Activists worry about the environmental cost of discarded mobile phones, personal computers, and other technology. Perhaps they should also worry about the swelling graveyard of start-ups and tech titans gone bad.
As Le Monde points out (in French), though businesses fail in all areas of the economy, technology ventures, and especially Web start-ups, prove particularly short-lived.
It's Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction...in overdrive.
Le Monde suggests three reasons: the speed of innovation/evolution (AOL's walled-garden approach meets Yahoo's open-portal approach), the ability of incumbents to crush nascent competitors (Netscape meets Internet Explorer), and the shortcomings of business models (Skype: only $500 million out of more than 520 million subscribers).
These are good points, but perhaps there's another: technology companies are increasingly disposable because they're so darn cheap to create.
This affects start-ups and incumbents alike. For the latter, perhaps the negligible cost of starting a new company fosters the comparative disposability of such start-ups. As Bernard Dalle, a general partner with Index Ventures in London, notes, start-ups need only rent essential infrastructure like hardware and software, and that rent is dirt cheap.
Ideas that couldn't survive a $5 million to $10 million capital-raising process might well weather a friends-and-family round of $50,000...and expire shortly thereafter when the idea proves barren.
But it's also true of the incumbents: Gulliver-esque Microsofts can fight off most of the Lilliputians, but an increasing array of the pesky imps sprout into adulthood (e.g., Google, Salesforce, Facebook).
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your market position), this process of creative destruction may well be accelerating, and open source is one of the primary fuels.
The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin insists that the pace and price of innovation today requires open source, a communal effort that isn't bogged down by the bureaucracy or cash constraints of any one company. He may be right.
That certainly seems to be one lesson to take from the success of Linux, Firefox, and other open-source projects, particularly those that are community-led, as opposed to company-led. It's hard to compete with a group of self-selected, highly focused developers who can focus on good code, not good financial quarters.
Now that virtually every technology company depends upon and contributes to open-source software, we may well be laying the foundation for even more industry innovation...and corporate bankruptcies.
Guess what? There's nothing we can do about it. Nor is there anything we should do about it, except focus on building long-term customer value rather than short-term start-up goofiness. That's the way to thrive in the fast-evolving world of technology, because it's the one thing that never changes:
Customers pay for value, and companies that consistently deliver real value acquire the most customers.
Tim O'Reilly points toward this in his call for developers to "work on stuff that matters." It's a reminder but also a warning.
Microsoft is still with us because it has delivered an amazing amount of customer value in its 30-plus years. The same is true of IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other industry incumbents.
But it's equally true of relatively new companies like Salesforce, Red Hat, and Google, which have eschewed gimmicky software and flimsy business strategies to give customers tangible, ongoing value. None of these companies sought an early exit through acquisition. None of them were content to build for the quick flip.
So, yes, technology may be a veritable boneyard of failed companies, and essential ingredients like open source may accelerate the demise of start-ups and incumbents alike. But those companies that use such ingredients to deliver above-average customer value are going to endure...and thrive.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun-MySQL has turned into a political circus, with both sides digging in their heels in preparation for a fight. However, the most interesting commentary on the deal may actually be coming from two highly interested parties with two very different perspectives on the takeover: MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius and IBM.
What's interesting in their positions is that only one of the parties pretends to be neutral. Surprisingly, the overtly biased party, IBM, comes to a very different conclusion than Widenius.
It has everything to do with money.
As Pamela Jones at Groklaw acutely analyzes, Widenius and his appointed lobbyist, Florian Mueller, are compromised by financial incentives to bar Oracle from owning MySQL. Jones writes:
They have big plans for a business around MySQL, and they want to make some money from it. MariaDB is their fork of MySQL...
So, what stands in their way? In their mind, the GPL [GNU General Public License]. They scorn the idea of a community project of GPL'd code and view Linux's commercial success, despite it being GPL code, as an aberration. What did they tell the EU Commission about licenses, then, and how to make money from FOSS? That the two most successful open-source business models are dual licensing, like MySQL, or open core, as in EnterpriseDB, the core of the code being open source, but with proprietary modules, and that is what they want to turn MySQL into.
Even if you don't buy Jones' contention that Widenius and Mueller want to make MySQL "proprietary" by licensing it under the Apache Software License, her excerpting of key commentary within their own brief (PDF) for the EU is sobering...and damning.
The evidence is particularly troubling when considered against IBM's response to the proposed takeover of MySQL. IBM, next to Microsoft, is Oracle's biggest competitor in the database market, and so presumably would have a big incentive to keep the popular MySQL database out of Oracle's hands.
But that's not what is happening.
In fact, IBM's Steve Mills has clearly stated that the acquisition would create no antitrust issues.
None.
Surely, if someone had a financial incentive to block the acquisition, it would be IBM. But IBM has its long-term credibility on the line, and it knows that specious arguments made for short-term gain have long-term negative consequences.
Oracle doesn't compete with MySQL. Oracle has said this. MySQL has said this (well before and after the proposed acquisition). And now IBM is saying it.
Widenius and Mueller, who have perhaps done more than any others to slow the Oracle-Sun deal, costing Sun hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales in the process, are not saying it. But then, if Jones' analysis is right, then they have a serious conflict of interest that would prevent them from saying it.
MySQL is an open-source database, licensed under the GPL, which ensures that its code is open and available to anyone. The license works, as its co-author, Eben Moglen, recently articulated.
That is, it works to preserve software freedom. It says nothing about Widenius' freedom to make money from MySQL, nor should it. That's a business model question for him to overcome, not a political question for him to lobby.
Despite the broad and deep trend toward open-source software, it's telling that Red Hat remains the only large, pure-play open-source vendor.
Without a strong, standalone open-source leader, will commercial open source endure?
The obvious answer is yes, but there are reasons to think that the industry would benefit from a billion-dollar open-source company. Actually, several.
It might seem counterintuitive to suggest that open source, which by its very nature tends to be decentralized and bottom-up in its growth, would benefit by concentrating wealth in a few hegemons.
David is nice, but the fact is that Goliath generally wins.
Open source needs a few more of these.
Take baseball, for example. The New York Times on Monday reported on the importance of the spending power of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox to the overall strength of the American League. A rising tide may raise all boats. But in the case of baseball, a few dominant teams force the rest of the league to follow suit or die, a curse/blessing that the National League doesn't share.
The stronger Red Hat is, by analogy, the better-positioned it is to set the pace of spending and innovation for other open-source companies.
The same is true in football, i.e. soccer. "Soccernomics" traces the importance of the Manchester Uniteds, Arsenals, and Real Madrids for pulling in fans: fans flock to watch the big teams, either to cheer for them or against them. The prospect of cheering on Hull City to best Bolton simply isn't that appealing.
In a similar manner, Red Hat serves as a beacon for would-be open source buyers. It may be hard to get excited about buying into No-Name Open-Source Vendor X, but buying from an established brand-name vendor like Red Hat? Much more appealing.
The problem, however, is that Red Hat is still a minnow in the global software pool, and its fixed focus on baseline infrastructure leaves it ill-equipped to lead the open-source market. Most open-source start-ups simply don't need Red Hat to thrive, and they derive little value from a partnership with the company.
A lot of companies make money in the shadow of Microsoft. Not so in Red Hat's.
Nor is Red Hat a viable exit for most open-source companies. Google, IBM, and others actively contribute to open-source projects--and arguably contribute even more to the continued health of the commercial open-source ecosystem by offering healthy exits for open-source start-ups.
Tim O'Reilly called out this phenomenon years ago when he suggested that the likely exit for most open-source companies would be acquisitions by proprietary software vendors. This is good for the open-source companies, but it may not be good for open source.
It would be ideal to have a large open-source applications vendor, but it's unlikely we'll get one anytime soon, particularly since successful open-source companies keep getting swallowed by proprietary vendors before they can crack the $100 million mark, much less than $1 billion mark.
It's also possible that we don't need IBM-sized, pure-play open-source companies. After all, we have IBM and its ilk already funding open source.
It's equally likely that getting to such a size with a pure-play open-source model simply isn't possible.
But I think we need a few open-source hegemons, companies that can offer a clear alternative to Oracle and Microsoft for both buyers looking for open-source software solutions and vendors looking for open-source software partners. Such hegemons can also help to fund the growth of the next generation of open-source innovation.
But from where will they come? I'm not sure. Your thoughts, please.
The freedom to fork is the essential right of open-source software. Until Oracle's attempted acquisition of Sun/MySQL, however, few realized just how important it would be to retain the right to fork one's own code.
After all, just because you have the letter-of-the-law right to fork doesn't mean you have a meaningful ability to do so. So long as you're not the primary copyright holder, you're always going to be second place, with second-place commercial opportunities in the software.
MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius hints at this in his letter to the European Commission, citing conflicts of interest between Oracle and MySQL development interests. Such conflicts wouldn't be of such importance were it not for the lack of external commercial appeal that stems from MySQL's use of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Even Richard Stallman, co-author of the GPL and founder of the free-software movement, and not someone that spends much time worrying about monetization of open-source software, gets this.
As noted in a letter co-drafted with Open Rights Group and Knowledge Ecology International, Stallman notes that Oracle's proposed acquisition of MySQL could hurt its development because the GPL reduces incentives to commercialize the code:
The acquisition of MySQL by Oracle will be a major setback to the development of a FLOSS database platform, potentially alienating and dispersing MySQL's core community of developers. It could take several years before another database platform could rival the progress and opportunities now available to MySQL, because it will take time before any of them attract and cultivate a large enough team of developers and achieve a similar customer base.
Given that forking of the MySQL code base will be particularly dependent on FLOSS community contributions - more so than on in-company development - the lack of a more flexible license for MySQL will present considerable barriers to a new forked development path for MySQL. [Emphasis added.]
For those who have been reading/hearing Stallman for the past 10-plus years as I have, this admission is shocking in the extreme. The GPL, which is supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of software freedom, may deliver the opposite. Because of its control-freak urges, it can stymie competition, which is presumably why Stallman is now calling on the European Commission to grant what his license couldn't: freedom.
Now consider if MySQL were licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. MySQL 2 could arise, take the code, hire all of the developers, and development of the open-source database would not miss a beat.
Could MySQL 2 achieve the same with the GPL? No, it could not, because the copyright holder, Oracle, would always have a superior commercial opportunity, because it has more rights than downstream users, as the GPL leaves the copyright holder with a greater range of business model options, and not simply support/services.
Apache leaves everyone--developers, users, vendors, etc.--on equal footing. The GPL does not. With the GPL, the copyright holder retains effective control.
That's one reason it has been so popular with commercial open-source companies, but the Oracle/MySQL situation may prompt more companies to consider using an Apache license so as to preserve maximum freedom in case of takeover, hostile or otherwise.
Disclosure: My company uses the GPL but has been actively considering areas to use Apache licensing.
For years, Red Hat sat unopposed at the top of the CIO Insight Vendor Value study. In 2008, however, Google pushed Red Hat aside with its low-cost, easy-to-use enterprise applications. This year, Red Hat has come roaring back to share the top ranking with Google.
Could this be a sign of CIOs' restive relationships with traditional vendors and an increasingly insatiable appetite for the cost and ease-of-use advantages of open source and software as a service/cloud computing?
The answer is almost certainly "Yes." It is telling that old-school vendors like IBM (ranked 20th overall), Microsoft (25th), Novell (29th), and Oracle (35th) are so far down the CIOs' list.
It is equally telling, however, that it is with these apparently less-preferred vendors that CIOs spend the vast majority of their IT budgets. Or perhaps that's the point? In other words, CIOs spend with such vendors today because they have to, but given their druthers, they're going to invest more money in Red Hat and Google going forward.
Red Hat and Google are still rounding errors in the overall IT spending picture, but CIOs seem to be signaling an appetite for more. It's not about reducing lock-in and other colorful marketing phrases, either: it's about great, easy-to-use software at a compelling price.
You know, the very thing that Microsoft used to win CIO plaudits for delivering.
From the report:
CIOs are more likely to try software as a service (than traditional, packaged software), which is better understood and simpler to use and requires no upfront investment in hardware or software.
This is the heart of the CIO uprising. And it's why low-cost, high-value companies like Intel (ranked first overall), Cisco/WebEx (ranked sixth and 11th, respectively), and Sun (sixth) are climbing the charts.
For now, however, Google and Red Hat rule the roost in the Software category of CIO Insight's annual study:
Both Red Hat and Google essentially offer the same thing: great software on a subscription basis. While this model often offers lower prices than competitors, it's important to note that "free" is not the value proposition here. (If it were, for example, Red Hat customers would be leaving in droves for Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone, CentOS. They aren't.)
No, the value proposition is customer control via the subscription model that enables less costly ways to buy into the software, and to turn off maintenance costs, if desired.
It's a winning formula, one that more vendors should consider adopting. Today IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle command the majority of IT dollars, but this survey suggests a rebellion is underway. Inertia can only support the traditional vendors for so long.
Postgres for years has lived in the shadow of MySQL's media attention: the "boring" database that quietly goes about its work while its sexy Web 2.0 cousin wins the popularity contest.
Recent data from the Eclipse Foundation, however, suggest that Postgres may be ready to make significant waves in the enterprise, even if it doesn't make headlines.
In a recent letter to European Union's commissioner of competition, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos stressed that MySQL's target market is the emerging Web database market and that the enterprise IT market was never really a source of strength (or focus).
Postgres is the opposite.
Postgres is an enterprise Java database, more suitable for carrying corporate data than the Web's consumer data. According to a 2009 survey by the Eclipse Foundation, MySQL (27.7 percent) and Oracle (27.3 percent) were the top-two databases used by those surveyed, with Postgres registering a respectable but still distant 9.9 percent.
Given that Oracle database users are far more likely to use Java as their programming language to develop server-centric applications, while MySQL users are three times more likely to use PHP as their primary language (17.4 percent of those surveyed use it, versus 5.4 percent for all users) to builde RIA/Web applications, Postgres is clearly more Oracle than MySQL.
Granted, the Eclipse community is traditionally Java-centric, so it's not surprising that Java would be prominent among its developers. But it's also the case that enterprise IT remains a Java/.Net market, and in such a market Postgres could be poised to boom if it can muster sufficient marketing to make its message heard.
This is where EnterpriseDB comes in.
The MySQL community would not be as well-developed as it is without MySQL, the company. MySQL AB has funded the overwhelming majority of MySQL database development, but it has also provided the marketing muscle to make a name for the Web database.
Postgres has traditionally been a standalone, organic open-source project with little concerted corporate involvement. EnterpriseDB has started to change that, but for too long wrongly fixated on competing with MySQL, a database that serves a different market and different developers. The company also spent too much time talking about Oracle migration technology, rather than focusing on why Postgres is a great database.
That may be changing.
Postgres just released version 8.4 of the venerable database. In EnterpriseDB's discussion of the release, there's no mention of Oracle, MySQL, or any other competitor. Instead, EnterpriseDB seems to be focusing more on its commitment to Postgres development, adding significant enterprise hardening through its open-source Postgres Plus distribution.
It's a welcome change, and one that could position Postgres to take a bigger share of the enterprise Java database market--not because it's cheaper than Oracle or more open than MySQL but because it's a great database in its own right.
That's the right messaging for EnterpriseDB...and Postgres.
Mårten Mickos
As the European Commission continues to evaluate the potentially deleterious effects of Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems and its open-source MySQL database, concern is rising that delay will harm MySQL without helping competition.
One who shares this concern is former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos. On Thursday, Mickos sent a letter to Neelie Kroes, the European Union's competition commissioner, urging that the deal be approved for the good of the market and MySQL. He also spoke with CNET News' Stephen Shankland on Thursday.
Below is the edited full text of the letter.
Helsinki 8 Oct 2009
Mrs. Neelie Kroes
Commissioner for Competition
European Commission, J70
B-1049 Brussels/Brussel
BELGIQUE/BELGIE
Dear Commissioner Kroes,
I am writing to you regarding your review of Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems. As I understand it, the EU Commission is concerned about a risk of undue concentration of power in the database market. Having been the CEO of MySQL from 2001 to 2009, and built a business that was serving a new market unmet by Oracle and others, I can agree with the questions posed, but I do not share the concerns that have been expressed. In the following, I will explain why.
In brief, my reasoning is as follows:
- Oracle has as many compelling business reasons to continue the ramp-up of the MySQL business as Sun Microsystems and MySQL previously did, or even more.
- Even if Oracle, for whatever reason, would have malicious or ignorant intent regarding MySQL (not that I think so), the positive and massive influence MySQL has on the DBMS market cannot be controlled by a single entity--not even by the owner of the MySQL assets. The users of MySQL exert a more powerful influence in the market than the owner does.
Many expected Oracle to harm MySQL as far back as 2005, when they acquired the InnoDB storage engine that plays a crucial role for many MySQL customers. And yet Oracle increased their investment in InnoDB since that time, making MySQL a stronger player in the market.
For further detail on my views on Oracle's intent, please see this interview with me in Forbes Magazine in April 2009.
It may at first blush seem counterintuitive that control of the MySQL assets does not automatically bestow control of the MySQL installed base. But the free installed base of MySQL--enormous on a planetary scale--is voluntarily but not mandatorily coupled to the commercial market of MySQL. It produces huge benefits to the MySQL business, but it is not controlled by it.
Background
The impetus to write this letter comes from my concern with the talented teams of the MySQL business unit and of Sun Microsystems in general. I am also troubled by certain factual distortions about a subject matter that I am intimately familiar with: MySQL and its business model. Open-source business models are complicated and quite different, and it took many years to fully understand and shape the one of MySQL.
A Finnish citizen, I served as chief executive officer of MySQL from early 2001 to February 2008, when Sun acquired MySQL. After that, I served as senior vice president of the database group at Sun until the end of March 2009. Being the only person to have served as the CEO of MySQL and to have attended every board meeting ever held, I believe I have unique insights into these matters.
To be clear, I resigned from my position in March 2009, and I presently have no commercial or financial interests in the MySQL ecosystem, Sun, or Oracle (or any other vendor in the DBMS market, for that matter), other than my loyalty to Sun employees in general and the MySQL team in particular.
MySQL's Markets and Installed Base
MySQL is the world's most popular open-source relational database, and potentially the most popular relational database of all. It has an enormous influence and impact on the usage and the buying patterns of relational databases (also known as RDBMSs), in particular for Web applications. One might even state that the Internet would not be what it is today, were it not for MySQL. Staffed by a highly talented team of passionate employees, the Swedish company MySQL grew the MySQL business from a small one in 2001 to a massive one in 2008.
"MySQL" refers to two things. On the one hand, there is the huge (community) phenomenon MySQL...On the other hand, there is the business of MySQL...Those two meanings of the term "MySQL" stand in a close mutually beneficial interaction with each other. But most importantly, this interaction is voluntary and cannot be directly controlled by the vendor.
In this discussion, the term "MySQL" refers to two things. On the one hand, there is the huge phenomenon MySQL--an estimated 12 million active installations under a free and open-source software license, millions, if not tens of millions, of skilled users and developers, and tens of thousands of corporations who use MySQL one way or the other.
On the other hand, there is the business of MySQL, which is growing rapidly, thus rewarding the owners of the assets (currently Sun Microsystems).
Those two meanings of the term "MySQL" stand in a close mutually beneficial interaction with each other. But most importantly, this interaction is voluntary and cannot be directly controlled by the vendor.
What I mean is that the vast and free installed base of MySQL is using it of their own free choice, unencumbered by the vendor and under no obligation or restraint. That is the nature of open source. And conversely, the MySQL business is supporting the free installed base of MySQL (by improving the product) voluntarily and in the hope of deriving benefit from the installed base.
This is the paradox of an open-source business, and it took me a long time to truly understand how powerful a force it is. It is unlike any traditional business. The key point is that both the users and the vendors of open source are engaged in a powerful free-market dynamic that cannot be contained by any single entity.
It is in everybody's interest that the two sides of MySQL produce benefit for and derive benefit from each other. But neither group can mandate or control the other one. This is a core philosophy of open-source software and more generally of the "architecture of participation" (as defined by Tim O'Reilly). There is a mutually beneficial voluntary relationship, but there is no control by one group over the other. In more colloquial terms: the owners of MySQL cannot force MySQL users to pay up, and the nonpaying users cannot force the business to subsidize them.
Anyone acquiring the MySQL assets will therefore acquire an ability to control the business aspect, i.e., meaning how MySQL is licensed commercially, but only an opportunity (and no free reign) to derive benefit from the free user base.
This explains how the MySQL business can be valued highly in the market ($1 billion, when acquired by Sun in February 2008) while at the same time providing no way of controlling its installed base. This unusual relationship between market share and installed base is at the core of the topic. The market share is small but controllable, to some degree. The installed base is enormous but not controllable. The installed base is, and can be, hugely beneficial to the owner of MySQL, but only to the extent and for as long as this owner of MySQL enjoys the trust of the installed base.
To put it in numbers, it may be useful to see the usage of MySQL, as divided into three categories:
... Read moreOracle is determined to keep MySQL if it acquires Sun, but the reason likely has little to do with open source and everything to do with Microsoft. Oracle doesn't compete with open source. Not really. Open source is simply a means to an end, and in the case of MySQL, a means to denting Microsoft's rising strength in emerging markets where Oracle's expensive database technology doesn't resonate.
In fact, in a recent survey by Evans Data, over 50 percent of developers in the emerging markets of China, India, Eastern Europe, and Latin America use Microsoft's SQL Server, compared to 46 percent using MySQL.
Oracle database technology? It's used, but not nearly as extensively.
MySQL gives Oracle a club with which to beat Microsoft. It's not about open source. It's about the MySQL developer community and its competitive price point, two things that Microsoft also has going for it. Arguably, though, open source provides Oracle a strong competitive differentiator against Microsoft in these markets.
Even so, I think we'll eventually see open source aiding both sides in this battle, as Microsoft learns to drop its acrimonious stance toward open source and instead strategically embrace it, as IBM, Oracle, and others have done before it.
Oracle can't afford to abandon MySQL. It's the key to unlocking its ability to effectively compete with Microsoft in tomorrow's big markets.
Open-source advocates need to get their stories straight. Are we a big-tent movement, or a parochial club that is hell-bent on limiting membership...and efficacy? Unfortunately, it increasingly seems that the open-source community is determined to be the latter, and has taken positions on various events that are out of keeping with the founding principles of open source.
Take Microsoft. The company has long been a controversial figure in open source, as well as in the broader technology industry, and for good reason. Conviction for abusing monopoly power will do that to you.
But Microsoft has spent the past few years extending an olive branch to the open-source community, only to be criticized, questioned, and rebuffed. Last week the software giant created the CodePlex Foundation, designed "to enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open-source communities." The foundation has assembled a solid core of directors and advisors, including Stephen Walli and Monty Widenius (formerly of MySQL).
"I don't believe it for a minute," thunders Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, speculating that "Microsoft doesn't mind stealing from open source, but any deals it makes are only good while there's a clear, short-term benefit to Microsoft." This is probably true, but it's equally true of every profit-seeking company on this planet, minus the emotionally-charged (and inaccurate) term "steal."
Do Google, IBM, SAP, Jive, MySQL, Red Hat, etc., use open source to advance their self-interest? You bet they do. They have a fiduciary duty to do exactly that. And do they selectively adopt open source without always contributing back? Of course.
Let's face it: no one--even open-source community contributors--writes open-source software purely out of the goodness of their hearts. This shouldn't be a surprise: open-source luminary Eric Raymond wrote about it over a decade ago.
But it's telling that Microsoft is the company singled out, more often than not. It is very likely that Microsoft could open source every line of its code and still be treated like a pariah by the open-source community.
Or, rather, by a vocal segment of that community. It's the part that doesn't have to meet a payroll. Perhaps the sort of person that Hugh MacLeod was referencing in a tweet he made: "It's easy to spot a purist. They're the ones without any skin in the game."
When your only job is to yell down others, you don't need to pay much attention to what you say.
But Microsoft isn't the only company to get pilloried. Oracle gets its fair share of abuse, too, and often enough on this blog. It seems that abuse is proportional to one's income statement, and the potential to abuse one's market position to the detriment of customers, as BusinessWeek recently wrote of Oracle.
Hence, ever since Oracle announced its intention to acquire Sun and, hence, MySQL, some within the open-source community have been wringing their hands at a frenetic pace. "Oracle will kill MySQL!" they moan.
Gartner rubbishes this concern, insisting that "the fact of the matter is (Oracle) cannot destroy the (MySQL) product." It's licensed under the GNU General Public License, after all, which preserves the freedom to fork the code. In fact, MySQL has been forked several times already.
This isn't to suggest that Oracle couldn't damage MySQL by slowing its development, or shutting down internal development altogether. Of course it could: Sun/MySQL employs the overwhelming majority of developers who write MySQL. To control them is to control the code.
But if there's any truth to open source's claims that it provides freedom (through the right to fork), then owning MySQL, the company, shouldn't be tantamount to owning MySQL, the code, and Monty Widenius, and others could merrily pick up where Oracle left off.
That is, assuming we really believe open source is a liberating force. Do we?
I do. That's why I don't worry about Oracle's impact on MySQL. Heck, I figure Red Hat or someone would simply hire the MySQL engineers and start MySQL II if Oracle attempts to kill the project (which I don't think it has any intention to do).
It's also why I welcome, not reject, Microsoft's attempts to open itself to open source. Those with no skin in the game find it easy to point fingers and malign others' imperfect attempts to engage. They forget that it's hard for closed-source companies to open up, as SAP's Dirk Riehle writes, but with the incentives to open up increasingly visible, companies will find a way.
We should be encouraging them to do so, not second-guessing their every move. And we should recognize that there are times when the open-source alternative is not ready to displace a proprietary incumbent, as Esther Schindler notes, which means that we're going to need to learn to get along for many, many years.
I'm not suggesting that Microsoft or Oracle has been perfect. But don't believe that IBM, Red Hat, Alfresco, MySQL, or (insert vendor of choice) has been perfect, either. Each of us is making this up as we go along. Sometimes we screw up, but that doesn't mean it's intentional.
Oracle has much to say to Sun Microsystems customers in a front-page advertisement it placed in Thursday's European edition of The Wall Street Journal.
The advertisement commits to greater investments in Sun hardware and Solaris software, but has absolutely nothing to say about MySQL. Is this a necessary omission to appease European regulators, or is it a sign of Oracle's intentions?
In the advertisement, Oracle commits to the following:
(Credit:
Oracle)
IBM, which has been cleaning up at Sun's expense, gets a warning from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: "We're in it to win it. IBM, we're looking forward to competing with you in the hardware business."
Sun's business has tanked in the ongoing uncertainty over Oracle's takeover bid. The advertisement is clearly intended to placate customers that might otherwise flee to the apparent security of a relationship with IBM or Hewlett-Packard.
It's interesting, therefore, that Oracle gives no assurances about MySQL. This could simply be a politic action designed to sidestep the ire of the European Union, which has been investigating the effects an Oracle acquisition might have on Sun's MySQL business.
Or it could simply be a recognition that assuaging the fears of MySQL's customers is a comparatively unimportant task. MySQL was doing roughly $100 million in sales at the time Sun acquired the company. Given that Sun stands to lose billions in its hardware business the longer the Oracle bid drags on, losing a few tens of millions from MySQL is pocket change.
Besides, it's not at all clear that Oracle's decision to snag Sun has done anything to slow MySQL adoption. A vocal minority within the open-source development community has wrung its hands over the deal, but I've yet to hear MySQL's customer base, which skews toward the technology-savvy Web crowd, fretting about Oracle's impact on MySQL's business.
Oracle's advertisement is designed to shore up confidence in the CIO crowd that still buys Sun and probably has no clue that their organizations are running MySQL throughout the enterprise. At some point they'll know. But by that time, Oracle's acquisition of Sun should be complete.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
