[JMostert]

Does that matter? Those users who do care should get the support they can expect if management claims to be committed to Windows, regardless of how many they are. It's a simple matter of putting your money where your mouth is: if you care, you make sure you have people who can support Windows and like to take responsibility to bring it up to par with the other platforms, otherwise you make it clear that Windows is a second-class citizen and you should be prepared to get a poorer-quality product with less support.

From a short-term management perspective it seems better to have just the promise of support than to have nothing at all, but in the long term you're sending a signal that MySQL on Windows isn't to be taken seriously, and that you don't want people who are committed to Windows as customers. That's as fine a business decision as any, but then it's cheaper to cut out Windows development altogether than to go about it halfheartedly.

[jawngee]

I can't think of one good reason why you would use MySQL on Windows. I know this seems trollish, but it's the honest to goodness truth.

Either way, it's not likely Windows is all that significant in terms of MySQL usage or you'd be seeing more activity and movement on that front. And Windows developers aren't really all that open source savvy yet either ...

[bayareaguy]

I can't think of one good reason why you would use MySQL on Windows

Licenses can cost quite a bit when you have lots of systems. A former employer of mine saved several hundred thousand dollars by moving from MS SQL Server to MySQL and PostgreSQL.

[JMostert]

It's what bensummers said above: it's not whether MySQL on Windows is a good idea at all, it's why MySQL management implies that it is by claiming to support it.

You're probably right that there's no technical reason to use MySQL on Windows, so the only reasons left are management reasons ("our code monkeys can install whatever they like as long as it's on our trusted Windows (tm) machines"). This explains why the technical support for MySQL on Windows sucks, while the management support is prominent...

[treskot]

MySQL on windows is huge. Did you know that Windows downloads outnumber other platforms by a huge?

[thwarted]

I'm not sure what "a huge" is, but download numbers from the MySQL website would obviously be weighted towards platforms where the distribution providers for a given manufacturer's operating system don't ship a usable version. Since Microsoft doesn't provide MySQL as the OS manufacturer, nor do Windows distributors like Dell ship a packaged MySQL installation, then it makes sense that Windows would be well represented in download numbers of binaries from the mysql website.

There's also a trend, at least in performance centric circles, to start building from source with patches or using third-party binaries, like those provided by percona, and other stuff not provided for on the mysql website.

Downloads from any one website are ultimately not indicative of the actual usage of the software, especially when it comes to freely repackagable open-source.

[treskot]

I'm afraid I'm not a purist. You cannot deny the fact that windows is ubiquitous & for any software claiming to support it, it is 'huge', I repeat its 'huge'. Just check this report (http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/mysql_on_window...) from MySQL itself on how 'huge' windows platform is.