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Comment by spudlyo | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's a silly default, but I don't think it's the fatal flaw that you make it out to be. That's ok though, this is clearly an advocacy piece, so I don't expect nuance.

If none of that freaks you out, then I have one word for you: Oracle.

This to me smacks of FUD.

Oracle, evil and terrible as they are, would have a very hard time killing or otherwise harming MySQL due to the code being GPL'd and the vibrant MySQL community (Percona, Facebook, Twitter, Drizzle, MariaDB, SkySQL, etc) that fixes bugs, adds features, and directly competes with the work Oracle does.

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I've been the victim of that flaw - I biffed a Rails migration and sent (what should have been) $200 transactions into the DB as $99. My local tests used SQLite, so I didn't catch it until we went live - true deal there. Very dumb on my part.

At the same time - changing data values not stupid? We may differ on this point but I believe it's insanity. I'd love to see NULLs honored as well as constraints.

That said - 1/0 = NULL is on par with Javascript silliness.

Finally, it's easy to characterize my comment as FUD but Oracle has a habit of using Open Source systems to its advantage. Why else would they buy MySQL? And the licensing is not as strong as you may think.

Either way - it's very argumentative and I'm happy to agree it's unsure at best.

I agree, it's insanity. I have no idea why it's still the default, there are probably a bunch of crappy apps out there that depend on this behavior. Anyway, sorry for hijacking your thread. I thought your video production and screencast techniques were top notch. As someone who dabbles in creating geeky youtube videos, I have to give you credit for a job well done.

> Why else would they buy MySQL? And the licensing is not as strong as you may think.

To compete with Microsoft SQL Server and to further solidify their customer base (most Oracle customers already use MySQL).

How is MySQL competing with MS-SQL? I'm quite sure they're in different league. Price point wise MS-SQL isn't that much cheaper than Oracle.

Here's one word: upsell _HARD_

That was my experience trying to buy support/license for GlassFish. Some sales guy tries very hard to upsell us to use WebLogic (of course, otherwise he's not going to fill his quota or get a bonus).

> How is MySQL competing with MS-SQL?

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/222168/oracle_...

I would characterise your comment as FUD. And now you are questioning the licensing.

There is NO evidence that MySQL has licensing problems otherwise we wouldn't have the Facebook, Twitter and Percona forks. It's as simple as that really.

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