> > So Sun paid $1,000,000,000 for MySQL in order to kill it? What a > > theory! Do these companies really have that kind of money to burn? > > Larry Ellison does. And that is Dvorak's conspiracy theory.
I think, there's a hole in that theory. MySQL is an open source product. For the sake of the argument, let's say that Sun is able to stagnate the mysql project. But there are several thousand copies of the mysql project source tree out in the internet. As with any open source project, there's a core group of people (whom, I think, Sun has aquired) and there's a larger group of people who follow the devel discussions, participate in hackathons, and submit ideas, hacks, code improvements, feature requests, etc. So, if Sun/MySQL starts to stagnate, a new core group of coders will emerge with the last pre-Sun code base, (call it OpenSQL or some-such) and will move forward. Good bye Larry and Sun. Mr. Ellison should worry more about Postgres, IMHO, than MySQL. Postgres is the heavier-weight of the two and has better authentication integration, etc and, is in a better position to challenge Oracle. In most LAMP implementations, Postgres is a drop-in replacement for MySQL. I think Sun wanted to buy mysql because they are tired of hearing of the LAMP stack. Sun will offer a Sun-branded version of MySQL, just like OpenOffice/StarOffice. (Look in the mysql.com site and you will see that they offer a Community Server for free and Enterprise server for pay.) Sun wants to offer an end-to-end solution stack based on industry standard products, but with their Sparc hardware (they've been doing 32-core systems for years now), Solaris (slow-laris, as some might say), and their own, supported MySQL. Sun also wants to improve on their claim that they've offered more lines of code to the open source community than any other company. They have open-sourced Java and Solaris. They invented NFS. DTrace is in MacOSX and is also in the open community. Apple is going to use ZFS filesystem in OSX. OpenSparc is an open HW reference standard that Sun has put out. So, Sun does not have a track record of squashing innovation. I don't think Dvorak's conspiracy theory is a very good one. Read some of the reader-comments to that article. ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive from 1/1/2000 is on the MARC http://marc.info/?l=computerguys-l * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
