"We have developed our engineering team to be independent of single persons" == "Suck it up, Monty, you're not that important. Don't let the door hit you in the ass."

And this in a nutshell is why all my servers are now Dells running Linux. It wasn't the price difference, it was the apathetic support.

So one senior manager has left, another *possibly* may go - and it's an "exodus"?

Sheesh.

and a replacable one. And if that is the case, why does one cog get paid 100x what another cog gets paid?

Man, talk about the world-wide cruising he will be doing...

There's one less Open Saucer out there. What difference does it make? Technical superiority isn't the issue: but the F/OSS crowd hasn't caught on yet. After another 10-13 years and the Linux/OSS products will be ready for the real world.

But just remember, the FOSS guys that aren't making any money in 10 years will still be whining about monopolies, unfair business practices and market share. Jesus what Fagots - and they wonder why no one takes them seriously. Software is nothing but a tool - it's up to you how to use it.

...for a community project, driven in (a large) part by open sauce developers, to be sold to a Corp. for a f#?@ing Billion?

<irony>I wonder how much of the billion was given to the contributors</irony>

How will I know when Linux is "ready for the real world"?

I get my living from working with Linux & F/OSS at a Tier 1 Global Company. It's committed to Linux and uses it extensively in internal projects and as a platform for its products. No, it's not IBM, Dell, Google, Yahoo or Oracle - all of which would apply for the above. The company I work for, like these, is an industry leader not only in its field but a significant player in global business.

Just because you don't see Linux & F/OSS in your own daily life it doesn't mean it's not there. It's also pretty funny to read how Linux vendors such as Novell, RedHat and Ubuntu are slammed on these forums as being non-viable businesses. I don't know any details but my guess is the company I work at is paying significant amounts to a Linux vendor.

Keep trolling, I'm just grateful for the time I spent on learning Linux - it puts the real world bread on my real world table.

"The FOSS crowd is giving away their work, for some strange reason" .... snore ... I guess companies like IBM aren't quite getting the joke since they plough lots of work back into the "community".

For some F/OSS is about "community", but for many big businesses it's a great business proposition as you say. However, when they participate in the development they help improve the product. When using GPL, you give your work away for free but get back the improvements. Who's using who?

And so what if the company is bought up or closes the source? The source is out there and can be branched if it goes awry. See SSH.

How do you reconcile your confilicting statements that a billion dollars is a trick and on the other hand projects that work "can be bought for far less than it would to develop them internally" Hmm.

I'm starting to wonder why you spew all that FUD.

"You get people (the "community") to do all the work for free - then you sell it to a real business. The FOSS crowd is giving away their work, for some strange reason."

This was never the case for MySQL, 98% of which was developed in-house by *paid* engineers.

MySQL has a big community that helps out with sending in bug reports, participating in forums, etc. But counted in lines of code, the community never contributed much.

... open *source*

It's open *source*

We're not talking ketchup here.

Who's payroll is this a ss on anyway?

As for companies using people, you don't think MS *EVER* uses people .. the paying customers ARE the beta testers .. sometimes we're the alpha testers, like for 2000, ME, and VISTA.

----------------

Sun engineer ... big deal, I wish the guy well, he helped create a nice database which is handy for many things.

You should have mentioned Firebird. Anyone working with databases should try it out. It was originally the brainchild of Jim Starkey who was head hunted by MySQL to write a new backend incorporating ideas he has developed since the original for Firebird. He has now left MySQL ....

I would have thought Ingres would be worth a mention in terms of industry strength open source databases....

Dude, that 'cog' is the guy who started the company and wrote the software. 'My' in MySQL is his daughter's name though it has a dual English language meaning.

who is using the family brain cell today?

"Jesus, what faggots"- classy, really classy.

(Engineer at a globally-known outfit, doing envelope-pushing research, using linux as a platform.. We have the choice of whatever tools we want- this one just happens to be the one that works best. Must be our latent homosexuality)

Man, you're spot-on with the very things that made me go back to PostgreSQL after the MySQL craze faded on me. I hated how the MyISAM backend was still being pushed, and the 3.x documentation insisted on telling us referential integrity and transactions were useless.

The funny thing is that the guy who actually pushed on this agenda of "no transactions" is the same guy who seems to be resigning. Maybe he's doing the whole MySQL team a favor?? I mean, the only other modern RDBMS that doesn't support transactions is MS Access, and you'd expect something like MySQL to be better than that! (And Access *does* have referential integrity!)

Even with the InnoDB engine, there are some quirks with MySQL that simply keep me off the thing. The day MyISAM tables turn into transactional, FK-supporting tables is the day that I *might* turn back to MySQL.

Rumors, rumors.

According to Finnish Computerworld he is still negotiating!

http://www.tietoviikko.fi/infra_docview.jsp?f_id=1408820