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Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL, Developer of the World’s Most Popular Open Source Database

Somehow this makes me feel slightly queasy.

Me too.

Actually I am seeing this as a good thing.  Sun actually does a lot for the open source community, and Sun being an “enterprise” supplier for many, many years, and has vastly more resources than MySQL AB had to further development, we will likely see some great things out of this.

Sun actually does a lot for the open source community

Yes, in their desperate move to even survive 😊

I hope one day I’m part of something where “desperate” includes the ability to drop $800 million in cash.

Still desperate, now poorer 😊

And still some of the best enterprise grade server equipment you can buy.

You’re right there.

I have to say, I’m not certain how I feel about it. Nothing against Sun, because I do respect them, if I don’t always like them. They actually have great server equipment, and do do a lot of great things for the open source community, and they’re a great go to source for white papers on a number of different issues. Not that I would turn down close to $1 billion either, but I kind of like MySQL AB being independent. I realized that they made money, and such, but never really thought of them as “able to be bought” but duh, they are a corporation, and truth be known, if they we’re on the purchasing block I’d much rather have Sun purchase them than Microsoft.  In fact, I guess my selection would be Apple, Google, Sun, FileMaker (which is like saying Apple)—no particular order, though FileMaker would probably be my last choice. I’d prefer them to keep their focus on FileMaker database.

I guess it just makes me uneasy, because I had mistakenly placed MySQL AB in firmly as an open source project, when MySQL is the open source project and MySQL AB is a corporation (which I knew, I just kept forgetting). But it also makes me think, thank god Sun bought them instead of numerous other corporations out there.

Yeah, well out of your list of companies I can say I am glad Google did not buy them.  While Google has a pretty good track record on online product purchases and upgrading/maintaining them, the last physical software product that I used that they bought out it took over 3 years for them to release any form of updates at all (even point releases) and finally have released a beta of a product that was just about released back when they bought them out, I am speaking of course of Urchin (aka the basis for Google Analytics).  So actually glad it was Sun, not sure it would have been a good focus for Apple at all.

True, Google’s history on physical products kind of sucks. I think they are spread a little thin. I agree not a great match for Apple overall, but they could bring some great things to the table, if they placed a small team on it. But there is a reason FileMaker got spun off; and database projects can take a lot of focus.  I think Sun is a pretty good match, it will be interesting to see what happens.

I’m interested to see how this will affect MySQL’s storage engines.  Will Falcon ever become mainstream, or will Sun supplant it with something they’ve been working on already?  And will they continue to renew their license with Oracle to allow InnoDB?

Something I am interested in is Sun’s clustering technology/knowledge being applied directly to MySQL, instead of the lackluster clustering abilities of MySQL currently.  MySQL Cluster can not be used as a direct replacement for systems most php/mysql scripts will run in.  Master/Slave replication processes only help if the software is written for this environment and 3rd party true clustering that does work runs in the range of $3k - $5k per cpu “core” per server in the cluster.  Other solutions generally have a true “duct tape and bailing wire” feel to them, not something I personally want to trust client data to.  So this is an avenue I will be interested in seeing them go, again their general “enterprise” focus, this would be a key area they would want to focus on, at least in my book.

I am cautiously optimistic.  MySQL AB was doing well enough, but there are a number of long standing bugs, performance problems, and features that should have been in MySQL 5 that were not.  Of all the companies that could/would buy MySQL AB, I think Sun was definitely at the top of my “good” list.  They are a strong, stable company with a relatively good track record for open source and making decent products.  Like Derek, I am curious if Sun will be able to play well with Oracle.  Falcon is nowhere near ready and even though InnoDB is not widely used, it would be a disappointing turn of events if it stopped being licensed.  Honestly, there are way too many details about the deal that remain unseen and, even if one knew them, you never know how well things will be executed.

Of course, as long as IBM stays away from Zend I will sleep well at night…