then Google must buy them both.
They would rule the world.
Looming over this chain of events is the Death Star...
Posted on 01/16/2008 7:16:06 AM PST by Fractal Trader
Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to buy open-source software maker MySQL AB for $1 billion, and said its fiscal second-quarter net income nearly doubled on boosted margins, according to preliminary results.
Sun is paying $800 million in cash and assuming $200 million in options to acquire MySQL. The Swedish company makes open-source database software used by companies such as online search leader Google Inc., social-networking ...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Didn’t see this one coming. OTOH, I think the future is in open source, so this makes sense. Can they compete with the Oracle monster? Time will tell.
ping
Yea spending $1 Billion on something that has been for all intents and purposes free doesn’t sound like a good investment to me.
Course how much did YouTube go for....
Hopefully they’ll keep it free for most users.
Sales of services, subscriptions, and training
Make it capable enough and complicated enough that there is a market for expert consultants and for add-ons. There's also the hardware tie-in for complete systems.
You make money on open source products by SELLING THEM, just like closed source.
And Just like Closed Source Software the real money is in Support Contracts not software licenses.
Companies make Money on OpenSource software all the time.
Apple is at the top tier for consumer open source sales.
Then IBM and Redhat make a boat load of $$$$ in the Business world on OpenSource Software.
You should also note, that even Oracle lets you download and use their database for FREE, you just pay out the $$$$ for support.
Wow, this affects me bigtime. I’m a heavy duty Mysql user, have even written a replication utility for Mysql. $1 Billion, Holy cow! Mysql is actually the biggest database system out there, it crept up on Oracle and SQLServer.
I assume it would be the same way Novell is trying to cash in on Suse: develop it as a base for its business products and get free development from the community. It gives them an in-road into users of MySQL.
We’ll see if it works. I think there is a lot of potential for open source software that simply has not been explored. It’s a “new” paradigm (new in that some people are just now discovering it even though it’s been around about as long as commercial software).
Looming over this chain of events is the Death Star...
“Give away the razors, sell the blades.”
>> MySql has a free community database, suitable for single users or for development. There commercial database is not free, technical services is not free either.
You must be talking about (Microsoft) Sql Server, not mysql.
mysql is free for much more than “single users and development” uses. OTOH, Sql Server Developer Edition is just what you describe.
MySQL’s major revenue stream comes from the top cell phone carriers premium support contracts. MySQL is optimized for mega tranactions per second. That’s how they keep track of each active cellphone’s IMEI as it moves from one cell to another. The software is free but MySQL responds to its big clients’ needs first.
This is big!
Ok.. you just go ahead and develop some application that you use to make money in your business with what you download from Oracle, and we'll just see how "free" it is.. Read their terms closely. Most of the stuff they have available for download are for your personal use only, and most have been disabled in some way as to make them useless when applied to an enterprise class application in a production environment. For instance, Oracle10g Express that comes with APEX.. Install that on your machine, and sure, you can develop with it, however no one else outside of your local machine can access anything that you develop with it. Great to learn with however. ;)
Isn’t that a fully armed and operational battle station?
It will be once Darth Gates has acquired all of the other satellite systems' capabilities.
I bet you wouldn’t turn down some Google stock even though their business was built on giving away search results for free.
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