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Old 20th April 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Default Oracle Agrees to Acquire Sun Microsystems

So, Larry wants to get into hardware...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/te.../21sun.html?hp

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Old 20th April 2009
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oh man, I hope they don't merge MySQL and Oracle Database lol
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Old 20th April 2009
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Or worse PostgreSQL and Oracle
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Old 20th April 2009
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Well, if this is not the end for MySQL, I don't know what is.

At least, that is it for the MySQL trademark. One of the forks will take over under a different name, of course. But it might get people moving across to a real database like PostGres.
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Old 20th April 2009
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AFAIK PostgreSQL used shipped with Solaris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostgreSQL
Quote:
In October 2005, John Loiacono, executive vice president of software at Sun Microsystems, commented: "We're not going to OEM Microsoft but we are looking at PostgreSQL right now,"[7] although no specifics were released at that time. By November 2005, Sun had announced support for PostgreSQL.[8] By June 2006, Sun Solaris 10 (6/06 release) shipped with PostgreSQL.
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Old 20th April 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
Well, if this is not the end for MySQL, I don't know what is.
Why would this be the end of MySQL? If Oracle were to kill off MySQL, they would be guaranteed to make no profit off of it, & Postgres might become a really viable competitor. If they keep MySQL around, they can reap the benefits of offering professional services for MySQL customers along with leveraging control over Postgres' future marketshare.

In fact, with Oracle owning both, they can make sure that "improvements" which might be going into MySQL will somehow be delayed, not be as good, become really hard to implement -- making sure that their flagship commercial product continues to be the "best" solution for big customers with deep pockets.

As always, this is merely conjecture, but there is no reason to think that Oracle would blatantly pull the plug on MySQL when ownership could mean that they can capitalize on yet another revenue stream.

And for history buffs, the early database companies (ie. Tandem...) made their own hardware for their database. There can be a lot of performance & stability gains made when the entire system is owned by one entity (what is old is new again...). However, the disadvantage is that they can move away from the de facto marketplace standards & become quite closed.

Oh, the drama of the marketplace...
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Old 21st April 2009
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I think, not that Oracle will take any steps to kill MySQL, but that the community will be very uncomfortable with the clear conflict of interest between Improving MySQL and selling Oracle.So the shift will be made to a MySQL descendant that is not under their direct control.
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Old 21st April 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
So the shift will be made to a MySQL descendant that is not under their direct control.
Long live Postgres.

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Old 21st April 2009
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Ars Technica has some interesting tea-leaf reading. This writer doesn't think Oracle will kill MySQL, but not being a big MySQL fan (even though, or possibly because, I work with it forty hours a week), I really wouldn't miss it.

More interesting in my opinion, though, is this part;

Quote:
Oracle's database software is heavily deployed on the Solaris platform, so Oracle clearly has relevant business interests in the future of Solaris. Oracle is, however, also very strongly committed to the Linux operating system. Oracle sells its own Linux support services on top of Red Hat's stack and is also as a major contributor to the Linux kernel. As a major player in both worlds, Oracle has every reason to want to encourage greater collaboration between the Linux and OpenSolaris communities. I suspect that this will lead Oracle to rethink Sun's licensing decisions for OpenSolaris.

When Sun liberated the Solaris source code, the company deliberately chose a license that would make it difficult for the code to be adapted for use in the Linux kernel. Oracle will probably dual-license the Solaris code so that it is available under the GPLv2 in addition to the CDDL. This will allow key Solaris innovations—such as ZFS and DTrace—to be ported to Linux.
This is interesting, because the presence of these tools was quickly becoming a key differentiating feature between Linux and more free Unixen. I guess that's good for everyone in the long run, but as a fan of BSD and of non-copyleft licenses in general, I would selfishly be a little disappointed if this came to pass.
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Old 21st April 2009
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Is it even possible to really kill MySQL?
MySQL is GPL, so if Oracle does decide to pull the plug a fork can be started by the FOSS people -- I know it will be a serious setback and that it sounds easier than it is, but MySQL won't `die' ...

As a sidenote, I didn't know Oracle was so big that they could take over Sun ...
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Old 21st April 2009
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Bigness isn't required, just money. And that, Oracle has.

MySQL already has a good number of forks. But I'm a PostgreSQL user, so I only deploy MySQL when an application demands it.
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Old 21st April 2009
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I wonder what Oracle plans to do with Solaris?
Make Solaris the primary platform for Oracle DB?

What could they do with Postgres?
Even Sun's strategy on Postgres seemed unclear to me.
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Old 21st April 2009
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PostgreSQL is an open project, but, because the database is BSD licensed, Sun (now Oracle) could produce commercial, closed enhancements, or use the code within a commercial product.

IMHO this does not, in any way, affect PostgreSQL as we know and use it. Its destiny is not tied to this acquisition, directly.
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Old 21st April 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ocicat View Post
Long live Postgres.
Hail to the king.

I can imagine that Oracle will invest money in building / improving MySQL -> Oracle conversion tools, perhaps making an Oracle "lite" more MySQL friendly, that sort of thing. Perhaps they have - I stopped paying attention to Oracle about 7 years ago. Prior to that I spent most of my time with MSSQL and Oracle. Following that almost all Postgres or no SQL at all (object databases mostly).

Bulk loading is one thing Postgres and Oracle had back then that MySQL did not, at least not efficient bulk loading.
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Old 21st April 2009
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April 22nd,

Oracle in a surprise decision has announce a new product, OrJavaMySQLSolarisSPARC 1.0.

This amalgamate of bellybutton lint will compete directly Microsoft's product line, A Oracle representive adds, "We definitely believe we're evenly matched, actually.. maybe we can buy them as well!".

EOF, All bacon rights reserved.. etcetera.. etcetera..
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Old 21st April 2009
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Old 22nd April 2009
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Most likely, IMO, would be an effort to bring MySQL up to the point where it can become Oracle Lite, to be used as a the gateway drug to Oracle Express, which is just a stepping-stone to the full Oracle. All with nice, for-pay migration tools. Get'em hooked on the free stuff, then reel them in for the big bucks!!

My bet is that we are going to see a lot of development going toward creating a nice spectrum with MySQL+scripting-language-du-jour+whatever-OS on the one end and Oracle DB+Java+Solaris+SPARC on the other, with MySQL on Solaris in the middle.

At the same time, we'll see a nice push to get Oracle optimised for all the storage goodness in Solaris, and a stronger focus on storage hardware solutions/products.

And, hopefully, some consolidating and strengthening of the Enterprise Java stack, again, all nicely optmised for the heavilly threaded T1/T2/the-next-SPARC architecture.

In theory, Oracle can become the next IBM, providing everything you could want in a DB server, storage server, Java server, etc. With all the nice expensive support staff in-house.

As a vertical, all-in-one-shop setup, they're looking really good. Especially if you look at things in the long-term, and skip over the knee-jerk reactions.

The bits that will be interesting to watch are OpenOffice.org, VirtualBox, and all the other non-DB-related bits that SUN had. Those don't really fit into the new Oracle landsape, IMO.

But, I'm just lowly network admin, what could I know?
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Old 22nd April 2009
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Most likely, IMO, would be an effort to bring MySQL up to the point where it can become Oracle Lite, to be used as a the gateway drug to Oracle Express, which is just a stepping-stone to the full Oracle. My bet is that we are going to see a lot of development going toward creating a nice spectrum of software from MySQL+scripting-language-du-jour on the one end and Oracle DB+Java stack on the other, with MySQL-on-Solaris in the middle.

At the same time, we'll see a nice push to get Oracle optimised for all the storage goodness in Solaris, and a stronger focus on storage hardware solutions/products.

And, hopefully, some consolidating and strengthening of the Enterprise Java stack, again, all nicely optmised for the heavilly threaded T1/T2/the-next-SPARC architecture.

As a vertical, all-in-one-shop setup, they're looking really good. I wouldn't be surprised to see a return to the hardware-database-appliance model.

The bits that will be interesting to watch are OpenOffice.org, VirtualBox, and all the other non-DB-related bits that SUN had.
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Last edited by phoenix; 22nd April 2009 at 10:49 PM. Reason: typos
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Old 22nd April 2009
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There are enough groups wanting to pickup the OpenOffice.org ball and run with it, if Sun would only drop it.
Novell is one group that maintains a very nice patchset to openoffice. (I think the Ubuntu openoffice uses it.)
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Old 25th April 2009
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http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/...o-be-free.html
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