MySQL ex-CEO tells EU to let Oracle buy Sun
Former MySQL leader Mårten Mickos on Thursday urged European Union regulators to approve Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems and its MySQL database group, arguing that further waiting undermines the very competitiveness the EU is trying to protect.
In a letter to Neelie Kroes, the European Commission's commissioner for competition, Mickos said the regulators were correct to question whether Oracle buying Sun and its open-source database software would harm the market. But Mickos, who ran MySQL from 2001 until 2009, believes that the Oracle acquisition won't hurt competition--and that holding the acquisition up will:
"Every new day of uncertainty is potentially very harmful to the various businesses of Sun, reducing competition in the market. A delay in the closing of this transaction is therefore only going to work against the respectable goal that you set out to achieve when launching the probe into this acquisition," Mickos wrote in the letter. (See this separate post with the full text of Mickos' letter to the EU.)
Mårten Mickos, surrounded by inflatable MySQL dolphin mascots.
(Credit: Benchmark Capital)It's not clear what effect Mickos' letter will have on the regulators, but Mickos knows MySQL's business well, and Oracle can use any help it can get in dealing with the acquisition. The U.S. Department of Justice approved the Sun acquisition in August.
Mickos, now entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital, said in an interview that he no longer has anything financially to gain from the transaction. Instead, he's motivated now by trying to help the employees still at Sun--and moreover, its MySQL unit--urging rational discussion about the matter.
"I couldn't live with the fact that I'm not taking action," Mickos said.
Mickos declined Oracle's advances when MySQL was independent, but he agreed to Sun's acquisition in 2008.
In September, the European Commission said MySQL was at the heart of its investigation of the Sun acquisition:
The Commission's preliminary market investigation has shown that the Oracle databases and Sun's MySQL compete directly in many sectors of the database market and that MySQL is widely expected to represent a greater competitive constraint, as it becomes increasingly functional.
The Commission's investigation has also shown that the open-source nature of Sun's MySQL might not eliminate fully the potential for anticompetitive effects. In its in-depth investigation, the Commission will therefore address a number of issues, including Oracle's incentive to further develop MySQL as an open-source database.
Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said MySQL competes in a different part of the database market than Oracle's existing products and that Oracle has no plans to spin MySQL off into a separate company.
Mickos summarized his argument this way:
1. 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.
2. 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.
MySQL is used to power large-scale Web sites with many servers, a role for which Oracle's back-end database software isn't suited, he argued. It's therefore in Oracle's interest to boost the MySQL business, Mickos said.
As evidence for his case, Mickos pointed to Oracle's 2005 acquisition of InnoDB, whose database engine software is used within MySQL. "Oracle increased their investment in InnoDB since that time, making MySQL a stronger player in the market," he said.
And perhaps reflecting his new role at a venture capital firm, Mickos concluded with a note about the broader effect of the EU's actions:
"If...it becomes difficult or impossible for large companies to acquire open-source assets, then venture investments in open-source companies will slow down, harming the evolution of and innovation in open source, which would result in decreased competition," he said.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
This deal should be blocked and rejected. I wish the big enterprises like Yahoo, etc. who are users of MySQL would stand up and speak up...
PostgreSQL remains to only truly independent database now.
Pity, because in so many ways PostgreSQL is better to MySQL. It's the same with FreeBSD... in my opinion FreeBSD is the superior server OS compared to Linux, but unfortunately has just a tiny fraction of the open-source mindshare.
You can fork the project, but you can't call it MySQL because that's a trademarked term and Oracle will own the asset after the purchase. Even if you fork it and call it ABetterSQL, it will take a long time to gain momentum and have enough developers, commercial backing, marketing, brand recognitions and so on... By claiming that you can successfully fork a project into a new one and most people will migrate, it shows that you have very little understanding of open source projects and the amount of work that is required to make them successful. Linux did not become successful in a year, it took several years, a lot of governance and support from hundreds of thousands of developers including many large commercial organisations such as IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novel, RedHat, etc... etc...
Do you think that any of these commercial entities will be willing to put a single developer onto your MySQL fork, especially since most of them have a highly profitable database system already? Good luck with that. The answer is to stop this acquisition. Oracle is not trying to get past the regulators to support and provide a free SQL database for everyone, they are doing this to make money because they see an opportunity.
I completely disagree. If Oracle shutters MySQL not only will we see a new fork, large commercial organizations WILL JUMP IN immediately. The reason is simple: many large companies have MySQL codebase integrated into their products. and services. The opportunity for someone to step in will be large.
In fact I predict just the exact opposite: in the aftermath of a MySQL closure, so many commercial players will want to jump in at once, the danger is splitting the existing MySQL community rather than any lack of commercial backing.
If you think companies with $$$ on the line will just let a key piece of technology they depend on falter because of this -- when it costs them pennies-on-the-dollar to support a strong fork -- you very little understanding of how commercial enterprises work.
I like your optimism.
There are a few forks already and the situation is looking rather gloomy (MariaDB, Drizzle, OurDelta).
Contributions to these existing projects is currently not doing so well even though some of them have been running for more than a year. My earlier comments were based on facts and not blind optimism.
Don't forget that MySQL contributors have transferred copyright ownership to MYSQL AB (http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2006/07/23/mysql-code-contribution-program/) , so the legality of these forks is still questionable. The fact that copyright ownership is held by a commercial entity, would be enough reason for many customers to keep away from any forks of MySQL.
It would be better to support another existing open source database system such as Postgres or Firebird.
As far as mySQL goes, what about its free to use, open source, anyone can modify it, create their own version, give away downloads of it...cannot ever be changed by anyone...do they not understand. It's open source licensed, c'mon.
1) discontinue supporting MySQL, prevent anyone else from using the trademark and move customers across to Oracle. They will have all the customer emails for anyone who has downloaded the software after the acquisition and can begin their marketing campaigns.
2) they can decide to not to document the software, making it difficult to support so that customers will be forced to buy training and support, unless another company has the time and resources to go through all the source code, understand it and document it for everyone.
3) they can extend the software with proprietary components which will require purchasing a license, such as advanced clustering and availability components. By extending, I'm not talking about changing the source code, but by creating interfaces which will allow them to work around the open source licensing model.
This acquisition should be stopped by the regulators. Once approved, there is no way to retract and split MySQL from Oracle.
Despite what some people think, Oracle and MySQL are direct competitors... they are both enterprise class databases used by small and large organisations... by private and public companies... by government, by schools and by web hosting companies... by systems small and large.
MySQL has a huge user base. Just because a large portion of MySQL users are small businesses, it doesn't mean that they don't compete with Oracle. There are still a lot more large businesses that use MySQL than those that use Oracle (in terms of installation base, not in terms of revenue). The problem is that it is not in Sun's best interest to reveal some of these facts.
Regulators should gather as much information as possible about Oracle intentions. This acquisition will substantially reduce competition in the market place... I have not doubt in my mind that consumers will suffer in the end.
The whole open-source idea - at least professed by the open source zealots, is that one is not dependent on the whims and fancies of a single controlling entity. If that is true, then what's the issue?
And I for one think that if Oracle slows down on mySQL, there will be at least a couple of VC backed startups offering varying levels of support, along with tons of individual and boutique consultants.
Get the government out of micro managing imaginary issues, let the market decide.
Maybe, just maybe all you doomsayers are wrong...I hope so, otherwise what a real pity.
- by tlschenkjr October 23, 2009 9:33 AM PDT
- @richard993
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(15 Comments)I think you are the one who is mistaken. Oracle has demonstrated through their contributions to Linux, InnoDB, and Sleepycat's DB product that they understand open source. Are they the biggest contributor to open source? No, but they are also not the smallest.
And MySQL does not directly compete with Oracle's database products. MySQL is a great product, but it simply doesn't scale to the levels that are Oracle's domain. Could it in the future? Maybe, but today, MySQL simply isn't in the same class. As others have stated, MySQL is a direct competitor with MS SQL, which is part of the reason that Oracle would want to have it.. One of Oracle's goals is to put the screws to Microsoft in any market space that it can. And your contention that Oracle isn't interested in hardware is completely wrong. Oracle wants to be able to be like IBM in that they can come into a company and sell a complete solution from hardware to software.
The other major reason that Oracle is interested in Sun is Java. Oracle has a huge investment in Java and having the control of Java go to some other vendor, especially the one's with the money to buy Sun, like Microsoft, would cause major havoc for Oracle.
As for why the MySQL forks aren't doing well today, I believe that it is because there is no compelling reason to use them. So saying that the fact that they are not doing well is evidence that a fork can't succeed is incorrect. Evidence to the contrary includes the success of X.org. When XFree86 started moving in a direction that the community didn't like, X.org appeared and rapidly replaced XFree86. I'm confident that the same thing would occur in the unlikely event that Oracle decided to kill off MySQL.
Your contention that forks of MySQL can't succeed is not born out by the history of open source. There are many cases of forks overtaking the original projects when the original projects fail to live up to community expectations. The SLS distribution of Linux lost out to the Slackware fork when SLS failed to meet customer expectations. X.org succeeded when XFree86 faltered. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD succeeded when 386BSD stopped listening to it's community.
Larry Ellison would be stupid to kill off MySQL and if there is one thing that people know about Larry it is that he isn't stupid. And his desire to put the screws to Microsoft is just too strong for him to waste any opportunity to keep a product going that would let him do so. MySQL and OpenOffice are two products that have the potential to directly affect Microsoft's bottom line and I fully expect to see Oracle continue development of them.