What MySQL Founder Michael Widenius said about Oracle acquiring Sun

http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-be-free-or-not-to-be-free.html

by edw519 • 17 years ago

52 10 17 years ago

monty-says.blogspot.com

gamache• 17 years ago

Blogspam: http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-be-free-or-not-to-...

And a repeat at that.

ocskills• 17 years ago

"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."

That distinction rightly belongs to PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org/about/

Radix• 17 years ago

Notice that 'most' refers to 'popular' not 'advanced'. So, the point I believe you were making has nothing to stand against. MySQL is very popular and is also advanced.

gaius2• 17 years ago

It isn't even the most popular, that honour belongs to SQLite by a considerable margin.

liuliu• 17 years ago

Is it strange or just me feel that way? How can a commercial entity buy open-source product? The founder can easily start a new free branch of this product because it is GPLed. Then, what is the 1 billion deal of MySQL all about?

Confusion• 17 years ago

Which is exactly what Monty has done: http://askmonty.org/wiki/index.php/MariaDB

However, MySql is also sold under a commercial license. Furthermore, MySql support was offered by Sun since they bought it, generating some income. Whether that is worth 1 billion I don't want to speculate.

gaius2• 17 years ago

MySQL was always dual-licensed.

But yeah, Monty has come out of this laughing. Sun effectively gave him a billion dollars for a few months work, during which time all he did was whine about them in his blog. Sun buying MySQL was a strategic blunder on the order of eBay buying Skype.

emilis_info• 17 years ago

Business plan:

1. Create a good product and a company. 2. Sell the company for 1 billion. (Profit!) 3. Whine about how the new owner is bad and leave it. 4. Start a NewAndBetterMySQL company. 5. ??? 6. Profit?

Now seriously. If there will happen a confrontation between "Oracle MySQL" and "OpenSource MySQL", I see two possible outcomes:

1. Noone will pay 1 billion for NewAndBetterMySQL next time.

2. The confusion between different versions of the database may mean, that the "OpenSource MySQL" will lose the enterprise market for some time.

yason• 17 years ago

Perhaps Oracle indeed thinks that some very suitable confusion is worth some serious money?

worldhello• 17 years ago

Maybe (really hoping) Drizzle will be better for the web. For enterprise, Postgres

What MySQL Founder Michael Widenius said about Oracle acquiring Sun

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