EU 'optimistic' Oracle will see reason on MySQL The European Union's competition chief has said she's "optimistic" a settlement can be reached with Oracle over its proposed $5.6bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Neelie Kroes is reported to have told journalists: "Let's be optimistic, and let's find out if they could take us to a point that we say, 'OK, here we can take the …
where there is none.
This is only because some whiny-little developer who quite happily took millions for some reasonably good work (and a load of great work from the non-paid hobby developers) is whining that he wants his cake and to eat it.
The competition commissioner has no clue - what a surprise! A politician with hidden agendas and no real clue.
And clearly neither has the writer of this peice - MySQL (a tiny database that doesn't scale well) compared to Oracle (a huge database that scales massively) - two completely differrent beasts.
I can't really understand what AC is saying that wasn't answered in the article. Sounds like a rant.
However, whatever you think of a competition office's knowledge of the industry area it is responsible for, calling one "stoopid" is like telling airport security you have a bomb in your bag - ha! ha!
-m.
The point is what starts small can become much bigger and hence probably is in the public interest to continue to improve & get community coding support.
Linux has shaken up IT, knocked chunks out of M$'s market share and is getting larger & more stable & x86 chips are strengthening up to take on high end SMP systems. Linux is handling workloads that 5 years were mainframe or high end Unix only.
Take that model & apply it to MySQL & you have to hope in 3-5 years if allowed to develop it might do as Linux has and knock chunks out of coporate giants who have dominant positions, unless they manage to stifle it. A free
MySQL & PostGreSQL can only improve in terms of stability, HA features & customisation as time goes by.
As a Sun software employee, you have to understand where we have been positioning MySQL. Rather successfully as a matter of fact. We realized it is not an Oracle replacement at the high end. Enterprise Oracle customers are extremely unlikely to move from the highly proven, installed Oracle platform. The cost of problems far outweigh the cost of license. But in a large company, that type of installation represents a small portion of the installed repository space in a company. Thats where MySQL has "gotten in the back door".
It is a favorite of developers who put up and tear down architectures all the time. These projects were having problems getting into production on smaller deployments until Sun purchased MySQL and offered support. Customers now have the confidence to put it into production knowing they have a throat to choke. So the target market was these smaller systems in the enterprise and mostly smaller customers who were relying on MS SQL Server.
But to think an independent MySQL or PostGreSQL will grow its own "enterprise ready" gene stock through natural selection of open source AND be deployed at the enterprise level without rock solid support behind it shows lack of understanding of the market. By having Oracle contributing more to the MySQL code base, the faster it will gain these advanced database features. This will greatly benefit smaller companies (a huge market still) and larger companies in their non-enterprise deployments. But it will still be a tough sell to replace an enterprise level repository, even in 5 years. It would greatly enhance the database market to let customers work with one vendor (one throat to choke) that would allow them to start small and eventually grow into onto a full blown production system, or any other degree of sophistication they choose.
Splitting off MySQL into an independent company would only scare major corporations from utilizing emerging open source products in the future. Everyone of our customers who rely on Sun for MySQL support would now have to worry that their production deployments will be run by a new startup trying to get established and build their support capabilities.
In my company we have a MySQL database getting close to a terabyte, load-balanced master-master replication and high-availabilty because MS SQL server couldn't provide us with these features. We have to serve over a million web service calls a day and any downtime is bad, bad news.
The enterprise monitor and query analyzer tell us everything we need to know and it happily goes along working fine. If you think MySQL isn't used in the large scale enterprise then you're not trying hard enough to fight your way out of your wet cardboard box.
First, Oracle doesn't scale massively. If it or other RDBMs did, you wouldn't see Hadoop/HBase.
But that's not the point.
If you look at the now massive software/hardware companies, ie Apple, Microsoft, IBM and HP, you can see a couple of different things. (Note: you could probably add other massive companies but the point holds true)
IBM - Hardware/Software (Infrastructure Only)/Services
HP - Hardware/Software (Infrastructure Only)/Services
Microsoft - No core Hardware/Software(OS and applications only on OS with some cross over to Mac, and some Infrastructure)
Apple - Hardware( Desktop, some server(s), Consumer products)/Software (OS and some desktop apps)
Now take a look at Oracle w Sun
Hardware / Software (OS, Infrastructure, Applications) / Services (Not as deep as IBM or HP)
The point is that an Oracle/Sun combo will put Oracle in to a dominant position which can block competition. (Oracle Financial/PeopleSoft on Oracle RDBMS on Sun w Oracle's webservers/app servers) You need a webserver, you have Oracles. You need a database, you have Oracles. You need hardware you have Oracle(sun).
With respect to IBM, you don't have an accounting package. You do have a services group which resells Sun and Oracle products and partners with application providers. Mention Monopoly and IBM jumps scared.
By creating a Sun/Oracle merger, you are creating yet another monopoly player. This is why you need to not let the deal go through.
But hey! What do I know? I kinda liked the idea of Cisco buying Sun. ;-)
-G
PS. Microsoft? Already named a monopoly. Only playing nice with Linux because if they didn't, they would be broken up, which is something they don't want to happen. Do you think their SQLServer could survive as a standalone product/company?
Two reader comments force me to respond:
"Take that model & apply it to MySQL & you have to hope in 3-5 years if allowed to develop it might do as Linux has..." - so the Commissioners are supposed to be fortune tellers? Using this logic, just about every acquisition or merger should be blocked because miracles might happen and some little idea today might turn into a game-changer someday in the future and letting a big evil company buy it now might change the future and stifle something. There goes the VC model...
"The point is that an Oracle/Sun combo will put Oracle in to (sic) a dominant position which can block competition." - This comment is simply not defensible. Yes, an Oracle/Sun combination will have good breadth. But they will not be #1 or #2 in any categories - except where Oracle is already #1. Sun is dying as a standalone company. Solaris (and UNIX) is in decline. Sun's servers have been losing marketshare since 2000. Sun's proprietary chip development is in tatters. Sun's storage revenue (most of which is just OEM) has been in decline. IBM makes more money from JAVA than Sun does. Sun has no credible presence in middleware. StarOffice is a money pit. Sun has been losing Wall Street business. Sun has been losing HPC business. Sun's revenue has been eroding. Sun's best and brightest have been leaving or RIF'ed. Sun has either no senior management (they've all bailed or gone fishing) or they have the worst senior management in high tech - take your pick.
Sure, a Cisco-Sun combination sounds exciting on paper. But Cisco and all the rest of the large technology companies all had a chance to consider buying Sun when it was shopped in H2 2008 and early 2009. Only two companies showed any interest and one, IBM, bailed. Oracle is Sun's (and Sun's customers and Sun's partners and Sun's employees and Sun's investors) last chance. If this deal is blocked Sun rapidly becomes Wang, Prime, Stratus, Cray, SGI.....That result will truly lessen competition.
Sure, MySQL is an important RDBMS. But, it is also open-source. Who cares if maybe, perhaps, possibly, potentially, the brand is important? Users will be able to tell Oracle to f*** off and fork, if they feel importantly enough about it. That's the whole point of open source. If that doesn't count here, where would it?
Blocking this on competition ground is lame (speaking as an ex-PeopleSoft employee, I think I have some personal history).
Sun is a failure, and has been so for years. Not technically, no. But commercially, yes. Don't believe me? Take a look at their annual operating income and compare it to their peers'. Yup, those pesky capitalist notions.
Let a better, less clueless company take over what's left. If Oracle wants it, let them have it. At least, don't invoke something as irrelevant as an open-sourced MySQL to block it. Who knows, Java and MySQL might even improve as a result (not holding my breath though).
I realize the European anti-trust commission guys might feel like they gotta do something to make it seem like they earn their pay, but this is the wrong tree.
p.s. When do we get Evil Larry/Good Larry icons?
Eu stance on the Orcale Sun deal is a typical backwards prehostoric approach. the next bit of decent software that comes out of the EU will be the first bit. the beurocratic so called gatekeepers with no sensical arguments is costing thousands op people their jobs around the world in this delay, can they comment on that. they have no backbone and integrity is totally at the whim of SAP & IBM. Oracle should show the middle finger and let them continue to play in the dark ages with DB2 and the likes.
MySQL is owned by Sun and Sun has not been competing well in the marketplace for almost a decade...
If the MySQL brand was really a magic bullet, Sun would be able to compete...
Taking a commercially nonviable company, which many EU commentators suggest there is no hope for, and providing it to another company may make a monopoly in the EU's eyes, but not necessarily in the eyes of the rest of the world.
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