Here’s my sort of transcript of the most important things that were said during the Q&A with Kaj Arno at FOSDEM09. If you have any questions (or corrections if you were there and think i misinterpreted) please use the comments.
It is virtually unedited, so it’s rough but I don’t have the time right now to write it all out..
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Kaj Arno - Recent developments / roadmap of MySQL
Kaj shows who he is -> VP MySQL of community relations
Non-paying customers = community
when want to pay or can pay => customer marketing steps in
don’t want to turn whole community into customer, but when opportunity presents itself we will.
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Monty resigned, planned to be at FOSDEM but had other things to do
Marten Mikos also resigned this week, makes very clear these two are not related
Karen Tegan Padir is new MySQL Boss, worked for Red HAt before. Boss since friday 4pm eu time, keys to teh kingdom were handed over 
What will happen now?
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expects MySQL to be more integrate into sun “but not to lose it’s soul”
Less swedish drinking songs
He sometimes still talsk in third person, not on purpose
All of his interactions with senior sun people has been very good, not interfering too much
Services and sales distinction => internally important
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Roadmap
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Community implications => no too much detail since he doesn’t know them
doesn’t know any other company that takes community that serious -> not bragging
, they are just good
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MySQL Strengths
refocusing core goals => stability performace ease of use
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Mysql weaknesses
-Feature set used to be a big weakness, not so much anymore
-slow release cycles => thinks 3 years from 5.0 - 5.1 is too long. must improve
-contribution process=> has many reasons, thinks signing a paper before even considering is a bug hurdle and seems unfriendly. It is inherent because of dual licensing. need for discussing attitude and processes inside sun/mysql.
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MySQL opportunities
Enterprise is not about binary difference in server daemon.
when you pay -> you get additional software. good way for community and business to live side by side
Cluster -> has a lot of value for HA and is FOS
Support team -> support is great, very big plus for mysql
Volume marketing -> not so important fro FOS, improtant for getting money. bridge between the 10 million users and 100 check signers. White papers and webinars. Nothing wrong with keepin track by signing up for white paper. downing more than 2 white papers is red flag for being customer.
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MySQL Threats
Founder headaches, founders gone -> sees monty as more of an opporutnity in swot context
“it’s just a toy”-thought is still remaining, but it is diminishing
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Start of questions and concerns, sun Lenz Grimmer taking notes,
explains: not what we say will happen, but what we say is being taken seriously
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What are we not so good at? tell us
1) half backed features
things that have been known for long time, but not fixed. SP exception handling needs fixinf, will only be worked on in 6.0
Kaj -translates to backporting or currentporting of fixes
Giuseppe - not that tehy don’t know, they do. Started to complain when he was still outside. when he was in mysql he could start change. marten assembled Team from community engineering and support. to gather all of the half backed features and prioritise. Results in the next weeks.
2) interoprability with other products
Kaj - migrate to and from is easy. interoperability with other products is on per-case basis
3) after acquisition look at branding and designs. big custs not interested at open source, but low TCO.
Kaj - might brand it more as online database instead of open source database. nothing to do with opensource, jut marketing
4) storage engines and mysql have problem when things are true for storage engine A but not for B. Needs more clear in manuals and articles
Kaj - refrases
example; show status in myisam and innodb different performance
5) Scale up is also importnat, not only scale out
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Help with roadmap, what should happen now?
InnoDb is not active so much, this should change
Deeper integration for external storage engine needed on business and technical aspects
Faster updates, more frequent smaller updates makes upgrading easier
Cluster needs to be easier and pricing model should be changed
Contribution process needs improvement
External storage engines need more support, like federated engines
various questions with hand raising => stability, ease of use and performance are still reasonable
shorter release cycles again. attendee: implementing something yourself is useless maybe when you need to take it out or change later
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End talk, summary, more feedback welcome
Slides:
