As a developer of an open-source software product that depends on MySQL, I’m very concerned with the recent upgrades at many hosts to a specific distribution of MySQL, version 5.0.51, that contains some critical bugs that affect many applications, not just MODx. And though workarounds can be found, it would require folks to patch installations, potentially reducing performance on complex queries, and generally inconveniencing multiple open source communities; it would sure help if MySQL could help stop the distribution of releases with such critical bugs.

So maybe this is just or rant about lack of quality control at MySQL, or maybe it’s a plea to hosting providers who want to GoPHP5 and are unwittingly deploying 5.0.51 (it also affects 5.0.50 and 5.0.51a) and crippling/confusing a great number of MySQL web developers. We’ve had literally hundreds of support requests because of this nasty error, and I just want to do my part to help inform folks that these versions of MySQL should be avoided like the plague.

Even XAMPP is distributing 5.0.51 with it’s most recent releases (1.6.5⁄1.6.6 at least). This is a tool I’ve used often, and I will not work with it past 1.6.3 atm. I hope they release a version with a newer release soon. I’m running 5.0.58 in production, and it’s running wonderfully with PHP 5.2.5. I’ll stop, but it sure is frustrating.