BOSTON. MySQL founder Monty Widenuis (pic left) did a lot of things right in the early days of MySQL.
Speaking the LinuxCon conference Widenuis detailed the history of MySQL and noted that the community involvement early on was key to MySQL’s success.
“What makes a successful open source project?” Widenuis said. “Be responsive to the community and treat them well and have good documentation.”
As MySQL grew, Widenuis’ message of community got pushed back and that’s where things started to go wrong. Widenuis also slammed Sun, saying that had no respect for engineering talent. Wiednuis left Sun in 2009 and the main reason for his new MariaDB was about saving the people that he cared about and he wanted a good home for MySQL that he didn’t believe was in good hands.
A focus on community is what MariaDB is all about, Widenuis said he is now following a hacking business model. It’s not a company that is being built to be sold, it’s democratic and employees are all shareholders.
“MariaDB will always be open source and there is no enterprise version,” Widenuis said.
