Sun Acquires MySQL

[Thrillhouse]

I know we joke about the Coffee Lounge being a mirror for Slashdot but I thought this was worth discussion...

MySQL AB :: Kaj Arnö

I'd be interested to hear what others think of this.

Most of the time, acquisitions like this scare me but I still think this could be a good thing. I liked seeing this part of the announcement:

I would expect that having access to the topmost Solaris and Java experts within the same company will accelerate our development for the benefit of MySQL users on the Solaris platform, and in the Java environment, respectively.

But I don’t expect that in any way to be at the cost of other popular operating systems (Linux, Windows, Mac OS/X, other Unixes etc.) or development environments (PHP, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, ODBC, C++, C#, VB etc.). MySQL grew with LAMP and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable. It was MySQLs part of LAMP that interested Sun in the first place. Hence I don’t see Sun having a platform migration strategy, but to continue to be an integral part of the dot in .com.

Thoughts?

[elija]

My first thought is we'll see...

Then I realized that

Open Office sprang from Star Office and Java itself has been open
sourced so it's not like Sun don't have a fairly positive track record
in the Open Source Arena.

I guess we'll see soon enough

[carlosponti]

well they have been kind of iffy when it comes to opening java however. though that is really weird news.

[bigtomrodney]

I'm surprised a bit but I don't think it's a bad thing. From what I remember MySQL were doing a good job of closing off as much as possible to non subscribers so maybe Sun will do the decent thing and continue their open-sourcing run.

Feel free to correct me on the MySQL source thing, that's just from memory.

[Bertlef]

Open Office sprang from Star Office

And see where open office is, it is nothing but the advertising office for star office, I am really disappointed with this move, I do not like Sun, I have never seen anything good from them (don't say Java please!!!)

I am happy that we have Postgre, and other open source options for databases, even if Sun is 'opening', I really doubt that they can do something good.

Yes, we'll see, please prove me wrong!!!!

[techieMoe]

And see where open office is, it is nothing but the advertising office for star office, I am really disappointed with this move, I do not like Sun, I have never seen anything good from them (don't say Java please!!!)

Wow, sour grapes much? Since when is OpenOffice an advertisement for StarOffice? Does anyone even bother advertising StarOffice any more? The only place on the OpenOffice website that I even see it mentioned in is the copyrights at the bottom of the page. Can you offer more specific evidence for your claim?

Why can't we add Java as a good thing from Sun? What (again, specifically) do you dislike about it?

[Bertlef]

I say that it is advertising for star office, because star office IS open office but charged, you might not see their logo all over, but that is the solution they offer when dealing with companies and corporate solutions, plus, how come a company that just paid 1 000 million dollars (not a billion because a billion = 1 000 000 million) for a company, is so bad at developing an application that has proved to be a gold mine, I love Oo but we have to face the truth, it could be waaaaayyyyy better than what it is with the support from such a huge company.

I don't like Java because I have used it, that has been enough for me to dislike it, yes, there are thinks that you can only do with it, but it doesn't make it good. I will not enter in details about memory management, or the complexity of the syntax, if you are a programmer (I am assuming you are) you know what I mean, I have never spoken with any programmer, even if they do use Java, that actually says it is good, again, there are thinks that you can only do with it, that is why it survives.

Just my opinion, please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to start a war or anything, I am just really disappointed for this move, I really want to be proven wrong.

Regards,
Felipe

[daark.child]

I'm a bit skeptical about the deal, but I hope it works out for the best. When I heard about the purchase of MySQL AB by Sun, I was a bit worried because Sun does not have a good track record when it comes to opensource. You only have to look at how stagnant OOo has been over the years because developers say Sun keeps too much of a grip on the project. The opensourcing of java is a good thing, but they seem to have been forced into doing it. The deal with MySQL also makes me wonder what they are going to do about PostgreSQL because SUN was supporting PostgreSQL on some of their platforms. Anyway, I guess those that don't like the deal can use PostgreSQL or FireBird.

[techieMoe]

I say that it is advertising for star office, because star office IS open office but charged, you might not see their logo all over, but that is the solution they offer when dealing with companies and corporate solutions,

I don't know how Sun handles corporate deployments of OpenOffice. I didn't even know that they offered them in the first place. Most open-source projects do not offer official corporate support agreements, and if they do it's through a third-party vendor like Redhat, Canonical, or (surprise surprise) Sun. Perhaps Sun's support of OpenOffice isn't great, but that doesn't mean a company couldn't look for support elsewhere.

When given the choice between offering official support for a product whose codebase they only sort of maintain and one that they absolutely maintain, I can't say I blame Sun for suggesting a customer buy licenses for StarOffice.

plus, how come a company that just paid 1 000 million dollars (not a billion because a billion = 1 000 000 million)

I'm not arguing with your math here, but every story I could find (including Linux.com and Yahoo News, which are relatively reputable sites) said the amount they bought the company for was $1 billion.

...for a company, is so bad at developing an application that has proved to be a gold mine, I love Oo but we have to face the truth, it could be waaaaayyyyy better than what it is with the support from such a huge company.

Ok, so OpenOffice could be better. I don't disagree there. However you act like the shortcomings of OpenOffice are not only entirely the fault of Sun, they're also an indicator of their abilities and worth as a company. Sun controls parts of the OpenOffice code, but it does not distribute the program.

If you want to take pot shots at StarOffice as a Sun product, that's one thing, but to blame perceived shortcomings of an OSS project on the company that originally released the source code rather than the community that has since failed to improve it, that's something else.

I don't like Java because I have used it, that has been enough for me to dislike it, yes, there are thinks that you can only do with it, but it doesn't make it good. I will not enter in details about memory management, or the complexity of the syntax, if you are a programmer (I am assuming you are) you know what I mean, I have never spoken with any programmer, even if they do use Java, that actually says it is good, again, there are thinks that you can only do with it, that is why it survives.

Well, count me as the first. I am a programmer, and I write Java for a living. I like it. I've had no issues whatsoever with Java's memory management. It's actually a lot easier to deal with than C and C++ (no pointer arithmetic or manual allocate/destroy needed). That's not to say I dislike C/C++. I got my undergraduate degree in those languages so they have a special place in my repertoire. They're just not the best language for the software I develop.

The syntax is long-winded I agree. Does it bother me when I have an IDE with auto-complete? Not really. There are shorter ways to write things in Java as well, but you'll never get the level of obscurity you can achieve in C using typedefs and whatnot. I think personally that's a *good* thing. Forcing programmers to explain what their code does a little bit here and there saves my office days trying to figure out what this consultant or that consultant's code is doing.

[bigtomrodney]

...a company that just paid 1 000 million dollars (not a billion because a billion = 1 000 000 million) ...

I'm not arguing with your math here, but every story I could find (including Linux.com and Yahoo News, which are relatively reputable sites) said the amount they bought the company for was $1 billion.

Both numbers are a billion. The original meaning of a billion refers to bi- and million and meant million to the power of two - this is now referred to as the Long scale billion. The short scale definition is however more often used in English speaking countries, which is a thousand million.


Billion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Long and short scales - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia