One of the common misconceptions about Continuent is that because Tungsten does not have an open source license, we do not support open source. In fact, quite the opposite, in everything we do. The whole purpose of Tungsten Clustering is to empower and enable teams that build business-critical applications on open source databases.
This leads us to the subject of this blog: how Tungsten is designed for openness.
Welcome to the wonderful world of open source! You really are on your own, even if you think you acquire a solution that works. But many of the companies offering solutions based on open source components wrapped with expensive consulting engagements really can’t help you as they are not the original developers of some of the important core components, thus they do not have the necessary skills to fix them either.Welcome to the wonderful world of open source! You really are on your own, even if you think you acquire a solution that works. But many of the companies offering solutions based on open source components wrapped with expensive consulting engagements really can’t help you as they are not the original developers of some of the important core components, thus they do not have the necessary skills to fix them either.
Instead of contributing back to the original project, and in that way benefitting the project as a whole, Percona takes over smaller open-source projects (such as Galera) and larger open source projects (MySQL, MongoDB), then adds some small enhancements (especially when compared to the work done by the original developers), slaps its own name on it and proceeds to make some negative comments against those who have done the hardest work.
There are two key elements (which often separate us from many other open source operators, such as Percona) to our MySQL HA/DR and Continuous Operations solutions. Read this blog, adapted from the June “Word from the CEO” from the Continuent Newsletter to find out what distinguishes Continuent’s Tungsten Clustering solution in the open source MySQL database industry.
When it comes to that little piece of software with a $0 price tag, just take a moment and ask yourself if it really is going to be free. Yes, there are many perfectly valid use cases for using OSS software, but ensure you fully understand the risks and potential business imapact from an outage first.
Watch the replay of a webinar with our colleagues from Datavail and hosted by DBTA during which we discuss whether “free” is really good enough for business-critical MySQL database environments.
We’re one of the two Diamond Sponsors at this year’s Percona Live Conference in Austin and this blog provides an overview of our participation, including the talks we’ll be giving, such as on moving MySQL data in real-time into Amazon Redshift and on the colour of open source money.
