Over the years I have come to the conclusion that all clients are from hell. It is just what degree of hell they are from. Below are some questions that I have been asked many, many times. They are not in order except for the first one. I’ve lost count of how many times that one has been asked.

• What’s a browser?
• My neighbors son has a program to make websites and he would of built it for $300.Why are you charging so much?
• I don’t understand why we can’t use the pictures I found while surfing?
• Can’t you use that site I like? All you would have to do is change the logo change the copy.
• Do I need an email program for each address?
• When are you going to change the password so only I know it?
• I had the portrait taken with a green canvas background, why is it taking so long to remove the background?
• Why is this store software as time consuming as my old eBay store?
• I sent you a word document with the copy for that page; why did you shorten it to only 6 paragraphs?
• Why do you want 50% up front? I want to see what I am getting for my money.
• Why do changes cost more money? I might not like the design in the end and want it changed.

On January 27th 2010 Oracle completed its buyout of Sun Microsystems and in 2008 Sun bought MySQL. When Sun bought MySQL they agreed to keep open source, Oracle did not! Just look what happened to InnoDB. Oracle started working on InnoDB+, a better closed source version and let the open source version fall into disarray.

Will this happen to MySQL? There is a good chance they will close the source and start charging licensing fees. Unlike InnoDB, MySQL is used by large companies and corporations. What will this mean to me and you? As far as I can see it, there are 3 things that may happen.

• You host has to buy a license and pass the cost on to you and your clients

• The host will say no and use MariaDB, a drop-in replacement for MySQL (developed by the same people that developed MySQL)

• The host will say no and switch to PostgreSQL.           

However it plays out it could be a bombshell exploding on the open source community. It was a sad day when only 89,184 people signed the petition to keep MySQL open source. If that few people had signed the petition to split Mozilla off from Netscape keeping it from becoming the AOL browser, there wouldn't be a Firefox!