Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun-MySQL has turned into a political circus, with both sides digging in their heels in preparation for a fight. However, the most interesting commentary on the deal may actually be coming from two highly interested parties with two very different perspectives on the takeover: MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius and IBM.
What's interesting in their positions is that only one of the parties pretends to be neutral. Surprisingly, the overtly biased party, IBM, comes to a very different conclusion than Widenius.
It has everything to do with money.
As Pamela Jones at Groklaw acutely analyzes, Widenius and his appointed lobbyist, Florian Mueller, are compromised by financial incentives to bar Oracle from owning MySQL. Jones writes:
They have big plans for a business around MySQL, and they want to make some money from it. MariaDB is their fork of MySQL...
So, what stands in their way? In their mind, the GPL [GNU General Public License]. They scorn the idea of a community project of GPL'd code and view Linux's commercial success, despite it being GPL code, as an aberration. What did they tell the EU Commission about licenses, then, and how to make money from FOSS? That the two most successful open-source business models are dual licensing, like MySQL, or open core, as in EnterpriseDB, the core of the code being open source, but with proprietary modules, and that is what they want to turn MySQL into.
Even if you don't buy Jones' contention that Widenius and Mueller want to make MySQL "proprietary" by licensing it under the Apache Software License, her excerpting of key commentary within their own brief (PDF) for the EU is sobering...and damning.
The evidence is particularly troubling when considered against IBM's response to the proposed takeover of MySQL. IBM, next to Microsoft, is Oracle's biggest competitor in the database market, and so presumably would have a big incentive to keep the popular MySQL database out of Oracle's hands.
But that's not what is happening.
In fact, IBM's Steve Mills has clearly stated that the acquisition would create no antitrust issues.
None.
Surely, if someone had a financial incentive to block the acquisition, it would be IBM. But IBM has its long-term credibility on the line, and it knows that specious arguments made for short-term gain have long-term negative consequences.
Oracle doesn't compete with MySQL. Oracle has said this. MySQL has said this (well before and after the proposed acquisition). And now IBM is saying it.
Widenius and Mueller, who have perhaps done more than any others to slow the Oracle-Sun deal, costing Sun hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales in the process, are not saying it. But then, if Jones' analysis is right, then they have a serious conflict of interest that would prevent them from saying it.
MySQL is an open-source database, licensed under the GPL, which ensures that its code is open and available to anyone. The license works, as its co-author, Eben Moglen, recently articulated.
That is, it works to preserve software freedom. It says nothing about Widenius' freedom to make money from MySQL, nor should it. That's a business model question for him to overcome, not a political question for him to lobby.
It's official: Michael "Monty" Widenius has officially quit his job at Sun Microsystems, as noted on his blog, and will be starting his own company.
I reported in September that Widenius, primary author of the original MySQL database and one of MySQL's founders, had left, which proved to be almost true. He was leaving, but he didn't quite make it out the door.
As of Wednesday, he's gone.
The reason isn't any different from what prompted him to move toward the exit door in September, as he notes on his blog: Widenius feels that the company is not open enough and that the MySQL 5.1 release wasn't ready for public consumption:
The main reason for leaving was that I am not satisfied with the way the MySQL server has been developed, as can be seen on my previous blog post. In particular, I would have like to see the server development to be moved to a true open-development environment that would encourage outside participation and without any need of differentiation on the source code. Sun has been considering opening up the server development, but the pace has been too slow.
This is understandable but overlooks huge problems in developing software in the way Widenius expects. It's perhaps why his new venture--a small, family-oriented company with 10 to 30 employees--may succeed in living up to his aspirations for a "true open-source company," even as MySQL and Sun failed to live up to his ideals.
Widenius' ideals don't translate well to a big software business. There are trade-offs inherent to achieving the scale that MySQL has, and there are future trade-offs that will be required to make it into a billion-dollar software business. Widenius didn't want to make those trade-offs, and he has now done the right thing in leaving so that he can pursue his vision of the ideal open-source company. I respect that and wish him the best.
But let's not forget what an exceptional organization MySQL is, despite its inability to be the company Widenius wishes it were. Reading through Arjen Lentz's reminder of MySQL's decade-old core principles, I can't help but be impressed with how closely it has held to its original philosophies.
MySQL may have become too big for Widenius, but it has not become too big for its ideals.
MySQL's Michael ("Monty") Widenius cann be a bit of a loose cannon, as I've written here before and as revealed in his recent excoriation of MySQL's 5.1 release, telling would-be adopters to be "very cautious" about using it.
Sun SVP of Database Products, Marten Mickos, attempts to put a happy face on Monty's indiscretion but I imagine his private feelings involve some choice Finnish profanities with Monty's name after them. At least, that's what I'd be saying (if I spoke Finnish).
Transparency, as Mickos notes, is a hallmark virtue of open-source software and its associated communities. But there is a difference between transparency and responsible self-criticism. Monty crossed that line.
Monty doesn't work for MySQL anymore. He works for a public company and has a duty not only to his conscience but also to his shareholders, shareholders that are not well-served by his now routine destructive commentary toward his own company.
Monty publicly criticized Mickos for putting consistency of release schedule over quality. Mickos, to his credit, has sought to make peace. But with rumors swirling about Monty potentially leaving Sun, I can't help but feel that he could not possibly leave soon enough for the good of Sun and its database business.
Well, that didn't take long. Monty Widenius, one of the founders of MySQL, resigned from Sun Microsystems last week but has already invested some of his hard-earned MySQL dollars in IT Mill, a Finland-based open-source start-up focused on the development of Rich Internet Applications.
While no mention is made of anything other than a financial investment and advisory role for Monty, it's good to see him sticking close to open source and to business. Monty notes that he sees 10 to 15 Finnish companies worthy of investment. It's safe to assume he'll have some money left over, even despite the strong euro.
Valleywag is reporting that Michael ("Monty") Widenius, primary author of the original MySQL database and one of the company's founders, turned in his resignation to Sun yesterday. For those inside the MySQL team at Sun, this will likely prove bittersweet.
Bitter, because Monty has been such an important architect to the MySQL database's technical success. Sweet, because Monty sometimes took public positions against MySQL AB, the company that has been attempting to profit from the database.
Monty was involved in Drizzle, the MySQL fork that need not have been (and, in my opinion, should not have been). Monty publicly came out swinging against MySQL's plans to offer commercial extensions to the core MySQL database, contradicting and complicating the company's decision.
At this point, however, Monty has done the right thing with his dissent. He has taken it outside the company, as Arjen Lentz, MySQL's twenty-fifth employee, did before him. Arjen continues to be both a promoter and critic of MySQL, but is able to do so publicly without the constraints of an employee agreement.
I assume Monty will do the same, and rightly so. I'm sure MySQL/Sun will welcome Monty's feedback on both product and revenue strategy. But it will be a bit more palatable to have that coming from outside the company, rather than appearing to come from inside the company, in contradiction to the company's public position.
I, for one, wish Monty the best. He has been a great asset to MySQL as an employee. No doubt he will continue to be such as an interested observer outside the company. So what's behind Door Number Three, Monty?
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