Three years ago, Alzato was acquired by MySQL from a big closed-source telecom company. For the MySQL Cluster developers, this meant totally new goals and new development challenges.

Should we open source the code? What do we need to do before we can do it? How can we make the program install in less than 15 minutes? Why is this necessary? How can we work in a distributed work environment? How can we cope with 250 new emails/day? When is it best to chat, meet, talk, or email? How can we make decisions and make development plans when we work in over 20 countries?

In this talk, I will give my personal view on what I and the other MySQL Cluster developers have done, what the challenges were, and how we work today. It has certainly been an exciting experience.