Re: Distro packaging decisions and the non-public Enterprise source

On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 11:08:28AM +0200, Joerg Bruehe wrote:
> - 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.

Those sales people might learn some day that putting down existing users (in any way, even if that's largely only a feeling) won't make the further proposition better.

So far I see that most people who need things to "just work" might not care whether the source, or similar service, is available to anyone -- those who work in positive context and not do things due to fear and hate, tend to focus on "what our money will buy us".

>From that standpoint, making bugfixes take longer to get to "the
rest" isn't going to help MySQL AB make a _better_ proposition on Enterprise: it's only to make Community proposition _worse_, which might impede not some determined corporate free-riders but rather newcomers who are considering their database choice (for the first time, or for the next project).

Still I'm definitely working in another niche than MySQL AB, and another country as well. YMMV.

> - 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).

Guess this list is quite about the interaction with us packagers.

Why not release source-only Community in sync with Enterprise fixes, but roll out corresponding builds slower if that makes sales that happy?

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Those who will cope with the source (which is distributable) will likely either know their way around it without any need for paid support anyways, and/or know when they're out of their abilities to fix/workaround some problem and would prefer a one-time resolution, long-term paid support options or changing the database altogether.

> Obviously, MySQL AB is still working on finding a way that
> satisfies all these goals simultaneously.

Yup, and good luck with all of that silver finelining.

> 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 ?

Maybe you could point them to heaps of analysis on how Sun has almost killed off Java of somewhat similar fear (and, dare I say, hate). I don't know which classic sales books it has hit yet but one reflexion was drawn in Torvalds' "Just For Fun".

It's not about technology or commerce in the first place, it's about people and relations.

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin 
  ------ Linux.Kiev 
http://www.linux.kiev.ua/

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