Database MySQL announces Product lifecycle plan

Last week, the Open-source database boss MySQL announced the product lifecycle plan. In future, each version of MySQL "Life" will be five years. The company also said it would charge for security Update Services for older versions of the database.

MySQL has actually been more "generous" over the last few years in the maintenance of older products. The company's top executives said this week that while security updates for multiple versions cost a lot of money, companies would charge a fee for those services.

It is reported that MySQL 3.23 and 4.0 version of users to continue to obtain security update Services, you must purchase the "MySQL Network support" service. The start time for this service is: Version 3.23 starts from August 1, and version 4.0 starts from October 1. The charges for the network support are: US, U.S. service period of 595 U.S. dollars each year, Europe, the U.S. service period of 495 euros per year.

The MySQL high-level also said that it would consider whether to stop downloading too old versions of the database. However, 3.23 and 4.0 two versions of the software will still provide downloads.

MySQL's latest software lifecycle policy states that MySQL will provide free updates within two years of the release of each new product, and that the company will only provide the necessary security patch updates over the next three years. After the end of the five-year period, a version of the database will be "dead," and MySQL will not provide any patches or technical support thereafter.

The MySQL move sparked resentment among some in the industry. Paul, a developer at a Canadian IT consulting firm, said he was surprised by the MySQL move and even had some concerns. One of his clients is still using the 3.23.58 version of the database, according to MySQL policy, the product has been "dead."

Currently, the latest version of MySQL is 5.0 version, launched last year. In version 5.0, MySQL increased the functionality of many enterprise databases, such as views, triggers, stored procedures, and Microsoft's SQL Server and Oracle database Oracle, "More and more alike," analysts believe that MySQL through these changes are targeting the enterprise-level database market. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM's Big Three database giants under the pressure of open source MySQL, has been introduced a certain limit of the free primary version.