Don Sambandaraksa interviews David Axmark, the co-founder of MySQL
David Axmark speaks of the power of open source software development, where there are no limits on what you can know. |
MySQL is the M in LAMP, the Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP open source software stack that has underpinned the Internet revolution, empowering generations of web development on all parts of the spectrum. David Axmark, co-founder of MySQL, was in Bangkok to explain the history of MySQL, the company's culture and the power of open source development as well as give a glimpse of its future now that MySQL has been taken over by Sun Microsystems.
Development began back in 1992 as the company needed a simple database for its own use. By 1995, the project became known as MySQL after My, the daughter of fellow co-founder Monty Widenius. The first public release was in 1996 and the company continued to grow as a loosely knit group of software programmers with no formal organisation or budgetary process until 2001.
"Developers usually complain about administrators, but they actually do good work and you notice when you don't have them," Axmark said. In 2001, just after the dot com crash, the company went for its first round of funding. One more round and later in 2008, MySQL AB was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1 billion.
MySQL is free, open source software. Its business model is based on royalties from ISVs and developers incorporating the database into an appliance, software or solution as well as paid-for support. As a database, MySQL is completely free and will remain that way. A paid-for enterprise version is available with performance tuning and management features, and the next version, code-named Citadel, will add enterprise-class security and privacy features.
"We were commercial from day one, we wanted to make money, but we didn't care if one in 10,000 or one in 1,000 users paid," he said.
Back in 1996, MySQL adopted the 15 minute rule: That the software should be easy and simple enough to compile and get up and running within 15 minutes. When 64-bit processors came about, Axmark admitted to being annoyed at all the larger database vendors who made headlines for releasing 64-bit versions of their software. "If you have good source code, 64-bit is a recompile. It's a day job, and if it takes a year, it means your code stinks," he said.
Axmark said that back in the '80s, the big computer corporations said that it was no longer possible for a company to start up in a garage as IT requires too much resources. These companies said that the concept of open source was impossible and that they would never get something worthwhile working.
Then came along Linux and MySQL, the common standards in servers. "We started with pretty crappy computers and 64Kbps Internet. How come we did what they said was impossible? It's a combination of factors," he said.
The strength of open source is help from the community, and this is more than just help with the source code. Detailed bug reports are valuable, and can save developers valuable time in tracking down problems.
He argued that security through obscurity, as practiced in the proprietary world, was not security and that having a public, dirty bug database for all to see helps focus development and keeps companies more honest.
"I don't believe open source is more secure, bad code is bad code. The difference is that with open source, more people can see it and comment on it. You will have people who look at the code and say, 'Yes it is much better,' or, 'No, it is still bad.' I believe it makes open source more secure if it is commonly used. It doesn't help a small piece of open source software, but it helps MySQL and Linux," he said.
Finally, the strength of MySQL comes from feedback for small, great ideas that make a difference which he says are more valuable than big ideas such as adding an XML interface to a database.
"It's about freedom and independence. You are not locked out if you don't work for Sun. One reason I got into open source is that nobody limited what I could know. With proprietary software, there is only so much you can find out before you have to go and work for that company or sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement)," he said.
On the other hand, Axmark recalls hiring a consultant and being able to send him off to help solve a customer's problem the very next day because he was already a self-trained expert on MySQL.
MySQL is highly adaptable and flexible. Being modular, many developers have developed plug-ins to make MySQL behave the way they want and many have developed various storage engines that work well in specific situations. One storage engine was an archival engine that only allowed writes without any deletion or modification. This was targeted by those who wanted to do logs as it meant the logs could not be changed, but it also was much smaller and faster as it did not have any code related to deletion or modification.
Another engine recently launched was supposedly the fastest when it came to terabyte-sized databases and Axmark spoke of a very high performance dedicated hardware MySQL engine that was developed though he has yet to see any benchmarks from it.
Other uses were more intriguing. When IBM needed a web development platform for its i5 (ne'e AS/400) running IBM's own DB2 database, it used MySQL as a front end and interface while elegantly integrating it with DB2 at the back.
Today MySQL already boasts a long list of customers in industries such as travel, telco, retail with both the embedded appliances and large scale clusters as a testament to the database's flexibility. Of the top 20 web sites in the world, only four do not run MySQL and three of those four are Microsoft's sites.
Between 70 to 80 per cent of MySQL's employees work from home and in fact it had no formal office until the initial investment, instead working through email, rarely even speaking to one another. Axmark said that many of his staff actually moved out of busy cities to work in the more relaxed countryside.
The cultural and business fit with Sun is very good with Sun being committed, if a bit late in the game, to open source and the free with paid for support business model.
On the business side, MySQL brings to Sun access to the huge database market and in return Sun helps MySQL gain a presence in markets all over the world. Previously, the only Asian country where MySQL had an office was Tokyo.
Aside from the cultural match, many of the other suitors were suspected of having a dual agenda, wanting to take over MySQL to make it fail as they already had commercial databases, he noted.
Moving forward, Axmark said one of the challenges was multi-core programming and taking advantage of those cores without thrashing the caches. Personally, he said he was still struggling with the size of Sun. Previously, he knew everyone in MySQL, now he does not even know all the departments in Sun.
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