Thursday, January 17, 2008

Good move, congratulations MySQL and Sun!

Its already a day old, but the news is as hot as ever. Sun will acquire MySQL before the end of the year.

Congratulation to MySQL and Sun!

And well done to all who were involved in making this deal, in particular, those I know personally: Marten, Monty, David, Zack and Kaj!

As I mentioned to Kaj, I am sure that MySQL has a very bright future under the wings of Sun. A deal for $1 billion made in 5 weeks can only mean both sides are extremely motivated to make it work.

I have just 3 concerns:
  • I hope that the MySQL web-site will not disappear into the Sun web-site like the proverbial needle in a haystack! Sun's download page alone is as big as the MySQL web-site ;) I would like to see a mysql.sun.com, where we can find our way around easily.

  • And the second is similar to the first but relates to the people. There is a massive difference between dealing with a company that has 400 employees, and one with 34000! I hope that this deal will not affect the access we have to the decision makers, the community support team and the developers.

  • Thirdly, Sun wants to sell MySQL to enterprise customers, but I want to be involved in a database that is there for everyone. I am concerned that the non-paying customers, which is a large part of the community, may become neglected.
I know that Kaj and many others at MySQL will be working hard to alleviate these concerns, so thanks in advance. Time will tell how successful they are. But they can be sure, in this quest they have my full support!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Paul, greetings for our staff meeting in Orlando! Thanks a lot for the kind words and your support. Details as the future of the web site will be hashed out in the weeks to come. We (as the community team) concur that parts of the web site should remain separate and easy to find. So this is something we will be pushing for. I could imagine that we will revamp the mysql.org domain for that (which currently just redirects to the DevZone, to concentrate all community-related content.

Regarding the direct access to people: I don't think this will change. Most likely the email addresses will change (AFAIK it's firstname.lastname@sun.com), but please don't hesitate to contact me or others like you used to do!

Regarding your third concern: I actually expect the opposite to happen. I have high hopes that we will finally get more resources to expand and improve our community interaction and support.