One of the greatest things with working in the MySQL community has been to meet so many people and travel in different countries and cultures. In my last blog post I mentioned how I learned that in Southern Europe it is considered offensive to go too early to meet your customer. As the customer is expecting you to come later than agreed (everyone always does), if you show up too early you are taking away time that he was expecting to still use to prepare for the meeting.

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A lot has been written for and against open core now. Yet in the end, a couple tweets can catch all that is needed:

scurryn @h_ingo -- So as long as 'an open core vendor' doesn't call themselves 'an open source vendor' then everything's fine?

h_ingo @scurryn: pretty much. I think I owe everyone one more blog post to answer that question with a few more details.

(Twitter)

This is that blog post.

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Oh my. I was outside painting my house for a few days, and when I return back online I discover that now everyone is having an opinion on the open core business model. Since some participants are still trying to promote it as a valid open source business model, let's see what everyone is saying and highlight any pitfalls being offered...

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1. Conflict Minerals and Blood Tech (Joey Devilla) -- electronic components have a human and environmental cost. I remember Saul Griffith asking me, "do you want to kill gorillas or dolphins?" for one component. Now we can add child militias and horrific rape to the list. (via Simon Willison)
2. Meteor -- an open source HTTP server that serves streaming data feeds (for apps that need Comet-style persistent connections). (via gianouts on Delicious)
3. …

Glyn Moody has an interesting piece on Why Patents are Like Black Holes where he looks at the situation when a large patent holder goes bankrupt - or is about to. His point is that even if a company otherwise can go out of business cleanly, the patents often remain as a piece of "IPR" that can come back and haunt us like a zombie.

Also Matt Asay recently weighed in on the subject:

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Update: Before posting this, I had made an effort to verify that this was not a technical problem. However, Lenz from the MySQL Community team has now replied that indeed Zak Greant's RSS feed had changed it's URL address (see comments), which is why new posts did not appear. So rather than telling anything about Planet MySQL, this post is good evidence of my and others mistrust towards it - thankfully still unfounded. (The roots of this is also discussed in the comments.)

NOTE: Heading of this post was subsequently changed.

Not that I would be surprised of anything anymore, but still.

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Out of loyalty to someone I respect, I have chosen to withdraw my post about honesty that appeared at this address.

Let me however take this opportunity to remind my dear MySQL customers and users: I warmly recommend you consult an experienced MySQL expert when architecting your MySQL solutions. Setup a call with a Sales Engineer, hire a consultant, read the blogs of MySQL AB oldtimers. If you have a hard time finding solid MySQL info, we are there to help you.

My parents instilled upon me many values that I keep with me today. My twin brother and I are the youngest of four children, coming from a lower-middle class background. We children had the inevitable fights over material possessions, screeching “Mine! Mine!”

My father’s response to this was to look at us and say “These toys are mine; I bought those toys with money I worked for. What’s yours is what you make with your bodies.” While the sentiment is arguably harsh, crude and bordering on vulgar, I cannot argue that he had a certain point.

If you do not truly own something, you will be left squabbling like a child when your perceived ownership is threatened. When you assumed you owned something and the truth comes to light, you will be massively insecure and have a sense of injustice.

A few points from OSCon are haunting me and getting me …