I attended a panel session at the South by Southwest Interactive conference recently on the topic of high-tech startups in Europe.  The panel included Marten Mickos (former CEO of MySQL, now at Eucalyptus), Resham Sohoni (CEO of Seedcamp), Peter Robinett (Bubble Foundry) and Felix Petersen (Nokia).  It was interesting to learn about some of the initiatives, like Seedcamp, which are investing in and promoting startup companies like Erply, and Codility coming out of eastern europe. These companies are small, but they have big ambition and are leveraging open source and cloud infrastructures to keep their costs low.

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Oracle’s plans for Sun’s OSS. The UK’s updated OSS strategy. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Oracle’s plans for Sun’s OSS
# Oracle’s MySQL strategy slide.

# eWeek reported that database thought leaders are divided on Oracle MySQL.

# Savio Rodrigues and Computerworld on Oracle’s plans for MySQL, other open source assets.

# Zack Urlocker is leaving Oracle/Sun/MySQL.

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Dennis Wolf, former MySQL CFO, has been undergoing Plasmapheresis treatment in the last week and despite a mild setback due to an infection, he will be checking out of the hospital today to continue rehab as an outpatient.  Dennis reports that he has increased mobility in his leg and that the test for Devic's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis has come back negative.  So there's a bit of a mystery as to what has caused this NMO flareup, but …

This tweet from former MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos caught my eye. It shows a trend of increased demand for MySQL and PostgresSQL expertise while job postings on job websites for  those with Oracle and Ingres expertise declined.

I was a little shocked by the graph until you realize it’s just a trend. I then looked at the absolute number of jobs requesting database expertise and the story quickly becomes clear….

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Since the European Commission announced it was opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle with a focus on MySQL there has been no shortage of opinion written about Oracle’s impending ownership of MySQL and its impact on MySQL users and commercial partners, as well as MySQL’s business model, dual licensing and the GPL.

In order to try and bring some order to the conversation, we have brought together some of the most referenced blog posts and news stories in chronological order. Part one, below, takes us from the announcement of the EC’s in-depth investigation up to the eve of the communication of the EC’s Statement of Objections. We will continue to update part two until either the acquisition or the EC’s investigation …

Dear Commissioner Kroes,

Last week, former MySQL CEO Mårten Mickos wrote you a letter urging approval of Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems1, asserting that Oracle’s ownership of MySQL (as part of the Sun acquisition) will increase competition in the market.

As a long-time MySQL user, a former MySQL AB staff member2 and a participant in or consultant to a wide range of other open source and free software projects3, I found Mårten’s conclusion to be optimistic at best.

Oracle’s ownership of MySQL will lead to what the commission fears – greater costs and less choice in the DBMS market.

In making this point, I’ll challenge the three …

Funding for Engine Yard and DataSync. Red Hat and Microsoft joint support. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Engine Yard raised $19m in Series C funding from the likes of Benchmark, DAG, Presidio and Amazon.

# Red Hat and Microsoft are now providing joint support for virtualization interoperability options.

# DataSync raised $1.2m and announced a partnership with SugarCRM.

# Simon Phipps began building a scorecard to …

Patents. M&A. Adoption. Business strategies. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

This bumper edition of 451 CAOS Links is brought to you courtesy of the Open World Forum’s temperamental wireless connection.

Patents
# Red Hat urged the Supreme Court to to make clear that it excludes software from patentability, while the SFLC and the FSF also filed briefs with the US Supreme Court arguing against software patents.

Investment and M&A
# The WSJ …

“We’re both in the transportation business. We have a 747, and they have a Toyota.”

The comparison of Oracle’s database and MySQL, made by Oracle president Charles Phillips at the 2004 Vortex Conference was undoubtedly meant as a criticism, but it so graphically demonstrated the differing business strategies and selling-points of the two products that MySQL executives began citing it themselves.

It is also a comparison that explains how the two products could potentially co-exist within a single company, as they seem likely to do following the announcement that Sun has agreed to be acquired by Oracle.

Much of the MySQL-related coverage of the impending acquisition has focused on the likelihood of Oracle killing-off the …

Some weeks ago Luke Kaines stated his observation that “requiring copyright attribution is a greater sin than providing commercial add-ons”.

His perspective was based on the theory that requiring copyright assignment restricts the developer community, a theory that was apparently repeated by Dave Neary during the recent OSBC event (I missed that session due to our CAOS client lunch).

Daniel Chalef of KnowledgeTree provided some evidence of Dave’s perspective and also the contrary view that the assignment of copyright is critical not just for vendor-dominated projects but also for community projects such as The Mozilla Foundation, The …