Blog: Pete Loshin: Sun to buy MySQL, Part One

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Sun to buy MySQL, Part One

Unless you've been under a rock, you know Sun is buying MySQL AB. That was news, last week. But it was also rather puzzling news, in many ways, and worth taking some time out to consider the implications.

So, for Part One of my coverage of the Sun/MySQL deal, I'm mostly going to offer a bunch of links. For example, the Yahoo! News breaking news story: Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion. You get the basics of the deal here, but you also get some of the issues spelled out for you: Sun is a "server maker"; meaning, they're a hardware company. Other key points to consider:

Sun expects to spread MySQL into big corporations, who already buy Sun hardware, as well as bolster existing Sun partnerships such as those with IBM and Dell.
Sun is a software company, too, and an open source software company at that. They, like IBM, see offering open source software as a selling point for their hardware.
MySQL is dwarfed by the competition from Oracle and Microsoft who dominate in the traditional database market, but MySQL owns the web database market, which is growing (while the more traditional market may be stagnating).

The Yahoo! article gives a pretty good precis of the situation, but you need to dig a little deeper to figure out what exactly is going on. For example, they don't say much about the extent to which Sun controls some very important pieces of software already, including Java, OpenSolaris, StarOffice, NetBeans, and more. Nor do they mention Sun's existing relationship with the other star open source DBMS project, PostgreSQL. For more about Sun, MySQL and PostgreSQL, check out Sun buys MySQL - what about PostgreSQL?, and Sun Purchasing MySQL and PostgreSQL advances from PostgreSQL.

Check back next week for my take on the implications and impact this deal with ultimately have, but in the meantime, here are some of the more interesting articles/blog entries I've found in the past few days about it:

Ars Technica has a "breaking" story w/ some commentary: Sun targets open source LAMP stack with MySQL acquisition
Here's the MySQL blog entry announcing the acquisition: Sun acquires MySQL
Betsy Schiffman at Wired seems to think the deal is overpriced, in Sun Pays Up the Wazoo -- $1 Billion -- for MySQL; she cites analyst estimates of MySQL revenues being just $75-80 million, rather low for a $1 billion deal.
Dvorak likewise doesn't mince his words; in The Sun-MySQL deal stinks he suggests the deal is horrible (for MySQL) and the only winner will be Oracle (!).
More from MySQL blogs here Talking to MySQL Founders Monty and David on Sun
MySQL and Sun - my thoughts from David Van Couvering

For the record, the official press releases here: