MySQL Tries Subscriptions

"We had been supplying our own technical support," says Paul D'Oyley, Blue Frog's technology director. After an hour of looking for what was wrong, "I concluded we needed technical support." D'Oyley's team requested help from MySQL AB, the Swedish company that developed and commercially supports MySQL, but fixed it before the vendor weighed in.

The downtime wasn't a disaster, since it came around 3 a.m., when traffic to the site is low. But support is one of the biggest problems open-source users face--one MySQL AB this week will address with a new approach to supplying tech support and services.

MySQL AB is moving to annual subscription fees of $595 to $4,995 per server for support, instead of depending on commercial license sales ($495) and separate technical support contracts. The price range reflects the variety of response options, from entry-level E-mail support to response from a MySQL specialist within 30 minutes at the highest level. The move gives it "a more scalable approach" for offering high-level technical support to smaller companies, such as Blue Frog, that have a limited number of servers. MySQL AB offered its Gold support to companies at a lower price, but they needed a minimum of 50 servers, or had to pay an annual charge close to $100,000, says company CEO Marten Micos.

MySQL AB will offer as part of its subscription a service called the MySQL Network to send notices of problems with the database and update advisories. It also will guarantee new releases are certified to work with other key software, and provide legal protection in the form of indemnification and warranties.

While an open-source version of MySQL remains free, the move to a subscription business model suggests a growing acceptance of MySQL by companies willing to pay for it; the model only works with a large enough customer base to spread the cost across. (MySQL AB has 170 employees.) Suresh Balasubramanian, director of product management at the software-license management firm Macrovision Corp., says Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. led the way among open-source vendors in launching subscription-based licensing a year ago.

Blue Frog is looking forward to establishing a cluster of MySQL servers, so that one server may go down but its Web business will keep humming. "High availability is exactly what we want," D'Oyley says. He says the subscription will pay off when he gets help later this year establishing the cluster--regardless of whether he runs into another database bug.