Hi Robin, all !
First, my disclaimers to state it explicitly:
1) I am a member of the MySQL Build Team,
but I do not set the company's policy handling Enterprise vs Community.
2) These comments are my very own ones, I do not speak for MySQL AB and
may easily lack relevant information.
Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> While I don't see any previous traffic on the matter, it's exactly
> what's intended for this list I believe. I'd love to hear from both
> MySQL folk as well as other distro packagers on the matter.
>
> I'm the Gentoo package mantainer for MySQL [[...]]
>
> In the beginning, before the community and enterprise versions split, it
> was simple, Gentoo simply provided 'dev-db/mysql'.
>
> Then the split happened, and we added 'dev-db/mysql-community' to the
> tree, while the main 'dev-db/mysql' followed the Enterprise source
> releases. This allowed folk to just upgrade into the enterprise version,
> which had better support in terms of bug-fixes actually getting out to
> users than the Community version.
To prevent any wrong impressions by other readers:
Every bug fix (or other change) that goes into the enterprise version
also goes into the community tree and will be included in the next
community build -
what does differ is the frequency.
>
> [[...]]
>
> I originally applauded the concept behind the community/enterprise
> split, but I'm afraid that it did not pan out anywhere near as well as
> I'd hoped.
There are similar voices within MySQL AB (if that is of any consolation
to you).
I will make sure your original mail gets forwarded internally to make
the issue known to all others who do not read the "packagers" list.
For all external readers who did not get that yet, I will describe the
conflicting goals of the enterprise - community split:
- From a financial point of view, MySQL AB has an interest that
companies become paying customers and use the "enterprise" version.
Several of our sales people fear this will not happen sufficiently if
the sources of that version remain publicly accessible,
or if those customers do not receive a faster delivery than the
non-paying community users.
- From a technical point of view, MySQL AB has an interest to deliver
changes to the community as fast as possible.
However, building community packages comes with an effort (resource load
which may conflict with enterprise builds).
- Also on the technical side, it is difficult to draw the line between a
bug fix (which has to go into enterprise packages) and any other
change in behavior (which the community should receive first, to get
feedback about its usability etc).
Obviously, MySQL AB is still working on finding a way that satisfies all
these goals simultaneously.
>
> The Changelog for ES 5.0.48
> (http://www.mysql.org/doc/refman/5.0/en/releasenotes-es-5-0-48.html)
> lists fixes for issues that I'm certain I'v seen in production.
> [[...]]
> Average of 64 days between releases, however 67 days have passed since
> the last community release, and I don't know when the next community
> release will be. The BK commitlog shows nothing for the last 10 weeks
> (http://mysql.bkbits.net:8080/mysql-5.0-community/?DATE=-12w..&PAGE=changes).
Changes are transferred from the enterprise sources to the community
sources in larger batches, not one by one as they are developed.
>
> [[...]]
>
> So what do we do? Responses, kudos, flames, I want to hear it all.
I hope this will raise more replies than just mine, and maybe we even
find a solution that pleases both the community and the sales people ?
Regards,
Jörg
--
Joerg Bruehe, Senior Production Engineer
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com
