Re: Sun buys MySQL

jd@commandprompt.com ("Joshua D. Drake") writes:
> On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:04:41 -0500
> Ron Peterson <ron.peterson@yellowbank.com> wrote:
>> A purchase gives Sun a certain exclusivity that they could never buy
>> with a mere donation.

> I don't argue that it is an interesting strategic move for Sun. They
> paid entirely too much but that isn't really relevant for us.

I think it puts Sun on Oracle's "radar" with perspective as a target,
as opposed to their usual "partner" status, which seems not so good to
me.

I wonder how it will all interact with the past posturing of MySQL AB
that was *very* much fine tuned towards pointing at an intersection
with SAP AG.  (MANY of the things MySQL AB was doing between 2003 and
about 2006 seemed to have that focus, between involvement with
SAP-DB/MaxDB and the set of MySQL(tm) enhancements that seemed
exquisitely targeted at making MySQL a potential platform for SAP's
applications...)

> What is important as that all this is going to do is invigorate our
> community further. I guarantee you we will start to see even more
> influx of new community members with this purchase.

I'm inclined to watch what happens for a while before drawing such
conclusions.

Sun's "open source" involvements have come with enough caveats that
I'm inclined to expect a continuation of policies likely to turn off
non-paying users.  And an important reason behind paying $1B is if
they're mighty interested in growing the revenues from paying users...

But the shape of what will actually happen seems pretty difficult to
predict.
--
"cbbrowne","@","linuxdatabases.info"
http://linuxfinances.info/info/nonrdbms.html
"He who  writes the code gets  to choose his license,  and nobody else
gets to complain." -- Linus Torvalds