back to article Ex-Sun boss gives Ellison open source wedgie

Former Sun Microsystems chief and co-founder Scott McNealy has re-appeared to champion open source and rough up billionaire Larry Ellison, the man who bought his baby. Speaking at PostgreSQL West 2010, McNealy urged devs to drive adoption of their database against Oracle's proprietary products and MySQL by working with other …

COMMENTS

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  1. MacRat
    Grenade

    Be quiet McNealy

    You ran the company into the ground.

    You should be too ashamed to even leave your house.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Larry is the devil

      Bill Gates = return of the nerds

      Steve Jobs = valedictorian...met Larry Ellison a few times

      Steve Balmer = the pain in the ass kid everyone cant stand enough though he tries so hard

      Scott McNealy= Scooter the goofy kid that dresses up as goofy for halloween and doesn't realize how true it is

      Jonathan Schwartz = the wanna be nerd, wanna be business person, wanna be success, but really just a suck up who doesn't see the bigger picture

      Mark Hurd - the kid who gets all the copies for the tests, plays tennis and has a few girls on the side

      and...

      Larry Ellison = Devil "Steve Jobs is my best friend...did I mention that Steve Jobs is my best friend?"

      thank you for your time,

      Klara

    2. Jay Jaffa
      Thumb Up

      Totally agree with you

      A Useful twat who killed SUN - and before he left he brought the pony-tailed asshole in to bury it.

  2. Daedalus
    Thumb Down

    Ooh ooh scary

    This must be the proverbial savaging by a dead sheep. Scary Scott strikes again. The man who led so many people into penury and trashed so much shareholder value is attacking the 800-pound gorilla.

    Go ahead Scott. Make my day.

    1. foxyshadis

      I guess you forget

      That he was also the man who created all of that shareholder value in the first place. Without him there likely would have been no Sun Microsystems, at least not for long.

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    1. Paul 172

      Really?

      >(despite the fact that Intel and Sun compilers whip GNU's ass when it comes to performance on

      >mainstream hardware.)

      Interesting comment !! Can you provide any resources that back this up ? I've been messing around with GCC versus Sun's CC lately and neither seem to work great.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        re: Really?

        @Paul 172: Let me google that for you ;)

        http://blogs.sun.com/BestPerf/entry/free_compiler_wins_nehalem_race

    2. CD001
      Troll

      See image

      That is all

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      GNU never said you're not allowed to make money out of your work

      All it says is you're not allowed to enslave the end-users with your work. It is OK if you want to lock them in, twist their arm and squeeze their wallet, just don't use free software for that. Pick any proprietary license like others do.

      Oh, and for me as an end-user, I certainly want that MY information remains free at least for myself if not for others. Even if this is crap for you, I don't want anybody to put a lock on my own data.

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        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    He should have put his money where his mouth is long before that

    Well, if supporting OpenSource is so great why didn't he put his money where his mouth is when he was at the helm?

    Why didn't he support MySQL instead of aquiring it? Why didn't he support Postgres consistently (and not just on occasions reversing the support policy more than twice in 10 years)? Why didn't he support Quagga consistently instead of hiring firing developers working on it depending on his agenda at the time? Why didn't he... I can continue with a long list of open source projects on which Sun has done a volte-face at least twice in the last 10 years and under his management before the chaos of Schwarz.

    As my dad used to say (with a fake german accent): Less schprehen, more arbeiten.

    Put your money where your mouth is Scott. While I am not a Larry fan by no means, the man has to be given credit where he deserves it - he DOES put his money where his mouth is.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    PostgreSQL gettin' its props

    It is great to see PostgreSQL getting some of the attention that it deserves.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Indeed

      Postgres has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years but still failed to get the media attention it arguably deserves. So very nice to see El Reg covering Pg West. And, whatever one thinks about McNealy (in my view it was his successor who made the really odd business decisions), he's certainly headline and I'm guess that many former customers will listen to what he says.

      Back to Postgres: Enterprise DB's Oracle compatible version is fantastic for customers wanting to escape the kraken without too much pain. The MySQL migration tool looks quite good as well - need to give it a spin with a customers database to see how it fares - and is bound to reassure existing MySQL customers who may be looking to jump ship. Not that you need "Postgres Plus" for serious development but it is important to know that professional support is available if desired. I can't help thinking that the permissive BSD licence helps here: no lawyers required.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Java licensee?

    "prosecuting Java licensee Google"

    I doubt Google are a Java Licensee, if they were then it would be an open and shut case as they would be violating all kinds of contract requirements.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gripe all you want..

    Gripe about McNealy driving Sun into the ground if you like, but if you use OpenOffice, NFS or any number of other common technologies you have him to thank.

    Larry is in it for Larry. He's systematically stomping out the good (don't deny it, Sun did lots of good) done by Sun and all that will be left is his locked-down versions of mySQL, Java and Solaris. Larry is evil. Filthy stinking rich, but totally evil.

    You need an evil Larry icon.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Magnus_Pym

    I disagree with everything you say...

    ... but can't be bothered to point out your glaring errors.

  9. Chris Pearson
    WTF?

    Why so fast to slag off the boating?

    Everyone seems to be tearing Oracle and Ellison a new one for sponsoring a big boat, why are we not having a go at other companies who do the same? And hows this any different to say Formula 1 sponsorship, which again no one bats an eye at?

    1. Victor 2
      Happy

      easy

      They are jealous

  10. Zobbo
    FAIL

    Snoracle

    "[But] I was a good capitalist, he's a great capitalist."

    McNealy is half right. So 50% better than usual.

  11. Ian Yates
    Thumb Down

    Nice opinions

    Where was /this/ McNealy when people were clammoring for the TCKs to be opened?

  12. future3
    FAIL

    All these comments are useless.

    I just wasted 15 minutes of my life reading comments by people who think their opinions matter.

    Kill me now.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge

      RE: All these comments are useless.

      "......Kill me now." Sorry, I'm an experienced capitalist, and that means I don't even type kill for free!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Dead Vulture

      No-one cares about your opinion

      Do everyone a favor then and do it yourself.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        RE: No-one cares about your opinion

        And where would be the fun in that, Sunshiner? So much more fun to expose fools like yourself - do you actually have any opinion on the matter in hand? Do you think McNeedy should be listened to with caution, ignored, or his every word taken as some IT gospel? Do you think his previous poor relationship with the Linux community should be taken into account when he champions OSS? Come on, just try and post something that a five-year-old couldn't top for a change.

        /SP&L

  13. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Stop

    Scott McNeedy and OSS? Meh!

    So, all of a sudden, Scotty loves OSS? Was he wearing the penguin suit again? Yes, those that laughed at his rediculous flip-flops over Linux will see this for EXACTLY what it really is - McNeedy has some short-term scheme that he thinks will make money for McNeedy and Co, and that is the ONLY reason for his sudden infatuation with PostgresSQL. As soon as his latest scheme falls flat on its face he'll be back to hating OSS again.

    How do you know McNeedy's talking utter and complete male bovine manure? Easy, it's when his lips are moving.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Instead of telling people to leave Oracle...

    ... they should start first delivering a database that could actually do what Oracle does. Unless you have very basic needs (and probably you're not using Oracle already) or use your database just like a data dump, there's a lot you can do with Oracle that databases like Postgres can only dream of. C'mon, Postgres still lacks properly LOB support, and wants to compete with Oracle? Look at poor-man-partitioning in Postgres, and its backup facilities for large, complex databases? Who cares if it is open source, I am not going to implement LOB support or many other advanced features myself, I have no problem to buy then from someone who spend the time and the money to implement them - and like me many others users who runs databases that do more than support a web site. Postgres competitors are MySQL, Firebird and SQLite, not Oracle.

    Unless many OS project don't understand they shoud be market-drive and not developer's whims-and-dreams-driven, they won't go far and they will keep on being surprised why people keep on using the most powerful products, although proprietary and expensive.

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