The MySQL Council has been operational for more than one year, with mixed fortunes. As an early member, I am glad to be a member, and I feel that I have done something useful by participating in this organism. The council is young, and the MySQL community is variegated and sparse. The enthusiasm of the first volunteers must be reinforced by the injection of new members, who can contribute fresh views and keep the council on their toes. I am glad to see more names coming up, and, as some of my fellow council members, I volunteered to serve for another year. But this doesn't need to be my decision. I will stay unless we get feedback on the contrary, and the same will be for the other people in the list below. (1)Please use the …

The MySQL Council has not being idle. We have addressed the bugs database concerns, and we are continuing our dialog.
To do a better job, we would like to hear more from the community. Unlike other established user groups, MySQL does not have a world wide organization for its users. The council exists on a voluntary basis, and we are seeking support from the rest of you. Please let your voice heard. There are three main channels for this:

• A MySQL Council survey
• A set of questions that will be answered during the keynote at the MySQL Conference
• Talk to a council member

SurveyThe …

When I announced the MySQL Council, I said that among its roles there is that of being a bridge between the MySQL community and Oracle.
It has come the time where we put this role to good use. Recently, there have been some concerns about the MySQL bugs database, which could be summarized in Mark Callaghan's post Where have the bugs gone?.
The gist of the concerns is that there has been a change in the bugs handling, although we don't know what was changed and how. In short, there has been a total lack of communication. The MySQL Council has addressed the concerns about the public bug database in a recent meeting, and has taken several steps, like approaching Oracle directly, and …

The Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) has formed the MySQL Council, with the purpose of addressing the interests and needs of MySQL users.

The current Council members are:

• Sarah Novotny, Blue Gecko, Council Chair
• Sheeri Cabral, PalominoDB
• Bradley Kuszmaul, Tokutek
• Giuseppe Maxia, Continuent
• Rob Wultsch, GoDaddy.com
• Matt Yonkovit, Percona

The IOUG is a well established and respected institution, with more than 20,000 database professionals registered as its members. In the long history of Oracle, the IOUG has always played a role in the aftermath of many acquisitions, extending a friendly hand to the newcomers in the family. I have spent much time with IOUG people, and I was impressed by their enthusiasm and …

Last week someone sent me an article about the “dueling” MySQL conferences from IOUG and O’Reilly. On the one hand, I find it really entertaining that there’s a perception that, three years ago, when the Sun acquisition wasn’t even on the radar, we purposefully scheduled our conferences against each other in anticipation of this moment. If we had a crystal ball or the ability to see the future that well, I would have picked better lottery numbers three weeks ago.

The sad part is all the focus is placed on a hypothetical negative, and it overshadows the real point of the article – that a collection of MySQL community supporters are pooling their time and effort to make sure the community stays strong. I’m lucky enough to get to work with the MySQL Council, and so I know that working on anything related to MySQL is about …