MySQL innovating toward an IPO, BusinessWeek says

It couldn't happen to a better set of people. As BusinessWeek reports, MySQL is well on its way to an IPO. The interesting thing is what it's doing to get there:

...[C]an MySQL keep up the growth without adding hefty sales and marketing costs?and getting squeezed by competitors? The company employs just 30 field sales staff out of a head count of 360 and strives to close deals more quickly than rivals. Most employees work from home. "Managing the cost of sales and marketing in an open-source company is the key to profitability," says Mickos, sitting in a small, spartan office adjacent to a sea of cubes in the company's Silicon Valley digs. "We're not just innovating in software, we're innovating in sales."

Open source, leaving the cave to usher in a new era of efficiency and innovation, as DDave Dargo writes over on Open Sources. This is the power that MySQL and other open source companies bring to the market. It's not about software anymore. It's about service and value.

BusinessWeek reports that MySQL could fetch a valuation of $600 million to $1 billion. If it does, you can bet that the rest of the open source world's valuation will rise in tandem as the world recognizes that with yet another open source jewel to put into the crown, there will be many, many more to come.

[BeefGeek]

A great addition to Red Hat ...

... another publicly traded open source product. But these products in and of themselves will not provide the tipping point needed to make them mainstream in business. Certainly, they'll be used here and there, with out question. But to compete in the mainstream business world against the MS SQL Servers and the Oracles ... the Open Source community is going to needs some serious organization and financial backing. That's why I think the recent meeting of the Linux masters at Google's headquarters is so significant. It's going to take someone like Google, who has the money and the human market share to get'er done. Google has no hardware to sell you (like HP and Sun), so they are the perfect candidate to evangelize the Open Source philosophy and bring the community together to swing the stone and strike down the Microsoft Goliath.