Marten Mickos to leave Sun in reorg

Marten Mickos, former MySQL chief executive and current senior vice president of Sun Microsystems' database group, is transitioning out of the company in a planned reorganization.

Marten Mickos

(Credit: Sun Microsystems)

I reached Mickos this morning for confirmation: he is definitely leaving. This move is not prompted by weakness in MySQL's business, which just closed an exceptional quarter, as he told me by phone.

"There is nothing in the MySQL business that is prompting me to leave," Mickos said. "Business is great. We just closed a multimillion-dollar deal recently that confirms much of the momentum we've made. We just closed our best quarter ever."

But Mickos grew disaffected with the larger bureaucracy that Sun brought to MySQL's business, a factor hinted at in a staff e-mail he sent out earlier this week:

I have made a decision to resign from Sun Microsystems. It's a personal decision that I made without anyone influencing me one way or the other (except perhaps my wife).

My personality is such that I love the challenge of an unproven value proposition, and I love being the top policymaker, building new things. I feel that together, we have accomplished the task set by the owners in 2001, and I am now stepping aside to let the strong managers of the group take over and continue the ambitious business ramp-up.

What Mickos doesn't say in the staff letter, but which I sensed in my conversation with him, is frustration at Sun's bureaucracy. As one of the most foundational personalities in open-source business, Mickos should have been given free rein to change Sun's fortunes. I don't think that he was given that freedom, based on other conversations I've had with Sun executives, and this clearly led to his desire to leave Sun.

Letting Mickos go is one of the worst decisions Sun has made. It is likely to lead to an exodus among MySQL's deep talent pool. Mickos was the backbone of MySQL's rising revenues, as an open-source pragmatist and visionary. He was the face of MySQL, but also of the rising open-source industry.

Mickos' departure comes on the heels of the resignation of MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius, but the difference here is that Widenius has been somewhat disconnected from MySQL decision making for some time; Mickos has been at the heart of it.

Sun will feel the loss of Mickos. Its open-source rebirth was just given a massive blow.

[pentest]

Maybe next time he will think twice before selling out to corporate interests.

[servermaker]

Oh, yes. I'm sure he's really bummed out that he put millions of dollars into his family's net worth; that he is not running a company that has to compete in today's economy; and that he is now free to go off and build another great company. This will definitely teach him.

[pentest]

Some people care more about their work then money. Just because you are so shallow that you are only concerned about money, doesn't mean he is.

I guarantee that he regrets selling his baby out.

[t8]

Most business exist to make money. He made heaps and now he is free to do whatever.
I don't think he is bummed out.

[davidherron444]

While Matt's earlier writings seemed totally screwy and left me wondering what planet he lives on, this one I am very concerned about. I worked for Sun until the current round of layoffs and was laid off specifically because of my open source duties not being needed (supposedly). I was not the only open source advocate laid off in this round. This has left me wondering just what the heck this means for open source at Sun, not that I had enough of a view into the real situation. One ray of hope I had about Sun's supposed shift to being an open source company was that the company would learn from MySQL the tricks to being successful in this field. But it may turn out like Sun's prior corporate purchases where the companies are unable to be integrated and the entire potential value from the purchased company disappears over a couple years.

[Matt Asay]

Oh, trust me, this departure has me concerned, too. There was much that I didn't print from the conversation.

[ozzieozzie]

I can imagine someone who has received a significant payout from an acquisition and has spent the last X years at the top dog in a small private company would find staying in a larger public company frustrating. No negative to Sun, on this, its a public company with a large range of products. Life is more complicated that the few employees and small revenue that MySQL had..

It must be remembered, that Marten Mickos did NOT make MySQL a US$1BN company. Marten and crew made a very good small company (What US$40M?) with a large but yet unrealised (financially) customer base. A true startup in the .COM sense of the word.

It is a loss to see Marten take the golden exit, but it is a personal choice and not a reflection on Sun. He likes to start things new and decided not to challenge his talent on a bigger task.

OpenSource is a hot ticket and he is a brand name. A rockstar in the industry. There is lots more short-term money to me made off that stardom before the shine begins to wane.

[pentest]

I hope he forks MySql.

[brian_aker]

Hi!

While there will be some engineering talent lost with Monty leaving, I suspect that there will be some neutral ground found to development the MySQL server now that enough personalities have left the building. Looking around at what is left of my fellow managers within Sun that came from MySQL, I don't see many who are ready to leave just yet.

Cheers,
-Brian

[ronaldbradford]

This is definitely big news to the MySQL community and Open Source in general.

Marten has always been a great leader and vocal advocate for the success of the little guy.
His track record stands for being highly successful in achieving the set goals.

I wish him well in his next pursuit and would welcome the opportunity to work with him again, having worked at MySQL, leaving at Sun acquisition due to disagreement in employee agreement requirements.

[ArtInvent]

This happens all the time when a small innovative company gets bought out by a large bureaucratic corporation. Seldom do the founders of said small company stay on more than a few years. Free thinking entrepreneurs do not good cogs in giant machines make. Not sure that it really says anything at all about Sun's commitment to open source, necessarily. Hopefully this particular exec will bring his experience and savvy with open source to a new project elsewhere.

[ZUrlocker]

Matt,
the engineering organization will be in good hands reporting to Karen Padir. We got to know her during the due diligence process and in subsequent cooperation with Glassfish and Sun's identity manager software. She's a good engineering manager and has a clear understanding of managing people and processes.

--Zack

[LeahPGeoghegan1]

Marten Mickos was just fired because he could not fix MySQL development problems and as result Monty had to leave.

[Matt Asay]

This is patently untrue. 10000000% untrue.

[preinheimer]

@Matt

Phrases like "10000000% untrue." just utterly destroy your credibility. "Ten Million Percent Untrue". If you would like to refute a point. please do so.

[pentest]

Although this article was pretty decent, Matt has little credibility to destroy.

[dream_fly]

Bias and exaggeration is his way of marking news in order to stay relevant. For once he reported a news story with a little bit of objectivity.

[problemchildren]

I am a member of the MySQL team, and neither I nor my peers are sorry to see Marten go. He was a very mediocre engineering leader, who fought against open source, and whose actions led to community frustration (and things like Drizzle, which Sun not only allowed but invested in, that could not have happened under Marten). I also understand the MySQL business unit was not performing well, which hopefully this new group will repair. I do not get the sense Sun is backing away from open source, quite the opposite, but they are running a business that holds leaders accountable.

[InScotts]

This isn't surprising at all. In my opinion, and after observing Sun's acquisitions over the last 10+ years, Sun doesn't want the open source movement to succeed. If you produce your own chip, operating system and hardware.....where is the value in moving to open source?

Can someone please *explain* the rationale behind Sun's acquisition of Cobalt? And how was Cobalt integrated into Sun?

[theopensourcerer]

The guy's earned his "earn out". Good luck.

There's no conspiracy here. If I'd sold out for what he has, I'd do exactly the same.

[BackInTheDayDBA]

Revenue pre purchase: $50 Million
Purchase Price: $1 Billion
Getting to leave and do it all over again: Priceless

In the meantime Sun are left with a pile of excrement that doesn't even scale on their own hardware

[billy12hand]

Matt, why don't you talk to someone else at Sun and find out the real story. Something tells me Marten's failure to deliver quality product or consistent revenues might have played a role in their picking a new manager. Marten's a great sales executive, but MySQL's problems aren't solved by spending time on open source panels or selling his company off, they're solved by basic execution... something he isn't known for.

Marten alienated a lot of folks inside MySQL, and a few of us are pretty happy he's moving on.

[t8]

He probably thinks it's no longer MySQL, but SunSQL.

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