Comments on: Sun to fork out $1 billion for open-source firm MySQL

Acquisition of one of the most successful open-source software companies is a bold move for Sun, which has embraced open source to try to boost revenue.

[indusani]

MySQL to become part of the Sun stable

May be a good move, but what concerns me is whether the database will continue to be 100% open source and whether it will continue to be as light weight and easy to administer.

[devnull01]

It will stay open source

With a quite good insight in Sun I can say that it's a sure bet that MySQL will stay open source. The commitment to open source in Sun is no gimmick it's acually the real thing.

[The_Decider]

If Sun closes it and/or add crap it doesn't need

A fork will happen and Sun will be left with nothing.

That is the power of open source.

[logicbus]

"Founded in the Last Five Years"?

According to Wikipedia, MySQL AB was founded in 1995.

[mlamonica]

corrected

yes, MySQL was founded in 1995.

[hellsyes]

GPL

It's GPL now, which means that anyone can have the source. Even if they make proprietary add-ons, I think they will have to keep the part that was GPL'ed under the GPL and any changes to that part would have to be gpl'ed too. Thats if I understand the license correctly.

[wango2007]

Principles walk when money talks.

This part confuses me too... why would Sun pay a billion for a product that is free and anyone can get and modify the code and and branch and "make their own" at any time?

Also, didn't many people contribute their efforts for free over the years in a move to have an "anti-establishment" database available? They just got their work sucked up by a corporate giant.

It seems to me that the GNU/CC system is not as useful as idealist presume. Principles walk when money talks.

[daftkey]

GPL Weakness

Unfortunately, I think you are wrong on that assumption.

If Sun decided they wanted to remove the GPL from MySQL, they would have every right to do so, as long as none of that code is licensed under GPL by any other copyright holder. As MySQL holds the copyright on the MySQL database, this theoretically wouldn't be a very hard thing to do.

I'm betting that we will start to see some of the potential weakness of the GPL in the coming years with a number of these large acquisitions - especially in large open source projects where the acquiring companies find that "support subscriptions" don't offer the same economic benefit as software sales would.

The problem with the GPL (as with any license that relies on Copyright law) is that it can only be enforced "down" the chain (ie, MySQL can enforce copyright against Red Hat for distributing a non-GPL'd version of the database, but the opposite isn't necessarily true unless there is specific Red Hat code in the distribution that was licensed to MySQL in some way but where Red Hat still holds the copyright).

What also doesn't bode well for smaller "down-line" contributors to the original source code, is in many cases they have given their *COPYRIGHT* (rather than a license) to the head company to ensure that the GPL can be effectively enforced (since copyright can only be enforced by the copyright holder - having a thousand different copyright holders for one piece of software would make it completely impossible to enforce the GPL). This means they have no recourse of the GPL is removed as they don't own the right to their contributions, and in fact may even find that they can no longer distribute their own derivative works because it will violate whatever new license is granted for the software.

[ExWinUser]

MySQL and Sun = Time to find a new database

Reminds me of Suse Linux and Novell. I started out using Suse but when Novell got involved I ditched Suse and never looked back! Like Novell I don't care about Sun and Sun will no doubt integrate their crap into MySQL and render the database a piece of S***. Oh well the world turns and a better open source database will emerge.

[maverick_nick]

Oh Really!

Well I guess that you don't know much about Sun, do ya?

Sun is a great company that is committed to open source, and good products. I think that this is great news for the MySQL community, because now finally MySQL can really begin competing with the proprietary systems like MS SQL Server - which is brilliant, and would be pretty difficult to beat.

Remember that MySQL didn't become popular because it's better than proprietary systems. It's popularity stems from the fact that it's light weight - relatively, thus great performance, however, the greatest reason is that it's "freely" available. Although those whom have never used the likes of MS SQL Server will never understand the deficiencies of MySQL. This is an area where Sun could be of great assistance.

[Ian Easson]

150 times annual revenue???

$1B for a company that has an annual revenue in the $60-70M range is insane.

[Ian Easson]

Correction: 15 times!

I obviously aren't awake yet this morning. But even 15 times annual revenue is insane!

[dcgregorya2]

MySQL is a private company.

Having no idea what their revenue is (estimates = magic 8-ball, the guy is just guessing), or profit margins, or PPA or ROIC there's really not much of a point trying to guess if this is a well valued buy is it?

You'll have to wait for the revised balance/income sheets.

[maverick_nick]

You have no business savvy.

If the company's price was based on it's annual revenue, then it would have been purchased a long time ago by someone like Oracle, or the company I despise - SAP. Heck I would have strung together a few investors and bought the company at that price.

MySQL wasn't purchased for its revenue, but rather its potential value, and large customer base. The potential return on investment on this transaction is "insane"! Sun will be selling servers optimized for the database, and various other products and services that over the next few years will add up to billions more.

MS bought DOS for about $50K, which may have seemed like a lot back then, but they made billions more from it that created the most successful company of all time. So just wait an see what Sun is able to do with their "seemingly" large investment.

[neverendingbrutality]

Um... how about 15 times?

Check your math, Ian.
Hardly insane when you are also acquiring all of their proprietary data, customer base, and tech services resources.
And if the business is showing strong growth in their sector, as well as innovation, for Sun it could be worth double the price in the next 5 years.

[uberchill]

HIghest bidder

They just happened to be the highest bidder ....

[daftkey]

Sun Java Studio

The biggest thing I hope to see is Sun replace their current database in the Sun Java Studio with MySQL - this would make my life a lot easier for development.

[The_Decider]

It is not hard to use MySQL with Java nt

nt

[jonniesavell]

that's not right

You might not care about Novell or Sun, but that doesn't mean that
either company has a poor commitment to open source. In
particular, Solaris 10 is not crap.

[sundance_tree]

MySQL java version?

I hope so, javadb is next to useless.

[The_Decider]

huh?

Since when does anyone need a Java version of MySQL?

You do realize that you can use just about any DB with Java, don't you?

There is no reason to spend the time or money to create a MySQL version with Java.

[limefan913]

Ech. Why oh why MySQL?

Personally I think this was a stupid move. MySQL has the largest market share of any db. Why would you sell your self out to a company that you compete with? They should have stayed independent.

[The_Decider]

Oracle is bigger IIRC

MySQL is the largest of open source databases, and in most areas can match Oracle and SQL Server.