Martin Butler

The open-source movement is quickly gaining ground and replacing proprietary technology - if you believe the hype. As with anything that excites the market, vendors are not slow to jump on the bandwagon, although their commitment is sometimes less than total and their offerings often owe more to PowerPoint than time spent on R&D.

The reality of some open-source offerings falls short of expectations, and it is time for a sanity check. The people promoting open source are keen to talk about cost. So let's look at cost as it relates to one piece of technology heavily promoted by the open-source movement, MySQL.

MySQL has almost singlehandedly reignited interest in the database market. But the first thing to note is that open source does not equal free in this case. A professional licence from MySQL costs $495. Entry-level technical support costs $1,500. That's scotched the idea of anything about it being free.

One of MySQL's key users is Yahoo. On MySQL's web site there is a telling quote from Jeremy Zawodny, who is described as a MySQL database expert at Yahoo. This is what he has to say: "One doesn't need weeks of expensive training and a shelf full of manuals to make MySQL work well. Also the MySQL support is truly outstanding."

There we are. Cost again. If it's so easy to use and it is reliable (one assumes it's reliable since apparently Nasa is using it to run missioncritical applications, although that would put me off becoming an astronaut), why am I asked to shell out $1,500 for entry-level support? And support costs can go as high as $62,400 - hardly a cheap option.

The great thing about MySQL, as Zawodny points out, is you don't need expensive training or a shelf full of manuals. But just in case you've never used a database before, the friendly experts at MySQL will log you into your system and set up the server just the way you want it. That will only cost a meagre $1,000.

Strange how costs seem to carry on rising. Perhaps Mr Zawodny (that would be the same Jeremy Zawodny who has written a book on high-performance MySQL) should write a short manual on installing MySQL. It would have to be cheaper than $1,000.

The fact that MySQL comes from an open-source background does not make it anything special. It is using open source as a tagline to gain attention, as are many other IT vendors, large and small. MySQL is a commercial database marketed on the back of interest in open source.

MySQL is not the only organisation doing this and I am not singling it out for special condemnation. The truth is open source has, to a large extent, been hijacked by commercial enterprises. The open-source community no longer controls many of the applications that are promoted as open source, and it is worth investigating the true costs before heading down the open-source route.

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