MySQL inventor Michael “Monty” Widenius shares his thoughts on the deal and its impact on MySQL.
What could be Oracle’s plan with MySQL? Three different plans come to mind:
- They are going to kill MySQL (either directly or by not developing/supporting it fully)
- MySQL will get sold of to another entity, either because Oracle doesn’t want it or becasue of anti-trust laws.
- They will embrace MySQL and Open Source and put their technical expertise on it to ensure that MySQL continues to be the most popular advanced Open Source database.
–Michael Widenius, Founder and original developer of MySQL.
Though he hopes for the third option, he doesn’t seem to have much faith in Oracle and its open source efforts. He also questions the idea of “owning” open source software, noting that communities are more important than trademarks.
It appears the roots of MySQL are already being reborn in Monty Program Ab. If this is a successful effort, I think MySQL enthusiasts will be fine, even if the database they use in no longer branded MySQL.
…”I guarantee you it will be hard to sell an iPod five or seven years from now when every cell phone can access your entire music library wherever you are.” — Sun CEO, Scott McNealy in a 2006 article at The Register.
Being big tech industry news, MacRumors posted a note on the Oracle buyout of Sun. It points out that Sun attempted to buy Apple once, and there were two occasions where the companies nearly merged. MR cites a 2006 article at The Register with Sun co-founder Bill Joy that I quoted above.
The article points out Scott McNealy’s hesitance toward Apple, especially the long range success of the iPod, which prompted the quote. In retrospect, that quote looks so funny with my iPhone setting on my desk and talks that Apple is developing technology to stream music from your desktop to you Internet-connected iPhone or iPod anywhere in the world. Three years later, Apple is going strong, and Sun has been gobbled up.
After months of rumors that IBM was to acquire Sun, Cnet is reporting that Sun is selling, but not to IBM, rather to Oracle. The deal is reportedly worth $7.4B.
I you’ve read my blog, you’ll know that my primary concern with the acquisition of Sun from any company is the fate MySQL, which Sun purchased last year. Leading up to that purchase, Oracle had failed several times to buy MySQL itself, which I was happy about. MySQL offers database software in a market in which Oracle has yet to find a foothold, and I feared that Oracle acquiring the company might stifle the development of the open source product.
So here we are about a year later and Oracle ends up with MySQL via Sun. What will happen to MySQL now? Maybe it will be good for it or maybe bad, or maybe its open source roots will see its core survive under a different name like MariaDB or Drizzle.
Published on
January 16, 2008 in
tech.
Today brings news that Sun has acquired MySQL AB, the corporate entity that develops the open-source relational database management system MySQL. I don’t have much to say about this because I’m not sure what to think. I know that MySQL AB has been slowed since Oracle acquired Innobase, a company that provided the InnoDB database engine for MySQL that featured capabilities such as referential integrity that allowed MySQL to compete against the likes of Oracle’s database offerings. MySQL AB itself had spurned Oracle’s advances before, which makes this acquisition a little surprising. I have worked and continue to work on projects using MySQL. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.
