Industry Voices Speak Out on the MySQL / Sun Deal

By John Conroy Jan 24, 2008

You've all heard the news by now that Sun went out and snapped up MySQL for a hefty $1 billion. Yes, that's right…turned the open source community on it's ear…or did it?

So…what do you think about the Sun/MySQL deal? Reckon it's good for open source in general? Does it affect your orientation towards MySQL? What about the price? Are they nuts?

That's exactly what we asked a bundle of the movers and shakers around the open source CMS community. And they were mostly upbeat about the deal.

Which is great, but…boy, how we would have loved someone to come out guns-a-blazing against those Sun guys, or MySQL, and given us some controversy or blackmail material. Next time we do this, we'll get them on the sause first.

John Newton - CTO Alfresco, Co-Founder of Documentum

“This is good for open source, because MySQL is good for Sun. Sun under Jonathan Schwartz is heading in the right direction towards open source. The deal also gives MySQL more horsepower and distribution than before.”

Jay Batson, co-founder of Acquia, formerly founder of Pingtel

“In my opinion, the MySQL deal demonstrates how open source development and the commercial open source software model is transforming the technology industry. The deal is good for open source in a few ways:

First, it will attract further venture investment to the sector. That means more startups, more ideas, more innovation, more value, and more benefit to open source users and communities.

Secondly, it means increased investment in advancing MySQL technology so it can cover more usage scenarios. This will in turn put further pressure on proprietary vendors and give customers more good options in more situations.

Third, it will draw large vendors like Sun deeper into other areas of the LAMP stack, helping these technologies mature more quickly and integrate more fully.

The Drupal community relies heavily on MySQL today, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Acquia has no database religion — we'll follow what the community and the customers value.

I don't have any comment on the price other than to note that MySQL is a great operational company with excellent management, and a wonderfully disruptive business model attacking a huge and well-defined market opportunity. It's nice to see such things highly valued in the marketplace.”

Scott Paley, CTO/Principal, Abstract Edge and all-around Plone superstar

“Yes, this is good for open source as it proves that there is real value in building a company around an open source model.

After a deal like this I don't see how there can be anybody left who feels that open source software won't be a major force, even at the enterprise level.

It's a great deal for Sun as well as it makes them a preeminent player in the database market.”

Lloyd Budd, “Digital Entomologist” at Automattic / WordPress

Lloyd is at pains to point out that he wants to 'Wait and see…', and that he hasn't been following the acquisition too closely, presumably on account he has better things to do with his time than we do. But he quotes us some scripture from the WordPress Bible:

“MySQL is ubiquitous and has shown to be fast enough and scalable enough for the highest traffic loads, so supporting other DBs would not improve the WordPress experience or our popularity much.

As a feature request it comes of fairly infrequently.”