• The absence of objective truth
• Queries return opinions, not facts

I thought this was the best proposal I’ve heard for an alternative to the NoSQL moniker. And this is not bashing — the absence of objective truth can actually be an enabling quality, not necessarily a drawback. There’s a lot to compliment about the new databases, and calling them NoSQL is really a disservice — like calling a car a horseless carriage.

Related posts:

1. Observations on key-value databases
2. On the unhelpfulness of NoSQL
3. Why high-availability is hard with databases
4. InnoDB is a NoSQL database
5. NoSQL doesn’t mean non-relational

When everything doesn’t fit onto a computer, you have to be able to migrate data to multiple nodes. You need some sort of scaling solution there… MapReduce works as a solution when your queries are operating over a lot of data; Google sizes of data. Few companies have Google-sized datasets though. The average sites you see, they’re 10-20 gigs of data.

Users shouldn’t need to put that data onto multiple machines anyway. In fact, I don’t think we need a multi-machine solution for the common case at all. We need software that can scale up with today’s hardware. 37signals likes to run boxes with half a terabyte of RAM. Are we there yet with MySQL and InnoDB? No. Postgres? No. Anything open-source? Not that I know of. We’ve got database software that can only do a fraction of what it should be able to on that size of server.

I think we have to be clear about the use case for a solution that partitions data across multiple machines. It isn’t 20GB of data, and in my opinion it shouldn’t even be half a terabyte. I think that in the ideal world, we should be thinking about that for terabytes and larger — and in a few years, single-server datasets should be even larger.

I say should because today’s database software obviously has a lot of catching up to do.

Related posts:

1. MySQL replication breaks single-threaded limitation? It’s
2. Did you know Sphinx can act like a MySQL server? Peter wrot
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It is a sweeping statement, but one that is worth further consideration, especially since, as Stephen O’Grady noted it is directly contradicted by Gartner’s prediction that: “By 2012, at least 70% of the revenue from commercial OSS will come from vendor-centric projects with dual-license business models.”

Success?

I remember reading this prediction back in December but dismissing it as being based on a fundamental error – the assumption that dual licensing and open source licensing are “essentially the same thing”. As Stephen argues, and we have previously clarified, they are not the same thing at all.

Dual licensing is the practice of selling exceptions to use an open source code base using a commercial license, while open core licensing is the practice of selling extensions to an open source code base. One of them is considered acceptable by Richard Stallman, and one isn’t (more on that in a minute).

As Stephen O’Grady notes, however, the Gartner prediction is further flawed. Even if we were to accept its definition of dual licensing, the prediction is undermined by mathematics. A couple of quick calculations suggest that Red Hat’s annual revenue this year will be easily be more than the rest of the top ten open source specialists combined.

Of course, this calculation very much depends on which vendors you choose to include, and it is quite possible that Gartner’s definition of dual licensing also includes vendors that sell proprietary software that includes or complements open source software. That would make the prediction more realistic in terms of revenue numbers, but would stretch the term “dual licensing” beyond the definition of most people.

It is safe to assume then that “dual licensing” as most people understand it is not going to be as successful as Gartner predicts. But what of Brian Aker’s prediction of its imminent failure? It probably goes without saying that reports of its demise have also been exaggerated.

Failure?

While it is undeniably true that dual licensing has diminished in popularity as a business strategy in recent years (as many commercial OSS specialists have opted for open core extensions as a quicker way to monetize community adoption and proprietary vendors have focused more on open source as a R&D cost-sharing exercise and avoided the community-limiting aspects of dual licensing) there is still a time and a place for dual licensing.

Dual licensing has got itself a bad name in some quarters (“MySQL != Free Software due to dual licensing“) but as mentioned above, it has the approval of Free Software Foundation president, Richard Stallman: “I consider selling exceptions an acceptable thing for a company to do, and I will suggest it where appropriate as a way to get programs freed.”

In fact, much of the criticism of dual licensing seen recently seems to be based on the view that it is used by commercial vendors to discourage users from adopting a free open source version. That is rarely, if ever, the case.

Where we do see dual licensing used, it is more often in enabling users that are unwilling or unable to use the GNU GPL to make use of the underlying code. In that way, dual licensing can be used to serve two different user groups, rather than attempting to cross- or up-sell open source users with a commercial version.

A good example of this is OpenNMS Group. The acquisition of copyright to the 1.0 code base in 2009 out the company in the position of being able to changing its licensing strategy beyong a pure open source approach. While the company is unlikely to go open core (Tarus Balog prefers to call it “fauxpen source”, OpenNMS has delivered Powered by OpenNMS – a commercial license program:

“While the OpenNMS Group encourages the adoption of open source software, some organizations, due to trade secrets, patents or other proprietary reasons, may not be able to use 100% open source software in their environment. The ‘Powered by OpenNMS’ program allows them to purchase the right to use OpenNMS under a more traditional license.”

That in itself does not guarantee the continued use of dual licensing. But it does demonstrate. along with the comments of Richard Stallman, that dual licensing remains a valid strategy for generating revenue from open source software that is compatible with the principles of free and open source software.

The back channel for all this was Twitter… Don’t hesitate to follow @harishpillay, @brianaker, @piawaugh or even @webmink (Simon Phipps, while not at the event, was available on Twitter). Some interesting reading, naturally.

As only the original rights holder can sell commercial licenses, no new forked version of the code will have the ability to practice the parallel licensing approach, and will not easily generate the resources to support continued development of the MySQL platform.

from Richard’s Letter to the EC opposing Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL. Listen to the discussion between Brian and Richard.

The feed for the podcast is at http://www.osdbzine.net/podcast/osdbpodcast.xml and a direct download of the episode is available here.

Episode Summary

This is the first episode of Open Source Database Podcast. This pod cast is about both open source database servers and the people who develop and use them. The plan is for most episodes to be centered around interviews with various people in the open source community. Kicking things off with this inaugural episode is an interview with Brian Aker who is the creator of the Drizzle database.

I will apologize now for the beginning and ending of the podcast where the recording level is too loud. My only excuse is I have new equipment I am working with and I am not used to it yet!

Resources

Sun’s announcement about purchase by Oracle: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2009-04/sunflash.20090420.1.xml

MySQL Server 5.4 overview: http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql-54.html

Postgres Website: http://www.postgresql.org/

Brian Aker’s blog: http://krow.livejournal.com/

Drizzle: http://www.drizzle.org

Drizzle code: http://launchpad.net/drizzle

Open Source Database Magazine: http://www.osdbzine.net

Production Notes

Recorded using Audacity and an Alesis MultiMix 8 USB mixer. The interview was recorder over Skype with the Alesis mixer.

Release date: July 24^th, 2009