Linux Solutions

Monty’s had a moment it would seem. MySQL creator Michael “Monty” Widenius has gone off on one about the recent version of MySQL. He says that last weeks version 5.1 still has fatal bugs, and that Sun Microsystems shouldn’t have released the database this soon.

MySQL v5.1 was made generally available last Thursday after months of development, but by the weekend Monty couldn’t hold his tongue any longer and had a bit of a rant about the release, claiming it was not ready for mainstream consumption yet.

On his blog titled, “Oops we did it again – MySQL 5.1 released as GA with crashing bugs”, Monty made it clear to users that they should be cautious before they install the latest version of the database on their live systems.

Monty claimed that the new version has around 20 serious flaws that could cause a crash, and said that users should consider v5.1 as a beta, and even hold off until patches to fix the flaws have been developed.

In a scathing assault on the MySQL team managers at Sun, he said that they had failed to learn from previous mistakes when – he claims – the company released a bug-addled version of the 5.0 database too early.

He quotes one of the developers pushing for the early release of the database: “Quality is not regarded to be that important. To quote Mårten Mickos: “MySQL 5.1 will be release as GA in or before December because I say so”. Mårten’s reasons for this is that he needs something he can sell and a release marked “GA” is much easier to sell than a release marked “RC”.”

Monty says that the reason the company wanted the release out is that it was better that v5.0 when it was declared generally available.

“In my opinion, this is not a good reason to declare something GA, especially as 5.0 GA was in terrible shape when it was released. What is worse is that the new features in MySQL 5.1 are of no better quality than new features in MySQL 5.0 was at the time MySQL 5.0 was declared GA,” he ranted

In his long-winded, and ill-advised venting, Monty recommends that new users should use v5.1 because its superior to the v5.0 community version, “which hasn’t been updated for some time”.

Monty made it clear that Sun, which acquired MySQL in February 2008 for $1bn, wasn’t to blame for what he feels is a premature release of the database.

“The decisions to do a GA release was solely been made by the MySQL management in Sun,” he said. “The only thing Sun can be blamed for is to not start fixing the MySQL development organisation soon enough to ensure that things like this can’t happen.

“I still have some hopes that Sun will come in and fix the MySQL development organisation, but with MySQL server releases like this one my hopes have started to fade a bit.”

However, as you can imagine Monty’s ramblings have not gone unnoticed and database administrator has retaliated at Monty’s efforts to “ambush his colleagues”.

She said: “This is another case of a developer, a brilliant one, mind you, one of the brightest in the open source arena, but a developer nonetheless, who has a non-user oriented mindset and is inflicting his view on the users.”

How long Monty will stay at the company is debatable. He started only in October and was annoyed at having to follow rules laid down by Sun, saying he “hated” how the company did business.

Expect a sacking in the coming weeks…

Monty’s post: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2008/11/oops-we-did-it-again-mysql-51-released.html
Angry Colleague: http://fakeamelia.blogspot.com/2008/12/monty-rants-or-yet-another-case-of.html