OpenMind 2007: Monty's Session on Building MySQL Community
I've come in late for Monty's session - everything seems to be running a bit early - how odd.
Monty's is covering mistakes in building communities - he's talking about Dream Box and how they have let their community fragment so deeply. Then he talks about how MySQL has provided a strong central point for the development of the server.
At this point someone asks how much contributed code is in MySQL. Monty says very little in the core server (but mentioning the Windows port as a large and notable exception). He should mention that the non-server contributions are huge, but he gets sidetracked.
He heads back to his slides and start discussion stats from MySQL's past - how many copies have been distributed (and estimated 100 million+ - about 40k downloads per day.) Lots and lots of books (about 250 in English, 200 in German, 200 in French, 50 in Japanese and 20+ in Spanish. Also in Chinese, Russina, Portuguese, Norwegian, Malay, Swedish, etc. More than 7900 projects that leverage MySQL (listed on SourceForge).
Monty also talks about why they got these results - by being friendly to users, encouraging cooperation on the mailing lists, talking honestly about the project, and so on. He mentions how PostgreSQL hurt itself in the early days by having some users who thought that attacking MySQL was a good way to advocate PostgreSQL.
Questions keep popping up from the audience. Someone who asked a question earlier has asked another question about security and how MySQL manages it. Monty describes how MySQL deals with security issues - which is basically the general Open Source way of handling bugs.
The next slides focuses on why Free DBMSs are getting better over time - open bug reporting and feature suggestions from MySQL users, faster development cycles than proprietary software, lots of testing of code on many different servers, freedom for users, the ability to audit the code, and so on.
One of the really key points is how people work around the core of MySQL to make it useful on their platform and with their language. MySQL AB developed very few APIs for MySQL. Most of the APIs have been developed on top of MySQL's C API, allowing MySQL to be used almost anywhere. MySQL would never have had the time to write these by themselves.
Monty breaks from his slides to talk about how he and David (one of the other MySQL founders) worked together virtually for many years before they started MySQL and how they ended up choosing this for MySQL when it became a company. He thinks that this isn't cheaper, but it is much more flexible for people (at least, once they get used to working virtually.)
The next slide pulls him to the topic of fighting software patents, talking about how MySQL has resisted software patents in Europe.
The next slides shows a few pictures - Monty making lobster while wearing a No Software Patents shirt, David's daughter, Anna Widenius, one of Monty's daughters (Maria) and Lucy Widenius - the family dog.
Questions come up, the first one being about how MySQL can provide first-tier support only, as it implies that all of the MySQL support people are developers. Monty answers that many supporters are devs and that the support engineers are well integrated with the dev team. Plus some support engineers and devs shift roles, helping develop a broad range of skills.
The next question is, "Can you elaborate a bit more about the difference in community development between the core and the other MySQL parts?" Monty responds with explaining how MySQL gets help from many outside groups to get support on things outside the core. He also talks about how plugins are getting easier and easier as a way to incorporate things into the core.
The last question is, "How do you keep the nasty people out of the community." Monty says that we tell them to shut up, but nicely. We need to be a bit of a politician - you have to be able to tell people to go to hell in a way that they will look for it. No one will blame you if you take a difficult argument off the mailing list or if you kick a troublemaker of the list.
Tags: Code, community, DBMS, freedom, monty, MySQL, MySQL AB, Open Source, OpenMind, OSI, Patent, PostgreSQL, Security, Uncategorized, WindowsRelated posts
Posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 2:22
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October 11th, 2007 at 9:52
[...] Monty on Building a Successful Open Source Community [...]