Comments on: What Sun's acquisition of MySQL means for the software industry

Sun's acquisition of MySQL has broad implications for the software industry.

[blowry]

Hi Matt:

Bruce Lowry from Novell here. Yes, interesting times, as always, in the software world! Just one comment.... I'm a bit confused by your short list of big open source vendors. Seems like apples and oranges, with a couple of companies that are actually commercial entities who sell open source solutions and a couple of others who either use it or contribute to projects. I know you continue to disagree with elements of our strategic direction, but to not consider Novell one of the top open source vendors in the market just doesn't track with what's actually happening. We're got a large and growing Linux business. Thanks.

[dunleav1]

Novell has a market share with SUSE, but the majority of corporate Linux out there is Redhat. I feel Ubuntu making waves for SUSE soon based on sysadms moving Ubuntu into the corporate world.

What is Novell's strategic direction?
VMware that doesn't support other Linux's ? Not much foresight there.

[Michael too]

IBM?

I was under the impression that IBM was a player in this area. However, I'm not very informed. Could you help me understand why you count Sun, Red hat and Yahoo, but not IBM?

Thanks

[adamopolis]

IBM has been a significant player in open source so far, but if Sun does become a leader in taking open source into big enterprise accounts, and given Oracles acquisition of BEA and many business application vendors, doesn't this make it more likely that IBM and SAP will merge at some point? or that IBM will acquire SAP?

[Matt Asay]

No offense intended, Bruce. But as big open source ecosystem players, you have to do more than distribute Linux. I know Novell sponsors a range of projects (mono, for example), but that's not enough to make it an open-source ecosystem player, in my book. I'd gladly call you an open-source company, but there has to be a broader spread of open source within the company to be credited as a big open-source ecosystem player.

In other words, this wasn't meant to be a slight on you, but rather a semantic distinction.

As for Michael too, I don't consider IBM an open-source player, either. It uses open source in a limited strategic way, but doesn't have the same bet-the-company commitment on open source that I think Sun, Red Hat, and increasingly Yahoo! have.

[slewisma]

Matt, while it may or may not fit your view of a major open source eco-system player, it would be grossly inaccurate to portray Novell as simply distributing Linux. Novell's community role reaches far beyond just being a distro. And Novell's support for, use of and contributions to open source touch every business unit at Novell, not just the one that distributes SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Novell leads or contributes to many projects, related standards and services. Some of these are: open courseware, OIN, openSUSE, Apache, Aperi, AppArmor, Banshee / Helix, Better Desktop, blade.org, eclipse, Evolution, Gnome, Higgins, ifolder, mono, OpenOffice.org, OpenWBEM, OMC, Open Cluster Framework, OpenLDAP, OpenSLP, OpenSSL, openswan, rsync, tomcat, xen, yast, OASIS, W3C, Java Community Process.

Covering operating systems, systems management, identity, security, user experience, collaboartion, training and interoperability, these projects are representative of the reach of open source in Novell's business.

You've tossed around a lot of terms in this thread. Some seem to be the same but with different meanings in different sentences. Do you have consistent definitions for what you are calling:

Open-source company

Open-source ecosystem player

Big open-source ecosystem player (by what measure is one big?)

Project sponsor

Open-source business community

Open-source venture (presumably this is an open-source company that hasn't achieved some business measure yet but just checking)

It's hard to talk about slights vs semantic distinctions when the words in use lack common definition. Even using the word ecosystem raises questions about the whole thing since, semantically speaking, an ecosystem player means nothing specific. If you're in the ecosystem you'll either survive or perish but that which would compare one "player" to another isn't a measure of how open they are or how much of a player they are -- it is whether another player can consume or destroy them. Perhaps that is why GNU suggests avoiding the word altogether: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Ecosystem

In closing, if the measure of how big an open-source player a company is comes from how many of their products or lines of business involve open-source or how much of their revenue is derived from open-source, I'm baffled as to how Sun with open-Solaris, OpenOffice.org (and their insistence on continuing the not-as-open StarOffice), Java, openVZ and now MySQL is a bigger player than Novell with the linux that Sun distributes, several very significant projects included with Linux, OpenOffice.org contributions second only to Sun, open-source identity, security and systems management use and contributions. Please tell us your definitions and measures. A "club" that is about open-source shouldn't have secret membership rules.

Linux distributor

[ElectricRanch]

With the hardware business disapearing, Sun seems to be building toward following IBM's sucessful business model.

[driven01]

I would tend to agree with Bruce and adamopolis with regards to including Novell and IBM into the "big open source vendor" bucket. Without those big vendors making Linux acceptable in big corporations the rest of the eco-system really doesn't matter.

[billxa]

Sun has a history of playing industry disruptor. It is a role they like and one that led to much of their success earlier in their history. This is a great move for them. Many had written them off as irrelevant (including me btw), but they're back. I agree with Matt's assessment that this set's up a Sun vs RHAT struggle for position in the changing software market. If history repeats itself, other players will try to jump into the fray, maybe with their own key acquisitions of open source players. Don't count IBM, HP, Oracle, Novell, etc out. They too will have to figure out how to get in the game if it goes the way that Sun and RHAT believe it will. We might even see Microsoft try to make some moves here at some point. All-in-all, Sun's big move should bode well for those of us investing our time, efforts, and money in open source companies. Bill Miller, XAware.org

[gianugo]

What about some apple and oranges for a change? I know it's far from being an accurate analysis, but it might be worth noticing how both MySQL and BEA were founded in 1995. Fast forward 13 years, and the latter is getting 8X the value of the former. I know it doesn't mean much, but I can't help noticing...

[adamopolis]

I just wonder if Sun will be able to monetize or at least leverage their growing open source portfolio and build a meaningful business model, their past history with Java and Solaris makes me doubtful.

...and returning to the theme of acquisitions, I've long wondered who would buy Sun and when.... You could argue that they have now made themselves sufficiently relevant enough for them to be an attractive takeover target. Their share price is low and there are several obvious candidates who would love to have control of Java and their open source assets - either to leverage, control or kill them.

[the68empirer]

what I don't understand is why sun hasn't a clear and homogeneous strategy
why it was sponsoring the "world's best opensource database--->postgresql" and now it acquires mysql?
http://www.sun.com/software/products/postgresql/index.jsp
Do you think they will try to get the 2 both and build a big opensource database...?
anyway, good choice the opensource
but they haven't done too much till today....solaris need many opensource porting before being attractive for desktop users
http://the68empire.blogspot.com