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Previously, I’ve called out years for non-desktop Linux in 2008, Linux in both the low and high-ends of the market in 2009, ‘hidden’ Linux in 2010 and last year, cloud computing in 2011. For 2012, I see continued growth, prevalence, innovation and impact from Linux, thus leading to a 2012 that is dominated by Linux.

I expect to see nothing but continued strength for Linux and open source in cloud computing in 2012. The cloud continues to be the biggest disruptor and opportunity for Linux providers. 2012 got off to an interesting start with Microsoft’s efforts to support for Linux on Azure, which highlights just how pervasive Linux has become in cloud computing. As detail in our special report on The Changing Linux Landscape, we also expect Linux to continue to be the basis for most offerings in IaaS and particularly PaaS, which is burgeoning across open source languages and frameworks as well as verticals and enterprise customers. Its popularity among enterprise and other developers will also bolster Linux and open source software in 2012.

We can certainly expect to see Linux continue its domination in supercomputing and the Top 500 Supercomputer List, where Linux continues to grow its share above 90% while others, such as Microsoft, Apple and BSD, fall off of the list.

I also expect Linux will grow its presence and impact on the wider, more mainstream server market, where Red Hat and SUSE continue to benefit from Unix migration, particularly from Solaris. Our analysis with survey data from 451 Research division TheInfoPro shows server spending for databases and data warehousing favoring Red Hat with Linux over Oracle with either Linux or Solaris. Out of more than 165 server professionals interviewed by TIP, 67% are planning to spend more with Red Hat on database/data-warehousing, and only 6% plan to spend less. The positive figures for Red Hat mirror negative spending intentions for Oracle, with 55% planning to spend less and only 9% planning to spend more. Spending continues to decline strongly for all of the primary Unix providers in the study, which in addition to Oracle includes IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

We may also see further expansion for Red Hat, which may be eyeing key acquisitions, and other Linux and open source vendors as they continue building their channels and wade more into midmarket and SMB customers.

In smartphones and mobile software, I also expect Linux will do quite well in 2012 with continued Android strength, diminished FUD and possibly an open source boost from a newly-open sourced WebOS. We also see Ubuntu arriving on the mobile and converged device scene, including ‘concept’ appearance at CES.

We’re also likely to see Linux in automobiles, health care and other electronics even more in 2012, though you may never hear Linux or open source. Don’t be fooled though, Linux is expanding its already impressive, wide presence and 2012 looks to be another year of significant gains.

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I wrote last year about the way Google’s Android mobile operating system was serving as a more open alternative to Apple’s iOS, but not so open that it didn’t leave opportunity for an even more open alternative.

Given that we continue to see software patent-based attacks on Android, as well as swirling FUD around coverage of the attacks and never ending suits and settlements and courtroom developments, it is clear it will be a long time before any of this legal business is ever close to settled, unless ended by settlements first, which is likely.

However, I’m more interested in the technology in the meantime. I also think it’s interesting to see, if not a ‘more open’ alternative emerging, at least another, ’somewhat open’ option in the tablet market, this being HP’s WebOS. It’s interesting that WebOS evolved from Palm, which HP acquired in March 2010 for $1.4 billion. Though Apple’s iPad is still the clear leader in tablets, it is interesting to see continuing signs that what happened in smartphones (where iPhone led and Android quickly caught up and then passed iOS) may be happening in tablets. There is also still the possibility that tablets may play out like netbooks, with wild popularity followed by a fade in favor of more traditional PCs for traditional PC needs. It is interesting to note that Google’s Eric Schmidt recently commented on the continued utility of PCs, which will remain key to professionals, consumers, and also developers, largely because of the tactical keyboard. What is most likely is continued convergence, and it will be interesting to see what ties emerge between WebOS and PCs as computer hardware giant HP rolls out the OS in tablets and smartphones.

We also see other signs that new, open entrants may be mixing things up in the mobile and converged device market, such as word of a possible Android and iOS competitor from Mozilla. There is yet another project that is already a factor in netbooks, other mobile devices and the burgeoning IT market of automobile information and entertainment systems, MeeGo, which is also open source. Even Research in Motion’s Playbook is based on the QNX operating system, for which source code was made available by its previous owner to make it more like the open source Linux OS, which was attracting developers and interesting customers.

We believed there was a fairly prominent place for open source software, open source operating systems and general openness in mobile software when we wrote our report, Mobility Matters three years ago, but we would have never guessed that the openness of this software would be so significant in two respects: defense from patent and other intellectual property attacks; the market power of open source, which draws in not only developers, but manufacturers and other third-parties. We’ve seen the speed and strength at which a project and community such as Android can grow. Will we now begin to see other alternatives that are even more open emerge as top choices among developers, hardware companies, wireless players and consumers? Never before have those alternatives really existed in the mobile software world, so it’s good at least to see the possibility is there.

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There are three types of FUD: the first and more genuine is (#1) the intentional spreading of falsehood, mostly to gain some marketing advantage over a competing product. While I despise this practice, I understand it. Then there is (#2) FUD spread by ignorance, when the originators are so blindly enraged by their hatred for a product that they don't care about getting the facts straight. And finally, there is a third kind, not less dangerous, which is (#3) the spreading of FUD with good intentions, when the authors believe that they have the facts straight and they want to help.

I have recently come across two examples of unintentional FUD. For different reasons, my comments to these public cases did not get through, and then I have to say something about that here in my blog.

MySQL is not ACID complaint

This surprising piece of news came in the blog of a company that calls itself the remote DBA experts.
The claim is this: if I insert a record in a table and then issue a ROLLBACK command, the record is not rolled back.
Anyone who has a minimal knowledge of MySQL knows about InnoDB tables (luckily for the poster, InnoDB is default in MySQL 5.5.6, which he was testing) and autocommit.
Reading through the example, one sees that the poster did not know about this piece of information. In MySQL, autocommit is ON by default. So if you want to rollback a record, you need to deactivate it. This is not optimal, and it can be debated, but if you read the docs, you don't claim something that is simply the result of your lack of knowledge. MySQL has shortcomings, but being unable to rollback a record is not one of them. Hence, this is FUD type #2.
Why I am writing all this here and not as a comment in that blog? Because I did post a comment, on November 23rd, but as of today, it has not been approved yet. The same is true for comments posted by other more knowledgeable people.

MySQL licenses. When it's free and when you need to pay for one.

This article is well intentioned. MySQL Licenses: The Do's and Don'ts of Open Source, or What's All the Fuss About? is a well thought piece, with practical examples, to help users decide what to do with MySQL licensing, i.e. when they need to pay and when they don't. Unfortunately, the article contains some unintentional confusion, and therefore leaves the readers with more wrong ideas than they had before.
I left a long comment on that blog, but for some unfathomable reason it was reduced to a tiny piece, and thus the need for explaining the matter here again.
The poster says this:

I make commercial software, which needs to have MySQL installed. My customers can use my commercial software, for which they do need to buy a license, in combination with the MySQL database engine, for which they don't need to pay. Because the MySQL engine is not embedded in my commercial software and I don't redistribute MySQL together with my software, I don't need a commercial license for MySQL and neither do my customers.

I am afraid that this wishful information is not correct. The GPL FAQ states it clearly:

If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.

Another quote:

However... as long as I have no desire to sell the embedded MySQL source code commercially, I can let the GPL license apply.

Also this is not true. The GPL does not regulate commercial transactions. It only deals with distribution of software. If I want to distribute a public domain but GPL-incompatible software linked to a GPL application or library, I am violating the GPL, even if I don't charge anything.

Another source of disinformation is "If you decide to pay for a MySQL license, you don't actually pay for the software."
This is also incorrect. Oracle sells two kind of things with MySQL. One thing is a subscription to services (MySQL Enterprise). If you buy this, you are not getting a license (unless you ask for it explicitly) but an agreement about services for a given periods.
The other thing that Oracle sells is licenses. They can do it because they own the source code, and they can decide to release it either as GPL (which is what you download from the MySQL site) or with a commercial license. If you ask for a license, you will most definitely get one. You can also get a license together with a subscription, if you are so inclined, but that doesn't mean that you aren't buying a license.
The important thing to understand to put the matter in perspective, is that the above information about licensing was still true before 2008, when MySQL was owned by MySQL AB, and it is still true today. Oracle, despite all the preemptive accusations of being ill intentioned, has not changed the rules of the game.
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Before launching into this, I must give due deference to Mogens Nørgaard’s landmark article, You Probably Don’t Need RAC (YPDNR), available here, but originally published Q3 2003 in IOUG Select Journal.  Mogens showed that you can be a friend of Oracle without always agreeing with everything they do.

Suddenly, everyone is asking about Golden Gate.  In July 2009, Oracle bought Golden Gate Software, just one of several companies that have developed log-based replication mechanisms for Oracle and other databases.  This was one of many major acquisitions by Oracle in 2009, including Sun and Relsys. But unlike most of Oracle’s acquisitions, Golden Gate provides very little new functionality not already available in Oracle Streams. Nevertheless, at OpenWorld 2009, Oracle made a shocking announcement.  They declared that Golden Gate would be the primary replication channel for Oracle, and that development would cease on Streams and related components.

Usually, Oracle watches these little third-party products for good ideas, then implements them independently (and better) on their own in the Oracle kernel, then watches as the little third-party companies fizzle out.  A case in point is direct memory access performance sampling.  Precise Software and several other companies in the early 2000s developed  low-impact performance sampling and visualization products for Oracle based on sampling the SGA periodically from an external program.  In version 10g, Oracle answered them with Active Session History (ASH), which did the same thing but better.  Although ASH required customers to purchase the Diagnostic Pack, it still more or less spelled the downfall of competing products.

But in the case of Golden Gate, Oracle already has a log-based replication technology (Streams) built into the kernel, available for a very reasonable price (free with Enterprise Edition).  The only major components that Streams lacks compared to Golden Gate is the ability to replicate across database platforms (Oracle to MSSQL, MySQL, etc. and vice versa).  Even that capability was clearly around the corner: In 11g, Logical Standby (Data Guard), a technology that uses essentially the same stack of components as Streams, gained cross-platform capabilities.

By 11g, Streams has become a mature and stable product, and is far more scalable and configurable than Golden Gate in many ways.  Streams can mine logs on the source or the target, or even a third system.  Depending on the load profile, you can use a wide variety of configuration choices, including parallelism at almost any point.  Streams also allows customers to choose to enforce transaction order or not.

In contrast, Golden Gate’s parallelism is restricted to the apply side, and in parallel mode, does not have the option of guaranteeing transaction order (it is non-ACID). Golden Gate’s parallel apply splits work up by schema, relying on the assumption that interdependent data at the business process level is confined to a single schema at a time.  In other words, if all the tables reside in one schema, then parallel apply doesn’t work, and if they reside in many schemas, the changes in one schema may be applied out of order vis à vis the changes to the other schemas.

Streams is only one of Oracle’s preexisting features that can compete successfully in specific use cases with Golden Gate.  Even more ancient and time-tested solutions such as advanced replication and remote materialized views remain supported and highly effective, depending on the requirement.

If you look at many of the use cases where our customers have deployed Golden Gate, I find that the simplest and most scalable engineering solution would have been remote fast-refresh materialized views.  Our customers often replicate core look-up data, like exchange rates, inventory levels, and other slowly-changing data between Oracle databases within an enterprise.  For this, Golden Gate is completely unjustified, due to cost and complexity compared to remote materialized views.  If it were a question of heterogeneous (inter database product) replication, I completely understand.  But in the majority of situations where we see Golden Gate in use, it is Oracle to Oracle. Given that, I wonder how it could come to pass that responsible people would recommend and implement a solution for such a requirement involving Golden Gate.  Why would Oracle essentially abandon ten years of development and stabilization on a platform like Streams for a less mature, rudimentary product like Golden Gate? Oracle can’t possibly be asking customers to pay additional license fees for a worse version of a product they already own.

So let’s review…

Streams: Mature, complex, requires engineering, highly configurable, scalable, Oracle-only, free.

Golden Gate: Simple, east to deploy, few configuration options, less scalable, expensive, heterogeneous (inter-RDBMS), might break your data.

For me, the corporate direction with regard to Golden Gate is perplexing and smacks of sales-driven (as opposed to requirements and cost-driven) engineering.  I can only imagine what it must be like for the team at Oracle that built Log Miner and AQ into an impressive suite of options including Streams.

Related posts:

1. New whitepaper: High availability without breaking the bank
2. Oracle Support and Certification on AWS
3. A Cloud over San Francisco for OpenWorld 2010

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This is the story of a tweet...

Last week Adam went to QCon San Francisco to talk about "The Road Ahead for Java". Adam covered the Java SE Strategy, presented by Oracle at JavaOne via a PR, keynotes and sessions like S319476 by Paul and Henrik. The relevant section from the PR is:

The Oracle JDK and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) will continue to be available as free downloads, with no changes to the existing licensing models.

Premium offerings such as JRockit Mission Control, JRockit Real Time, Java for Business and Enterprise Support will continue to be made available for an additional charge.

Now, I don't know what exact words Adam used to describe the premium services but Michael Nygard posted this tweet:

"It's our intent to have a premium version of the JDK." Said in addition to the open source JDK. #qconsf

Nothing wrong there, it's just a tweet; and maybe Adam even used those exact words.  The only problem is what happened afterwards.

That one tweet was retweeted heavily, somewhere in the process was reinterpreted as "premium JVM" and given all sorts of extra attributes, was then taken as truth by some journalists , and was then further spread through news, blogs and tweets. The whole thing moved quickly around the world. The original tweet was Saturday, the 6th, I spent 5 minutes at Google News yesterday, only looked at a few local editions, and came up with these stories:

• Nov 6th, Oracle cooks up free and premium JVMs
• Nov 7th, Oracle vuole monetizzare Java... Sai che novità!
• Nov 8th, Daily Dose - Oracle to Sell "Premium" JVM
• Nov 8th, Oracle: Novos Planos para Java Virtual Machine
• Nov 8th, Oracle: ora spunta l'idea di una JVM a pagamento
• Nov 8th, L'ultima mossa di Oracle: la Java Virtual Machine a pagamento
• Nov 8th, Oracle: ci saranno due Java Virtual Machine, una sarà a pagamento
• Nov 8th, Oracle wil met gratis en betaalde JVM-uitvoeringen komen
• Nov 9th, Oracle prépare une JVM "Premium" payante
• Nov 9th, Una Java Virtual Machine a pagamento?
• Nov 9th, Oracle podría bifurcar la JVM en dos: una gratuita y otra de pago
• Nov 9th, Oracle будет выпускать платную и бесплатную версии Java
• Nov 10th, Oracle To Offer Free and Paid 'Premium' Versions of JVM
• Nov 10th, Developer Week in Review
• Nov 10th Oracle planche sur une version payante de la JVM

Plus discussions at DZone, SlashDot, The Server Side, and multiple mailing lists.

All of this from a single tweet, "validated" by "the press".

Several of us spent a fair amount of time over the weekend trying to point folks to the correct information. Yesterday, Henrik got an extra-quick approval for an official Oracle's JVM Strategy and Dalibor then used it in Extra! Extra! Oracle Premium JVM! Read all about it! and I'm using it in this note. But it's much easier to spread misinformation than to correct it; go through the list above and see how many are publishing corrections...

The morale? To me there are two:

• Journalists (and bloggers and tweeters) should remember this quote from Graeme Philipson (via @robilad):
     journalists must be vigilant for the facts in an online era of instant disinformation
• And readers need to use your judgment when reading news.

Sounds like motherhood and apple-pie, but good reminders for all of us...

And before going back to our normal topics, I'll mention that last week saw a similar fire-drill around InnoDB and MySQL - see Get The Facts: MySQL Licensing and Pricing.

PS. And, to be extra clear, I do not blame Michael at all; his tweet was totally fine.

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Following the release of our report, ‘The Myth of Open Source License Proliferation’ and during research for it, we heard and sensed a feeling that open source software licenses had evolved to become a generally well-accepted piece of the the enterprise IT and IP market. However, we also heard from numerous vendors, developers and other individuals that the next battlefront is obviously software patents, which are in need of reform, according to many supporters of free and open source software.

This week, we saw some of the software patent skirmishes that are driving and validating this thinking. There was first news that the Open Invention Network, the consortium dedicated to legal and IP defense of Linux, had bought some software patents that related to Linux, which admittedly is not hard to do these days. It turned out the 22 Linux-focused patents were purchased from Allied Security Trust, which had actually purchased them from none other than Microsoft. This might not have meant a whole lot, with OIN proclaiming a victory and Microsoft stating simply that the patents did not hold much value to them. However, the plot thickened as we heard from FOSS defender Eben Moglen, from Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin and from vendor Red Hat, that Microsoft may have been shopping the patents around to would-be patent trolls who would do the dirty work of FUD on their own.

Frankly, it has been my position that the market is determining the fate of Linux in embedded uses, mobile devices, desktops, servers, clusters and clouds, and no vendor or vendor-generated FUD will significantly disrupt that. Still, I recognize the importance of promptly and directly countering FUD. Microsoft is largely sticking to its story that the patents did not represent significant value and were thus put on the block for sale. Although it might not acknowledge it, the company is actually correct in that asserted patents or IP that relate in any way to Linux or other open source technologies are of little value, since asserting them invokes the full and forceful response of Linux and its defenders, ranging from the likes of Moglen, Zemlin and the OIN to bitter rivals such as Red Hat and IBM.

The patent spat is also juxtaposed against Microsoft’s efforts to participate and improve its profile in open source and among developers with the CodePlex Foundation as covered by Matt, which also marks the departure of Sam Ramji, who has skillfully headed Microsoft’s efforts to change stance and approach on open source and will be sorely missed.

If we were keeping score, I would say Linux and open source have scored a point (acquiring the patents) while Microsoft has lost one (Ramji’s departure). However, I must also point out that in today’s enterprise IT environments and markets, it is very rare to see a case of EITHER open source OR proprietary software and is almost always in a case of BOTH. We have seen attacks on open source, from Microsoft and others, evolve from targeting its core tenets and ideas to attacking open source licensing. As open source and proprietary software continue to interface, interact and integrate, the patent questions, threats and implications seem to be the next battlefield, only this time Linux and open source are far better established and armed while Microsoft is coming to grips with its loss of market control.

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