I wrote last week about the commercial open source business strategies that I expect to dominate in 2009.

The flipside to that is the commercial open source community strategy. You simply can’t have one without the other, and I expect community strategies will be a hot topic in 2009 and beyond.

Savio Rodrigues wrote recently that “By the end of 2008, virtually every successful open source vendor has a fairly tightly controlled development process and this hasn’t hurt their revenue growth.”

Based on my prediction that proprietary licensing strategies will be increasingly important in the next two years I am inclined to agree with him.

However, I am also …

When Monty Widenius published his criticisms of MySQL 5.1 recently a lot of the coverage that followed focused on his belief that the product had been made generally available too early and has too many serious bugs.

A solution to this problem would have been told hold 5.1 back even longer for more testing or, better still, not to have announced it as a release candidate so early. However, reading Monty’s post in full indicates that this would be a matter of treating the symptoms rather than finding a cure.

He also wrote: “the MySQL current development model doesn’t in practice allow the MySQL community to participate in the development of the MySQL server” and “I think it’s time to seriously review how the MySQL server is being developed and change the development model to be more like Drizzle and …

Topics for this podcast:

* Open source getting, and going without VC investment
* Oracle contributions to Linux and open source
* Sun’s latest moves with MySQL database and version 5.1
* Linux in high-end computing

iTunes or direct download (25:50, 6.0 MB)

I just noticed that Sun/MySQL has dropped SCO OpenServer from its list of supported operating systems for MySQL 5.1 and higher (along with Mac OS X 10.3 and QNX).

It is not a massive surprise to see MySQL doing this given SCO’s current position but MySQL teamed up with SCO in the midst of its controversial legal claims against IBM et al, so I thought the end of the deal warranted a quick mention.

At the time Marten Mickos defended the deal by claiming that he hoped working with MySQL would educate SCO’s executives:

“In a partnership you exchange thoughts,” he said. “If you exchange thoughts hopefully the other side will listen to you. We understand …

…is the title of this post written by Tim Bray a few days ago in which he outlined the directions he would like to see his employer take to improve its fortunes.

He also invited others to continue the thought process. Many have already done so (I’ll include the best in tomorrow’s CAOS Links post) and given my recent constructive criticism of Sun’s open source strategy I feel compelled to provide some answers as well as questions.

I’m sure there are lots of things Sun should be doing with relation to storage and servers and processors and client devices, but I’m going to stick to what I know. What would I do?

Light a fire under MySQL
When Sun announced its acquisition …

Until this week Infobright’s claim to open source fame was its partnership with MySQL that enabled its analytical data warehousing software to act as a storage engine for the open source database.

However, the company is now taking the open source route itself by releasing the code behind its Infobright data warehouse (formerly Brighthouse) as Infobright Community Edition.

Earlier this month the company announced that it was moving to a subscription model for the commercial version of the product, Infobright Enterprise Edition, which comes with “enhanced features, services and support, warranty” amongst other things.

The company has also announced a $10m Series C investment …

Agenda:

* Red Hat buys Qumranet
* Google’s Chrome browser
* Status of MySQL founder and CTO at Sun

iTunes or direct download (26:30, 6.1MB)

Still no official news on the rumour that Monty Widenius has left Sun, but Dave Rosenberg confirmed over the weekend that he is leaving MuleSource, the open source ESB vendor he founded in 2006 with Ross Mason, creator of the Mule project.

“After two and a half years I’ve decided to transition out of my operating role at MuleSource and will be devoting my full time efforts to a new company I have been working on,” he wrote on Friday. “I initiated a CEO search in June and we expect to have a new person in place by the end of the year at the latest.

“I started the search because I felt like a more …

Valleywag reports that Monty Widenius has quit Sun. The Pythian Group reckons its true. Kaj Arno’s non-denial denial would appear to confirm it despite his protestations otherwise.

“Technically there is no resignation letter. However, I spoke to Monty yesterday, and yes, resignation is an option he considers,” writes Kaj before expanding on some of the reasons that Monty might consider leaving Sun and how the MySQL project would continue without him (or without him as an employee at any rate).

He concludes: “In summary, I can neither confirm nor deny the rumour. But I hope my posting has shed some light on the …

I finally got around to reading this update from Red Hat about Spacewalk, the open source version of Red Hat Network Satellite, launched in June.

Other than the progress in attracting participants and patches, the interesting news is that PostgreSQL support is being added after being demanded by the community. The roadmap confirms that work on support for PostgreSQL is scheduled to begin in mid-October.

The Path to PostgreSQL page, meanwhile, indicates that the idea will enable Red …