Monty Widenius officially leaves Sun's MySQL
It's official: Michael "Monty" Widenius has officially quit his job at Sun Microsystems, as noted on his blog, and will be starting his own company.
I reported in September that Widenius, primary author of the original MySQL database and one of MySQL's founders, had left, which proved to be almost true. He was leaving, but he didn't quite make it out the door.
As of Wednesday, he's gone.
The reason isn't any different from what prompted him to move toward the exit door in September, as he notes on his blog: Widenius feels that the company is not open enough and that the MySQL 5.1 release wasn't ready for public consumption:
The main reason for leaving was that I am not satisfied with the way the MySQL server has been developed, as can be seen on my previous blog post. In particular, I would have like to see the server development to be moved to a true open-development environment that would encourage outside participation and without any need of differentiation on the source code. Sun has been considering opening up the server development, but the pace has been too slow.
This is understandable but overlooks huge problems in developing software in the way Widenius expects. It's perhaps why his new venture--a small, family-oriented company with 10 to 30 employees--may succeed in living up to his aspirations for a "true open-source company," even as MySQL and Sun failed to live up to his ideals.
Widenius' ideals don't translate well to a big software business. There are trade-offs inherent to achieving the scale that MySQL has, and there are future trade-offs that will be required to make it into a billion-dollar software business. Widenius didn't want to make those trade-offs, and he has now done the right thing in leaving so that he can pursue his vision of the ideal open-source company. I respect that and wish him the best.
But let's not forget what an exceptional organization MySQL is, despite its inability to be the company Widenius wishes it were. Reading through Arjen Lentz's reminder of MySQL's decade-old core principles, I can't help but be impressed with how closely it has held to its original philosophies.
MySQL may have become too big for Widenius, but it has not become too big for its ideals.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
then
"MySQL may have become too big for Widenius, but it has not become too big for its ideals."
Which is it?
If selling your soul is the cost of "making it big", then smaller is better.
I've contributed to the JBoss source code, and I know others that have contributed ot the linux kernel. Both Redhat and Jboss encourage community contributions and make it very easy to do so.
Our beloved Sun, on the other hand, does not do a very good job at this. Sounds like MySql does not make it easy for contributions from the community, and I know Java is nowhere near as easy as Redhat/Jboss.
While I love that Sun is becoming more Open Source, I believe they need to follow Redhat if they want to become a true open source company.
MySQL will be to Oracle what Linux was to Unix...
MySQL is catching up on features and there are also partner technologies that in the near future will allow you to simulate Oracle functionality on MySQL. ANTs Software (www.ants.com/acs) currently provides a Sybase simulation layer on Oracle.
- by madmongol February 5, 2009 11:35 AM PST
- MySQL as a technology is tremendously useful. In terms of what the role it fills the fact at how widespread it's use is becoming especially for web-based applications and large scale distributed computing indicates how the current and future technologists see it's role in the world. While it is true that Oracle and other larger database vendors are the dominant players in certain respects, their approach to tackling the difficult problems of the future computing landscape is far from clear. Their sheer cost structure, inability to rapidly adapt to new challenges, closed platform among other key points puts them at a severe disadvantage.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(7 Comments)Google one of the largest and most public examples used MySQL (customized of course) for their data storage needs. Something that Oracle nor IBM can claim. So while I have seen numerous arguments for MySQL or other Open Source technologies not meeting the corporate standard I would argue that many corporate standards are woefully behind the times and need to adjust accordingly.
In any event I look forward to new offerings coming out from Widenius and others, and seeing how products like MySQL continue to grow and push at products such as those from more established vendors like Oracle.