At foss.my 2009, Brian Aker asked Richard Stallman at his keynote, about the Oracle/Sun acquisition (with a focus on MySQL), with regards to the parallel licensing approach used by MySQL. Brian was referring to:

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.

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We’re supporting the OpenSQL Camp, which will be held in Portland on November 14. 

One of my objectives for the camp is to make progress on a universal storage engine API, to make it possible to use the same storage engines in MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ingres, or any other database.  I’m also looking forward to hearing other people’s great ideas.

After OpenSQLcamp, I’ll be attending Supercomputing’09.  Supercomputing and database hardware technology seems to be converging.  Many of the fastest databases today look like a supercomputer with disks attached.  Will there be other kinds of convergence?  For example, what kind of convergence will we see between multicore computing and cluster computing?  Today we program multicore machines very differently from clusters.  I think in the future that difference will vanish.

As a frequent traveler for my MySQL consulting (last 4 weeks were Sydney, San Francisco, New York and Vancouver), I like to keep abreast of any local tech event that includes MySQL that I may be able to attend.

Now there is a consolidated location that you can use, the Open Source Events Calendar. Kudos to the MySQL Community team members Lenz Grimmer and Giuseppe Maxia who have put this together.

We need your help. If you have a local event, please submit your event request. This projects needs the support of all.

You will also find valuable conference information including dates for close of proposals. A great tool for scheduling your upcoming conference year.

In addition to informing you about the events, this calendar does also tell you when a …

The event is public and free. Therefore, it needs public sponsoring. I don't know yet if I can attend, but I have already donated something to the organizers, and I am officially a sponsor. You can be one too. Simply go to the sponsors page and donate a minimum of $100 as in individual or $250 as an …

Another year and another successful OSCON has been concluded. While I didn’t attend this year’s conference, let me hereby offer some reflections — basing it on reading blogs and talking to attendees both in person and over Twitter (I’m glad to see both the @MySQL and @MySQL_Community Twitter accounts have a large and quickly growing list of followers).

Let me start by highlighting the 2009 Google O’Reilly Open Source Awards. First on the list is Brian Aker, who is recognised as …

The OpenSQLCamp 2009 European edition, is under scrutiny. There are 27 session proposals, from which we will need to get 12 in the schedule.
The open voting is done via Twitter or the mailing list.
I have a good feeling about it. Since I am proposing a public …

During one of these activities, I will give away one copy of the MySQL Administrator’s Bible. If you are a MySQL enthusiast and you are in Madrid, that's an extra reason to attend the forum. For the ones who still don't know how …

Yesterday we held our PHP BBQ event at Munich, well it was no BBQ as the weather forecasts predicted rain,which came in the evening, but a nice evening in a beer garden.

We had more than 30 people there, some leaving early, sme arriving late, covering quite different kinds of participants: PHP core developers, professional PHP users, people doing PHP stuff as hobby, friends and PHP community veterans like Till Gerken. Many people didn't know each other or didn't see each other or some time so we had lot's of discussions, and most of them even weren't about PHP and even many non-IT things were covered, which I find always great. If you want an impression check Ulf's photos. I really hope this makes a good foundation for more regular PHP meetups.

There will be a few more events of this kind this week in Germany, so go there if you can, don't be …

I will join the happy campers on Saturday, June 20, in Hamburg, and finish off the tour in Kiel the next day.
The event is open. However, for …