Пытаясь обмануть природу и создать универсальный механизм репликации мы потратили кучу денег и времени. Из-за нее же потеряли важного клиента. Но, что одному смерть, другому -- золото:

MySQL made its money from the "enterprise" version (identical to the "community" version plus some management software). The hook was that you couldn't buy support from MySQL without an enterprise license. MySQL support was absolutely excellent; people were will to pay big bucks to get it. And helping things was the fact that MySQL replication was so delicate that nobody in their right mind would run it without access to expert hand holding when things started to blow up.