I used to love MySQL!
It was fantastic you found what you needed immediately, you downloaded it, no questions asked. You installed it and you where up and running in no time. It was simply the best DB I had ever had.
These days, if you go to the MySQL website, it is certaily not obvious where to go to download the free version. A lot of blabla for their enterprise version but the rest is very obscure. A first time user would not know immediately there is such a thing as a free version.
There is a small link in the top of the website that says “community”. When I see a “community” link, I think of open source developers, support forums, blogs etc. I do not immediately think that there could be another version which I could maybe download there.
They call it the “Community Version”, tsss. But where to get it? I had to google a while to get pointed in the right direction. When I finally wanted to download the 5.1 community version, I got to a page where at first it seems you have to register go on. There is just a small link that is not obvious that say ‘no thanks…’ But when I clicked it, it did absolutely nothing!!!
This could be due to some bozo IE setting but anyway, it should just work!
In the end I did manage to download it and in retrospect it seems logical how they organised the community download but I did not find it intuitive. I strongly believe I’m not the only one.
Anyway, if I think about the way things where with MySQL and where they come from and their attitude today, I don’t get a lot of warm feelings…
Posted by Dennis 