In many ways, this is an incorrect presentation of the situation of how MySQL evolved during it's growth PRIOR joining Sun Inc. Do not misunderstand me, I do not have any major objections on the management of MySQL Inc.
However, culture did change for the worse from 2004 until 2008. New philosophy was forced on the company, with Marketing over Quality, with Managing Board over the Developers. We got managers (at all levels) who knew NOTHING about MySQL. They just managed the people and not the product. I strictly remember that many of my questions were left unanswered by Development Management and I was clearly told, by most of Dev. Management, that they do not care about Development at all. All that they wanted is to move up, to the top management.
Quality, stability and performance were underrated beyond belief. Instead of that, the principal motto was to advertise new features, which were half baked and lousy, to be honest.
MySQL culture was totally lost and best developers started leaving ..... before entering Sun.
This continued unchanged during Sun Inc. I did not notice any change for the worse or better.
Luckily, we then entered Oracle Inc. and most of the things were set right !!!!!!
I appreciate the perspective. I think it's true that quality suffered for a while and that MySQL 4.0 was rushed out before it was ready. I don't recall loosing a lot of people, but you may have been closer to that than I was. I have heard that there was the perception that Marketing made the decision to ship 4.0 before it was ready. But that decision was entirely up to the VP of Eng. And honestly, we were all a bit surprised in marketing at that time.
Actually, 4.0 was just fine ....... great version .....
In 4.1 the error has crept in ..... variable-length character sets were introduced, while MEMORY engine and filesort (it was used for ORDER BY), still had only fixed length storage. These caused that every CHAR/VARCHAR/TEXT/BLOB attribute or field had it's CHAR length multiplied by 3 (three). That introduced HUGE performance degradation. Other than that, quality remained just fine.
But, 5.0 and higher were TOTAL, TOTAL disaster .....
I will not even comment on it.
Do I have to tell you also that, before InnoDB left MySQL, I informed top management that there were 3 (three) offers on the table. Then, MySQL's "smart" management REDUCED its offer ....
We entered a company that was doomed to fail. After I found out that they bought MySQL for 1 G $, WITHOUT it's main storage engine, meant that Sun Inc. (which had some wonderful products) will definitely go down .....
Perhaps it was 5.0 that I was thinking of. But for sure there was a lack of quality. It's unfortunate that you had rough treatment, but it seems you've found a good path forward.
In many ways, this is an incorrect presentation of the situation of how MySQL evolved during it's growth PRIOR joining Sun Inc. Do not misunderstand me, I do not have any major objections on the management of MySQL Inc.
However, culture did change for the worse from 2004 until 2008. New philosophy was forced on the company, with Marketing over Quality, with Managing Board over the Developers. We got managers (at all levels) who knew NOTHING about MySQL. They just managed the people and not the product. I strictly remember that many of my questions were left unanswered by Development Management and I was clearly told, by most of Dev. Management, that they do not care about Development at all. All that they wanted is to move up, to the top management.
Quality, stability and performance were underrated beyond belief. Instead of that, the principal motto was to advertise new features, which were half baked and lousy, to be honest.
MySQL culture was totally lost and best developers started leaving ..... before entering Sun.
This continued unchanged during Sun Inc. I did not notice any change for the worse or better.
Luckily, we then entered Oracle Inc. and most of the things were set right !!!!!!
I appreciate the perspective. I think it's true that quality suffered for a while and that MySQL 4.0 was rushed out before it was ready. I don't recall loosing a lot of people, but you may have been closer to that than I was. I have heard that there was the perception that Marketing made the decision to ship 4.0 before it was ready. But that decision was entirely up to the VP of Eng. And honestly, we were all a bit surprised in marketing at that time.
Actually, 4.0 was just fine ....... great version .....
In 4.1 the error has crept in ..... variable-length character sets were introduced, while MEMORY engine and filesort (it was used for ORDER BY), still had only fixed length storage. These caused that every CHAR/VARCHAR/TEXT/BLOB attribute or field had it's CHAR length multiplied by 3 (three). That introduced HUGE performance degradation. Other than that, quality remained just fine.
But, 5.0 and higher were TOTAL, TOTAL disaster .....
I will not even comment on it.
Do I have to tell you also that, before InnoDB left MySQL, I informed top management that there were 3 (three) offers on the table. Then, MySQL's "smart" management REDUCED its offer ....
We entered a company that was doomed to fail. After I found out that they bought MySQL for 1 G $, WITHOUT it's main storage engine, meant that Sun Inc. (which had some wonderful products) will definitely go down .....
Perhaps it was 5.0 that I was thinking of. But for sure there was a lack of quality. It's unfortunate that you had rough treatment, but it seems you've found a good path forward.