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).
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!
It's dual-license with free and paid versions. Use it at home, run a web server, etc., and it's free, but with the conditions of the GPL. But you can pay for it and not have to worry about the derivative work provisions of the GPL when bundling it with your software. Then there's also the enterprise support.
Aww crap there goes a perfectly good mid tier database... Sun will bury this thing under so much Java Ill have to get my postgre books out..