Sun to fork out $1 billion for open-source firm MySQL
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Acquisition of one of the most successful open-source software companies is a bold move for Sun, which has embraced open source to try to boost revenue.
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Open-source advocates and industry watchers saw benefits to Sun's acquisition of MySQL that could mean greater use of open-source software in enterprise IT and more financial security to MySQL.
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Sun is getting into the open-source business with Solaris, but will this automatically translate into better sales?
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Despite having revenues of around $70 million to $85 million, MySQL commanded an impressive $1 billion price tag in today's acquisition by database giant Sun.
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InfoWorld - Sun Microsystems will pay $1 billion for Swedish software company MySQL, whose open-source database is used for some of the most widely visited Web sites in the world.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. -- After investing roughly $500 million and spending years of development time on its next-generation operating system, Sun Microsystems Inc. today will reveal an aggressive price for the software: It's free.
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If you had any doubts about Sun Microsystems? commitment to open source, it?s time to set them aside. Sun put its money where its mouth is Wednesday, with the announcement that it would buy open source database vendor MySQL for a whopping $1 billion. If the price tag set tongues wagging, however, it was no more tantalizing than the question that immediately sprung to the minds of IT managers everywhere: Now that Sun owns MySQL, what on earth does it plan to do with it?Sun has toyed with the idea of a database offering of its own for at least two years. But in a market where basic relational database functionality is increasingly considered a commodity, competing successfully is no mean feat, even when playing the open source card.Certainly, Sun isn?t the first to try it. In 2001, leading Linux vendor Red Hat launched its own branded version of the open source PostgreSQL database, only to scrap the project a year later after deciding that servicing and supporting a database was not its core competency. Similarly, Computer Associates opened the source of the Ingres database in hopes of becoming a one-stop shop for customers in need of an enterprise application stack, but had little luck winning market share away from the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. CA spun Ingres off into its own company in 2005, where it continues to nurture a small installed base.In his blog announcing the MySQL acquisition Wednesday, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz remains characteristically effusive. ?Until now, no platform vendor has assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system for the Internet,? he wrote. ?No company has been able to deliver a comprehensive alternative to the leading proprietary OS.?Yet CA?s and Red Hat?s experiences seem to discredit the idea that a stem-to-stern platform offering from a single vendor is what customers really want. Not to mention the fact that Sun already offers enterprise support for PostgreSQL, a competing open source database that is widely perceived as being technologically superior to MySQL. Schwartz reaffirmed Sun?s commitment to PostgreSQL in a conference call Wednesday, causing some analysts to speculate whether the MySQL acquisition was anything more than a billion-dollar PR stunt.But there may be method to Sun?s madness. The considerable goodwill that MySQL has cultivated among enterprise customers could have benefits for Sun that technology alone never could.?I think the answer is simple: ubiquity,? says Andy Astor, CEO of EnterpriseDB, which markets a high-performance, commercial database product based on PostgreSQL. ?[Sun is] a big company; to move their needle, they need to see millions of potential users, which MySQL provides.?According to MySQL?s own estimates, there are already some 11 million active installations of the MySQL database worldwide. What?s more, MySQL is virtually the de facto standard relational database for rapid application development, particularly for the Web. In future, as these fledgling sites mature and their needs broaden, they will become natural customers for Sun?s enterprise support offerings.Sun?s new role as steward of MySQL is sure to ruffle feathers in the software industry, as well -- particularly at Oracle, which, with its recent acquisitions, increasingly competes with Sun in the enterprise application platform arena. In 2005, Oracle bought Innobase, makers of a plug-in component that adds advanced features to MySQL, in what was widely perceived as a competitive swipe at the open source upstart.For his part, MySQL CEO M?rten Mickos has repeatedly denied that his company?s aim is to displace high-end databases such as Oracle?s. And that?s only appropriate; for those customers who demand Oracle?s most advanced features, no other product will do. But Mickos? protestations verge on false modesty. On the low end, MySQL is an absolute pandemic, and it?s already making headway into the mid-tier territory traditionally owned by the likes of Microsoft. That trend is only likely to accelerate with Sun?s backing.What is unclear, however, is whether Sun will take any steps to alter MySQL?s license terms. Licensing and project governance have played key roles in MySQL?s success, and as a result, MySQL?s license policy is somewhat more restrictive than the one that Sun has used for the rest of its software portfolio.Although all MySQL code is available under the GNU GPL (General Public License), the product is developed primarily by full-time employees of MySQL. Furthermore, the MySQL company requests that community developers sign over copyright to their code contributions to the company before those changes become part of the main MySQL code base. This allows the company to offer a separate, commercial version of its database for enterprise customers who don?t want to be bound by the terms of the GPL. Initially, this license structure was used mainly to allow companies to embed the MySQL database into their own products, but the MySQL company was criticized last year for making it more difficult for non-paying customers to download the enterprise version of the database.By comparison, Sun has been freer with its own code, foregoing separate, commercial versions of its products in favor of a subscription-based enterprise support scheme. PostgreSQL is arguably even more free; it is governed in a much more distributed, community-based fashion than MySQL, and its permissive license even allows proprietary derivatives, such as EnterpriseDB.Ironically, however, MySQL?s stringent intellectual property policy may be precisely what makes it so appealing to Sun. Red Hat Database and Sun?s own version of PostgreSQL were merely different retoolings of an existing open source software product, one that customers could just as easily download from elsewhere. To the enterprise IT community at large, however, there?s really only one MySQL -- and from now on, that name will be indelibly associated with Sun. Remember, for all Sun?s talk about open source, this is a company that banks so heavily on its trademarks that it had its stock ticker symbol changed to JAVA.Ah, but there?s the rub. Sun open-sourced the Java platform in 2006, and while the move has been widely hailed by developers, not everyone in the business community was as thrilled with the idea of Sun giving away its crown jewels. As former Sun vice president Larry Singer put it, ?We [at Sun] were spending all of our time and attention ? on things that were important from an intellectual standpoint, important from an innovative standpoint, [but it was] hard to understand how they were going to drive revenue for the company.?So far, MySQL has built a solid business selling open source database software. Whether Sun has the strategic acumen to take that success to the next level, however, remains to be seen. But stay tuned; after all, $1 billion gives Sun a hell of an incentive.
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Analysis: Sun broadens its open source stake, while MySQL enjoys Sun's standing and budget.
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Blog: MySQL is relentlessly pushing its way toward an IPO, as BusinessWeek reports, which makes the entire open source ecosystem that much more valuable.
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Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to buy open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, beefing up the server maker's database offerings with a company whose technology is used by some of the world's biggest Web sites.
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Some enterprise database users and industry analysts with whom BetaNews spoke today believe the purchase of open source database producer MySQL by Sun Microsystems could have an across-the-board effect on the entire database market.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun MicrosystemsÂ on Wednesday will begin donating its Solaris clustering code to the open-source community, the latest move in the company'sÂ ongoing strategyÂ to eventually make all of its software freely available. It has been more than two years since SunÂ released OpenSolaris, an open-source version of its Solaris 10 Unix operating system. Since June 2005, the vendor has made other pieces of its software freely available, notably itsÂ core Java platformÂ starting in November of last year. Sun hopes opening up its software will enable its products to enter new markets and lead to more customers for its servers, storage, and paid support services. Known as Open High Availability Cluster, Sun will release its Solaris Cluster source code over the next 18 months through the High Availability (HA) Clusters community on the OpenSolaris Web site. Developers can use the code to help them build clustered and high-availability applications and services. Sun will make the clustering source code available under its own open-source license, CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), said Paul Steeves, director of Solaris marketing at Sun. There are no plans to also provide the code under the GNU general public license (GPL)Â as Sun did with Java. That situation might change, if, as rumored, Sun decides to also provideÂ OpenSolaris under GPLv3. The third version of the GPL is due to be finalized later this week. OpenSolaris is currently offered under CDDL. Sun will make three major contributions to the clustering code, according to Steeves. The first donation, due out this week, is focused on application modules or agents that allow open-source or commercial applications to become highly available in a clustered environment. Sun will make the code available for 24 of the high-availability agents it offers with its commercially available Solaris Cluster software. Among the agents are modules for Sun's Solaris Containers virtualization technology, BEA Systems' WebLogic application server and the open-source PostgreSQL database. "There are a couple of agents we need to work through, that have encumbrances," Steeves said, where Sun doesn't hold enough rights to release the code under CDDL. These modules include agents for Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) technology, Sybase's database and IBM's WebSphere middleware. "We intend to release them once we've worked through the licensing," he added. Sun will also provide documentation for the agents along with the source code for the Solaris Cluster Automated Test Environment (SCATE) so that developers can test new agents they develop, Steeves said. Agents written using Open HA Cluster will run on Cluster Express, a binary version of Solaris Cluster, which Sun plans to release in a few weeks, Steeves said. The agents will also run on the latest version of Sun's commercial clustering product, Solaris Cluster 3.2, which debuted in January, and runs on the Solaris 9 and 10 operating systems. The second donation will likely appear in December, Steeves said, and will include code for the Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition, software that enables multisite disaster recovery. At the end of the 18-month period, Sun will release the code for the core Solaris Cluster infrastructure along with more documentation and additional SCATE infrastructure tests. In total, Sun will make around 2 million lines of clustering source code available, Steeves said. By comparison, Sun's donation of Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) software to the open-source community represents over 6 million lines of code. Â
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BURLINGTON, Mass.--Sun Microsystems will create an open-source project around its Solaris 10 operating system by the end of the year, company executives said Monday.
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One of the principal products in the LAMP open source arsenal will become a Sun Microsystems product, possibly by the end of this quarter.
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Sun Microsystems will pay US$1 billion for Swedish software company MySQL, whose open-source database is used for some of the most widely visited Web sites in the world.
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As interest grows in the open source suite, Sun decides to offer back-line support for firms that distribute OpenOffice.org.
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Ziff Davis - Sun's plans to offer Solaris code to the open-source community leaves some analysts scratching their heads.