The latest from the MySQL community

My CAOS colleague Matt Aslett wrote recently about how we expect to see an uptick in open source merger and acquisition activity given the current economic conditions and bargains for the larger, mostly proprietary players. Matt also discusses the difficulty of further VC funding, though we have seen some significant investment announcements, such as Open-Xchange, Infobright and others. Still, Matt is probably right that funding will be harder to come by for any company, open source or not.

I also continue to see a number of startup and younger open source vendors — would-be fundees — that are opting to hold off on venture funding and stick to building up business, customers and …

I just noticed that Sun/MySQL has dropped SCO OpenServer from its list of supported operating systems for MySQL 5.1 and higher (along with Mac OS X 10.3 and QNX).

It is not a massive surprise to see MySQL doing this given SCO’s current position but MySQL teamed up with SCO in the midst of its controversial legal claims against IBM et al, so I thought the end of the deal warranted a quick mention.

At the time Marten Mickos defended the deal by claiming that he hoped working with MySQL would educate SCO’s executives:

“In a partnership you exchange thoughts,” he said. “If you exchange thoughts hopefully the other side will listen to you. We understand …

…is the title of this post written by Tim Bray a few days ago in which he outlined the directions he would like to see his employer take to improve its fortunes.

He also invited others to continue the thought process. Many have already done so (I’ll include the best in tomorrow’s CAOS Links post) and given my recent constructive criticism of Sun’s open source strategy I feel compelled to provide some answers as well as questions.

I’m sure there are lots of things Sun should be doing with relation to storage and servers and processors and client devices, but I’m going to stick to what I know. What would I do?

Light a fire under MySQL
When Sun announced its acquisition …

Commercial Open Source is a game changer, but it is also a game of balances between different interests: the free user and the paying customer, the individual developer and the partner and the corporate developer, short-term adoption and long-term revenue. There are a number of different business models for OpenSource that attempt to navigate these interests and Sun follows a combination of support, services, hardware/systems drag, and Add-Ons.

Recently I burned a copy of OpenSolaris 2008.11 RC1 and used it with Songbird (using pkg install SUNWsongbird)  and Fluendo MP3 Decoder (which is free for OpenSolaris),  Flash and soon I had a setup in my bedroom which I love to call OpenSolaris Home Theatre Edition that I used to listen to my songs collection and watch online shows that I controlled via Remote Desktop  which to me was a serious contender to those Media Centers out there. 

However I realized that while I wanted to …

Recently I burned a copy of OpenSolaris 2008.11 RC1 and used it with Songbird (using pkg install SUNWsongbird)  and Fluendo MP3 Decoder (which is free for OpenSolaris),  Flash and soon I had a setup in my bedroom which I love to call OpenSolaris Home Theatre Edition that I used to listen to my songs collection and watch online shows that I controlled via Remote Desktop  which to me was a serious contender to those Media Centers out there. 

However I realized that while I wanted to …

Recently I burned a copy of OpenSolaris 2008.11 RC1 and used it with Songbird (using pkg install SUNWsongbird)  and Fluendo MP3 Decoder (which is free for OpenSolaris),  Flash and soon I had a setup in my bedroom which I love to call OpenSolaris Home Theatre Edition that I used to listen to my songs collection and watch online shows that I controlled via Remote Desktop  which to me was a serious contender to those Media Centers out there. 

However I realized that while I wanted to …

Last week I found out about the Open Source Economy Conference 2008 held in Putrajaya, Malaysia on the 19th of November 2008. Its co-organised by Sun and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC). Its also the “launch” of MySQL in Malaysia.

I only mention this because I’m speaking - check the agenda out. Don’t hesitate to register now.

Sun Microsystems always seems to be forced to defend itself, whether it is the company’s ongoing strategy amid dimmed revenue and earnings or its participation in open source. As one who recently considered the fate of a somewhat weakened Sun, I’d also like to highlight a recent series of promising technologies and efforts — dominated by open source — from the venerable technology giant.

Despite continued doubts, Sun continues to focus its strategy on open source software, which is finding its way into the company’s Solaris OS, storage technology with ZFS file system and MySQL database and elsewhere. The company recently launched a new Web site where it is figuratively letting its open source ponytail down and more succinctly staking out its place and …

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Juanjo Hierro from the Morfeo Project, a Spanish community of open source communities set up to speed up the development of Service Oriented Architectures-related software standards and create business opportunities for local suppliers.

Hierro explained that the Morfeo Project is based on “The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits”, articulated by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Solution:

“When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.”

Christensen’s law has also been used by Tim O’Reilly …