Oracle To Purchase Sun Microsystems for $5.6bn Net

[trillianjedi]

Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for a total of $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt.

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, says:-

"From the Java platform touching nearly every business system on earth, powering billions of consumers on mobile handsets and consumer electronics, to the convergence of storage, networking and computing driven by the Solaris operating system and Sun's SPARC and x64 systems. Together with Oracle, we'll drive the innovation pipeline to create compelling value to our customer base and the marketplace."

[sun.com...]

Immediate thoughts turn to what happens to MySQL?

Oracle are well invested into Java already, so I don't see any issues there.

OpenOffice?

[Gomvents]

"Immediate thoughts turn to what happens to MySQL?"

This scares me!

I really don't want to pay per core like they do with Oracle. Even $500 / core would be $4,000 a year on a dual quad core box :(

...and that's like a tenth of the cost of Oracle.

[nealrodriguez]

well, i don't know what there crm interfaces are now; but i know oracle crm's used to be slower than la traffic. hopefully, some java will will give it the random access caffeine it needs.

[coopster]

Oracle already owns SleepCat (Berkeley DB) and Innobase (InnoDB) and they attempted a MySQL purchase once prior [webmasterworld.com].

I wonder if this isn't the real reason Monty left Sun [webmasterworld.com] earlier this year.

[bill]

They can't touch the open source portion of MySQL, can they?

[lammert]

They can't touch the current open source versions of MySQL, but they have the right to stop their development of these versions anytime and only put development effort in commercial versions.

Because of the high complexity of relational database systems, I wouldn't trust a community to pick up the further development of the open source part of MySQL at the same level as the current development has been. Without a full-time highly committed development staff, the open source portion of MySQL effectively dies IMHO once Oracle decides to stop putting effort in it.

[webdoctor]

I can't see why Oracle would kill off MySQL unless they release a product to take its place.

If MySQL stops being 'free' (or is killed off completely) then it will drive developers to either MSFT's SQL Server Express + Visual Studio Express combo or to PostgreSQL and friends.

[Lord Majestic]

SQL server requires Windows, and PostgreSQL (speaking from personal experience) is terrible.

Oracle probably won't do much to MySQL right now, but it seems reasonable that they won't be undercutting themselves.

[2clean]

Is that 5.6Bn real money or just that inflated currency called webmoney?

[bwakkie]

PostgreSQL isn't AT ALL terrible in my opinion just much more robust I would say. Perhaps a bigger danger to Oracle than MySQL. I use PG already 10 years without any problem.

If I read benchmarks about scalability PostgreSQL wins. Speed is not the issue too any more.

In fact I think it is very good news for PostgreSQL. MySQL has been bought (indirectly) now for the second time by big players. I would not like to rely on MySQL too much for any open source application because of its uncertain future in the long run.

[Hugene]

IMHO there would be too huge of a backlash at Oracle if they stop developing a free version of MySQL. Too many small business depend on it.

And even if they do, then I don't fully agree that an open source community won't pick it up and continue it. They would just have to come back to the original business model of MySQL. Heck maybe even Michael Widenius could pick it back-up, but with a billion $ in his pocket now. That would be too hilarious: sell, leave, take open source version back and continue it.

[xalex]

I think oracle would have to sell Mysql to someone else, as there world be Antitrust involved.

Mysql is big enough that someone else would pick it up. $1 billion is a pocket change when you compare the database market and Mysql market share. Mysql is too big to fail.

How many of us would fork over $x,#*$! just to make sure Mysql is up for another couple of years?

What I fear is, Oracle would inject enough poison to slow MySql and the features that make it popular in the first place.

MySql gets sold> Mysql Enterprise gets released> Oracle is gone

[Hugene]

Unbelievable, this is just too funny. I think the prediction in my post of 21 April has become true (article here [developers.slashdot.org]):

"Michael Widenius, founder and original developer of MySQL, says that most of the leading coders for that project have either left Sun or will be leaving in the wake of Oracle's takeover. To ensure MySQL's survival, he wants to fork from the official version — using his company Monty Program Ab to create what he calls a MySQL "Fedora" project. This raises the larger question of who really owns a commercial open software application: the corporate copyright holders, or the community?"

;) I guess Widenius is up to the task for further developing MySQL. Soon we'll all be running FreeMySQL.

[lammert]

FreeMySQL will be the current MySQL without InnoDB, BerkeleyDB and MaxDB which are under direct control of Oracle or covered by commercial licenses. this makes it IMHO still only a crippled version of the original MySQL. This may be good enough for a small website, but not for transaction critical applications.

[trillianjedi]

this makes it IMHO still only a crippled version of the original MySQL.

Isn't that just a case of FreeMySQL creating its own backend engine? I would imagine if a large part of the community followed Widenius that community would have the skill set required to build one?

[lammert]

InnoDB, BerkeleyDB and MaxDB were never part of the development effort of the MySQL core developers. They were separate projects by a Finish company InnoDB (now owned by Oracle), SleepyCat (now owned by Oracle) and SAP (bound by commercial licenses). These are currently the three most advanced database engines from MySQL.

The Falcon engine which is currently in beta may be powerful and versatile enough in the future to replace these three, but future has to prove it. Widenius and his developers have never themselves released a database engine which could match with those in Oracle, MS-SQL or even PostgreSQL. They have always used third party developments for that.

[graeme_p]

1) People are saying "commercial" when they mean proprietary. Open source software can be commerical (ask Red Hat!) and non-commercial software can be closed source (although that is rare).

2) InnoDB is open source (dual licensed like MySQL), older versions of MaxDB are open source so it could be forked starting from one versions back. I do not know about BerkleyD, but as it is based on an open source product, it probably is as well.

3) A lot of MySQL users (most?) do not need these engines.

4) If Oracle neglect open source MySQL it will help Postgres which is much more of a threat to their flagship product.