MySQL daddy quitting Sun?

MySQL co-founder Michael "Monty" Widenius may quit Sun Microsystems, less than seven months after Sun paid $1bn for his free database outfit. Yesterday, Valleywag reported that Monty - the primary architect of the original MySQL database - had resigned from the company, and though a MySQL marketing genius called the news "a …

[Anonymous Coward]

"engineers are a dime a dozen"

"We have developed our engineering team to be independent of single persons" == "Suck it up, Monty, you're not that important. Don't let the door hit you in the ass."

And this in a nutshell is why all my servers are now Dells running Linux. It wasn't the price difference, it was the apathetic support.

[EnigmaForce]

Hyperbole much Reg?

So one senior manager has left, another *possibly* may go - and it's an "exodus"?

Sheesh.

[Qwixel]

Just another cog

and a replacable one. And if that is the case, why does one cog get paid 100x what another cog gets paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I made millions of $$$, I would leave, too!!!

Man, talk about the world-wide cruising he will be doing...

[Solomon Grundy]

Another One Takes the Cake

There's one less Open Saucer out there. What difference does it make? Technical superiority isn't the issue: but the F/OSS crowd hasn't caught on yet. After another 10-13 years and the Linux/OSS products will be ready for the real world.

But just remember, the FOSS guys that aren't making any money in 10 years will still be whining about monopolies, unfair business practices and market share. Jesus what Fagots - and they wonder why no one takes them seriously. Software is nothing but a tool - it's up to you how to use it.

[Pristen Power]

Monty's arrogance brought him down.

Monty made a fortune in the Sun buyout, even though he's a marginal contributor. Lots of folks resent him, and his way of threatening whenever he doesn't get his way. It's time for him to go, maybe that what's the founders like, but no one else likes working that way.

[David]

Is it not unfair...

...for a community project, driven in (a large) part by open sauce developers, to be sold to a Corp. for a f#?@ing Billion?

<irony>I wonder how much of the billion was given to the contributors</irony>

[theotherone]

how

how can you buy a FREE database outfit for 1 billion dollars?

[Solomon Grundy]

@how

That's the biggest trick isn't it? How can a 'company' that gives away it's product be worth a billion dollars?

It's easy; and it's the biggest swindle in centuries. You get people (the "community") to do all the work for free - then you sell it to a real business. The FOSS crowd is giving away their work, for some strange reason... While FOSS is great in principal, real companies look at it is a joke; 'cause when projects do work they can be bought for far less than it would take to develop them internally.

The only people that profit from FOSS are the people that run 'companies' that sell out to traditional businesses (you know, the ones that make money)

[Anonymous Coward]

Stock to Sell

He had to stay on for the acquisition to get bonuses and options. Once he had those in hand there was no need to hang around. Now he can go join/start another small venture.

[foo_bar_baz]

@Solomon Grundy

How will I know when Linux is "ready for the real world"?

I get my living from working with Linux & F/OSS at a Tier 1 Global Company. It's committed to Linux and uses it extensively in internal projects and as a platform for its products. No, it's not IBM, Dell, Google, Yahoo or Oracle - all of which would apply for the above. The company I work for, like these, is an industry leader not only in its field but a significant player in global business.

Just because you don't see Linux & F/OSS in your own daily life it doesn't mean it's not there. It's also pretty funny to read how Linux vendors such as Novell, RedHat and Ubuntu are slammed on these forums as being non-viable businesses. I don't know any details but my guess is the company I work at is paying significant amounts to a Linux vendor.

Keep trolling, I'm just grateful for the time I spent on learning Linux - it puts the real world bread on my real world table.

[foo_bar_baz]

Solomon Grundy again

"The FOSS crowd is giving away their work, for some strange reason" .... snore ... I guess companies like IBM aren't quite getting the joke since they plough lots of work back into the "community".

For some F/OSS is about "community", but for many big businesses it's a great business proposition as you say. However, when they participate in the development they help improve the product. When using GPL, you give your work away for free but get back the improvements. Who's using who?

And so what if the company is bought up or closes the source? The source is out there and can be branched if it goes awry. See SSH.

How do you reconcile your confilicting statements that a billion dollars is a trick and on the other hand projects that work "can be bought for far less than it would to develop them internally" Hmm.

I'm starting to wonder why you spew all that FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL was not created by the community

"You get people (the "community") to do all the work for free - then you sell it to a real business. The FOSS crowd is giving away their work, for some strange reason."

This was never the case for MySQL, 98% of which was developed in-house by *paid* engineers.

MySQL has a big community that helps out with sending in bug reports, participating in forums, etc. But counted in lines of code, the community never contributed much.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Solomon Grundy

You come across as a bit of an idiot, quite frankly. Linux has been used by the big players for some years now. I come more from a Sun/HP background but, to give one example, one of the major banks I'm working for is now in the process of moving from Sun to Linux and another from Windows to Linux.

On the other hand I would agree that while MySQL has many strengths it's not a competitor of Sybase, Oracle or DB2 at the high end. Postgress might be getting thqt way though.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeat after me...

... open *source*

It's open *source*

We're not talking ketchup here.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Solomon Grundy

Who's payroll is this a ss on anyway?

As for companies using people, you don't think MS *EVER* uses people .. the paying customers ARE the beta testers .. sometimes we're the alpha testers, like for 2000, ME, and VISTA.

----------------

Sun engineer ... big deal, I wish the guy well, he helped create a nice database which is handy for many things.

[Absolute Cynic]

@Anonymous Coward

You should have mentioned Firebird. Anyone working with databases should try it out. It was originally the brainchild of Jim Starkey who was head hunted by MySQL to write a new backend incorporating ideas he has developed since the original for Firebird. He has now left MySQL ....

[Pat]

What about Ingres?

I would have thought Ingres would be worth a mention in terms of industry strength open source databases....

[foo_bar_baz]

@ cog

Dude, that 'cog' is the guy who started the company and wrote the software. 'My' in MySQL is his daughter's name though it has a dual English language meaning.

[paul]

@Solomon Grundy

who is using the family brain cell today?

[Chris]

@Absolute Cynic

I second your suggestion to check out Firebird. I've evaluated it for several projects and found it to be very feature rich - I only ended up plumping for PostgreSQL out of familiarity. As for MySQL, having had it corrupt my data due to misfeatures and bugs (with the InnoDB backend that's supposed to be a real relational database, unlike MyISAM) I'm reluctant to use it again.

As for Monty leaving Sun - if he really has - it's probably no great loss. MySQL has been technically deficient since its inception and the head honchos at MySQL AB did everyone a disservice when they tried to claim that features like referential integrity were unnecessary. I still find myself interviewing developers who believe constraints should be enforced solely at the application level, having been fooled by what was frankly marketing in the MySQL documentation.

[Name]

best you can do, trollboy?

"Jesus, what faggots"- classy, really classy.

(Engineer at a globally-known outfit, doing envelope-pushing research, using linux as a platform.. We have the choice of whatever tools we want- this one just happens to be the one that works best. Must be our latent homosexuality)

[Daniel B.]

@Chris

Man, you're spot-on with the very things that made me go back to PostgreSQL after the MySQL craze faded on me. I hated how the MyISAM backend was still being pushed, and the 3.x documentation insisted on telling us referential integrity and transactions were useless.

The funny thing is that the guy who actually pushed on this agenda of "no transactions" is the same guy who seems to be resigning. Maybe he's doing the whole MySQL team a favor?? I mean, the only other modern RDBMS that doesn't support transactions is MS Access, and you'd expect something like MySQL to be better than that! (And Access *does* have referential integrity!)

Even with the InnoDB engine, there are some quirks with MySQL that simply keep me off the thing. The day MyISAM tables turn into transactional, FK-supporting tables is the day that I *might* turn back to MySQL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving? Monty says he is still negotiating!

Rumors, rumors.

According to Finnish Computerworld he is still negotiating!

http://www.tietoviikko.fi/infra_docview.jsp?f_id=1408820