods industry).

This week’s Wednesday was a big thing for MySQL and Sun in Japan:

• Over 300 attendees to our World Tour event in Tokyo
• Over 30 press attendees to the press conference in the morning
• Availability of nine-to-five MySQL Technical Support in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Enterprise Monitor in Japanese announced
• Availability of MySQL Knowledge Base articles in Japanese announced

I had the opportunity to keynote 60 minutes on the MySQL Architecture of Participation, with the first 5 minutes in Japanese.

Minasama, Konnichiwa.
Konotabi wa, Sun Microsystems toh MySQL AB no Tougou ni tsuite, *Kigaru* ni *Oiwai* shi, *Hanashiau* tameno, Launch Event he, Youkoso Okoshi Kudasaimashita.

[the following four minutes deleted]

Against all hearsay advice for gai-jins, saying that foreigners should not attempt at joking in front of a Japanese audience, I also inserted a small attempt at making the audience laugh towards the end of my presentation:

Minasama wa, Mou, Owakari kato Omoimasuga, Watashi wa Nihongo wo *Hanashi masen*. Desukara, Minasama kara Question wo Oukesuru toki wa, honyaku shi, Eigo de, Kaitou sasete itadakitaito Omoimasu.

For those of you who are in the same unfortunate position as me, not to understand the quote, what I said was

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I *don’t* speak Japanese, which means that I’ll rely on translations for understanding your questions, and I will reply in English.

My “limitations” in Japanese were sorely apparent by the time I mentioned that, and surely enough, there were a couple of Japanese chuckles in the audience.

The Q&A then started with an intensity of questions that I am used to from my native Finland, in other words, complete silence. After the first brave Samurai opening up the q&a session, the questions started flowing and were of the same type as elsewhere: What are our plans for storage engines? What does the Sun integration mean? Will Sun change us? Will we stay open source? (Yes, we will).

Thanks to Yoko Suga-san, and everyone at MySQL KK and Sun KK who made this great event such a success!

References from MySQL:

• Yoko Suga’s blog: http://blogs.mysql.com/teamapac/
• Our announcement (in Japanese): http://www-jp.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_1492.html

References from Japanese press:

• http://opentechpress.jp/enterprise/08/04/09/1352214.shtml
• http://techtarget.itmedia.co.jp/tt/news/0804/09/news05.html
• http://www.computerworld.jp/news/sw/103769.html
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298437/
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298444/
• http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/NEWS/20080409/298555/
• http://release.nikkei.co.jp/detail.cfm?relID=186589&lindID=1
• http://www.nikkeibp.co.jp/news/manu08q1/567758/
• http://it.nikkei.co.jp/business/news/release.aspx?i=186589
• http://enterprise.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/software/2008/04/09/12665.html
• http://japan.internet.com/busnews/20080410/5.html
• http://journal.mycom.co.jp/news/2008/04/09/032/
• http://japan.zdnet.com/oss/story/0,3800075264,20371091,00.htm