Just over a year ago we registered the domain name mysqlfoundation.org in the hopes that Sun/MySQL will actually create such an entity.
My idea was to move the development of the MySQL Community server to the Foundation and make the development fully community orientated. The Foundation would have its own development goals and release schedule. Sun could then pull patches from the Foundation's Community server into the Enterprise server once they had stabilized.
I pitched the idea to several people at Sun back then and over the last year, however, for some reason, the foundation concept just proved impossible to push through.
I believe this would have been a great opportunity for Sun to take the leadership in the community, as the foundation idea dates back to before things really started splitting up. But Sun's loss is now that of Oracle, who perhaps doesn't care anyway.
What is really most important is that we in the community now have an entity that is going to tie our side of things together: The Open Database Alliance. For the community it is critical that things do not split up any further and that instead our efforts are bundled. I believe the Alliance can do this for us.
So where does that leave Oracle?
Well, as I see it, we now have a new, more relevant, community/enterprise split: the Oracle MySQL Enterprise server and the MariaDB Community server.
And, I guess I have to stand up and say, for us (primebase.org) this difference is real and significant.
PBXT is already part of most community builds including MariaDB, OurDelta and XAMPP. But is is not part of the official MySQL 5.1 Community Server.
Please note, this has nothing to do with my many great friends at MySQL! They help us in lots of other ways and I am very thankful for this :)
But even with the "community" label, any download offered by Sun (now Oracle of course - no change there) is about business! That is very difficult to change, and I accept that.
But the community does not need to change anything. It is, what it is.
