If you wonder why there hasn't been an update from me for quite a while — I just returned from two months of paternal leave, in which I actually managed to stay away from the PC most of the time. In the meanwhile, I've officially become an Oracle employee and there is a lot of administrative things to take care of... But it feels good to be back!

During my absence, Giuseppe and Felix kicked off the Call for Papers for this year's European OpenSQL Camp, which will again take place in parallel to FrOSCon in St. Augustin (Germany) on August 21st/22nd. We've received a number of …

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My ongoing dialogue with Matthew Aslett inspired me to read more of his recent writings. An excellent piece Do not sell anything to your community is based on a blog post by Stephen Walli.

Inspired by Stephen, I also looked into a set of slides I recently created and will try that style for this post...

Aslett and Stephen make a great point:

the conversion of community users into paying customers has long been a concern for open source-related vendors. It has also long been a source of friction, with vendors that offer proprietary extensions being accused of “bait and switch” or otherwise undermining the value of the open source software in an attempt compel community …

Monty says:

During the last 2 years, I have seen a lot of the people that originally worked at MySQL AB and who joined Sun together with me, go away in different directions. More than 50 % of them have already left Sun/Oracle.

Matthew Montgomery commented...

I'm curious where you are getting that > 50% number? How would you have any access to that sort of HR information? Sounds like one of those numbers that falls under the "83% of all statistics are made up" rule.

And Monty answered

The MySQL Alumini in linkedin group has close to 200 members, a majority that also joined Sun and this group doesn't include all people that have left. I have also heard the number 50 % from MySQL people that recently left Oracle, so I have good reasons to believe that this figure is reasonable accurate. …

Monty says:

During the last 2 years, I have seen a lot of the people that originally worked at MySQL AB and who joined Sun together with me, go away in different directions. More than 50 % of them have already left Sun/Oracle.

Matthew Montgomery commented...

I'm curious where you are getting that > 50% number? How would you have any access to that sort of HR information? Sounds like one of those numbers that falls under the "83% of all statistics are made up" rule.

And Monty answered

The MySQL Alumini in linkedin group has close to 200 members, a majority that also joined Sun and this group doesn't include all people that have left. I have also heard the number 50 % from MySQL people that recently left Oracle, so I have good reasons to believe that this figure is reasonable accurate. …

Monty says:

During the last 2 years, I have seen a lot of the people that originally worked at MySQL AB and who joined Sun together with me, go away in different directions. More than 50 % of them have already left Sun/Oracle.

Matthew Montgomery commented...

I'm curious where you are getting that > 50% number? How would you have any access to that sort of HR information? Sounds like one of those numbers that falls under the "83% of all statistics are made up" rule.

And Monty answered

The MySQL Alumini in linkedin group has close to 200 members, a majority that also joined Sun and this group doesn't include all people that have left. I have also heard the number 50 % from MySQL people that recently left Oracle, so I have good reasons to believe that this figure is reasonable accurate. …