Jeff Gould has written an excellent piece on the big question arising from Sun's acquisition of MySQL: how will Sun make enough money on the deal to justify the $1 billion valuation? Gould's analysis is generally solid, but he misses a few key points.
First off:
Only time will tell. But in my humble opinion, MySQL's open source business model will make Sun's road to payback a lot steeper than if it had bought a software company with conventional revenues and profits.
Ah, the good old days! Just one problem: those days are gone. Pining for an acquisition of the old way of selling and distributing software is like pining for Mayberry: you can want it, but those days are never coming back. VCs aren't investing in proprietary Mayberry anymore. Except from the consolidators of 20th-century software (Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft), customers aren't buying into the false Mayberry that left them destitute of innovation and options.
Open source is the way forward. But that doesn't make it an easy road, as Gould suggests. Here's where his analysis becomes relevant.
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(Jumbo) Maple Cream Pie
(Credit: Matt Asay)In thinking a bit more about my post on MySQL's Workbench product, it's starting to sound to me like a matter of pie. Let me explain.
MySQL isn't really holding back any functionality with Workbench. Not the essential functionality that its users need. It's just holding back some time-saving features from a tool that is otherwise fully functional and enables the same output that its open-source version enables. You pay to get to the end result faster, but you can get the same end result with the open-source version.
Everything that is possible in the Standard Edition (commercial version) can also be done with the OSS Edition. You only trade saving time and ease of use for money....
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(Credit:
MySQL)
MySQL, one of the world's most successful open-source companies, has released the Standard Edition of its new MySQL Workbench product under a proprietary license. The company gives several reasons for doing so, but I suspect the core reason is that MySQL is experimenting with ways to ensure more of its production customers pay it for the value they derive from its products.
Is this the future of open source? To get ubiquity through open source and then cash through proprietary source?
I emailed Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, about the change and he stressed what MySQL's FAQ already notes: This is not crippleware:
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