OStatic

As news and analysis about the future of MySQL under Oracle made the rounds this week, the annual MySQL Conference and Expo also took place in Silicon Valley. New versions of MySQL arrived and were announced, and we asked Karen Tegan Padir, Sun's VP of MySQL and Software Infrastructure, several questions about where MySQL and open source are headed. While Oracle's plans may be different from Sun's, and the acquisition wasn't up for discussion, Karen shed some light on what's important in the new versions, and how Sun wants to keep MySQL's direction simple.

MySQL founder Monty Widenius, who left Sun Microsystems earlier this year, has an interesting blog post up on why he thinks Oracle is acquiring Sun. In it, he also considers several possible scenarios for MySQL going forward, including the possibility that Oracle might kill MySQL, which it has competed with. Monty's opinion on these matters is probably as informed as anyone's, and here are some thoughts on what he says.

This post from ZDNet and this one from Matt Asay provide some good angles on the momentous changes we've seen on the open source front this week. The fallout and immense industry changes that we're likely to see as Oracle digests Sun Microsystems are staggering to consider. As Dana Blankenhorn says, Oracle is going to control three crown jewels of open source in the form of Java, OpenOffice, and MySQL--among the most widely used projects and among those with the largest developer communities outside Linux itself. Meanwhile Matt points out that only Red Hat is thriving as a public, pure open source company, which I would agree with. So what has Red Hat done right?

This week in Silicon Valley, the MySQL Conference and Expo is underway, and there are already questions appearing about whether the speakers will have to perform last minute tweaks to their addresses in light of yesterday's news that Oracle is acquiring MySQL's parent, Sun Microsystems. I doubt if there will be a whole lot said on that topic, but the conference has some interesting events, and Sun has also just announced MySQL Cluster 7.0 (a carrier grade version of MySQL), and the preview version of MySQL 5.4. Here's what's in the new releases, when they're available, and what's slated for the conference.

Only weeks after a possible IBM acquisition of Sun Microsystems fizzled, news is out today that Oracle is to buy Sun for $7.4 billion--in the same neighborhood as the price IBM was said to have been looking at. An Oracle acquisition of Sun has substantial implications for Sun, currently one of the largest public open source companies. It promises to put Oracle squarely in the hardware business, but most notably, Oracle will now own MySQL. As Matt Asay notes, Oracle already sought to buy MySQL in 2007 for $850 million, ?which was the third time the company had attempted to acquire it. Is this good news or bad news for MySQL?

I can safely say when I covered the speculation that IBM and Sun were wrapping up the finer points of the acquisition Friday, I figured that if there was anything left to say come Monday, it would deal with idiosyncracies of the agreed-upon terms. Even though the announcement is imminent reports were not officially sanctioned by IBM or Sun, there was no reason to believe the sources were dishonest about the information they gave. It still doesn't seem there was dishonesty, or that these sources made wildly off-base assumptions about what was to come. It seemed as though IBM's purchase of Sun Microsystems was set to proceed, until late Saturday evening, when IBM and Sun broke off negotiations, according to Bloomberg.

There had been much debate about how an IBM acquisition would affect Sun's open source efforts. As those questions move even further into the hypothetical realm, far more troubling questions loom about Sun's next potential buyer -- or its choice to weather the storm on its own.

According to the New York Times and Bloomberg, IBM's purchase of Sun Microsystems is imminent. The official announcement and terms of the acquisition will most likely be made public on Monday, but a late in the day announcement hasn't been ruled out. It's estimated that the purchase will cost IBM nearly $7 billion.

There's been much speculation and discussion both here at OStatic and elsewhere about what this means for Sun and its open source projects.