Commercial Open Source is a game changer, but it is also a game of balances between different interests: the free user and the paying customer, the individual developer and the partner and the corporate developer, short-term adoption and long-term revenue. There are a number of different business models for OpenSource that attempt to navigate these interests and Sun follows a combination of support, services, hardware/systems drag, and Add-Ons.

Big Cats by micalngelo

“Every startup CEO is at least thinking about the need to cut back right now” – Michael Arrington

“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffet

I’ll give you one guess as to which man I’m listening to. So no, not every startup CEO is cutting back. Apple spent their time innovating during the last downturn and look where it got them. I’m thrilled to have just passed out big, healthy profit-sharing bonuses to all of our employees this week for the 5th consecutive year. We think and hope they’ll be even bigger next year.

Karim Lakhani has put together a business case study on Wikipedia. It is worth noting that Wikipedia uses MySQL as its database engine. 

This is a picture with a lot of impact. This was from Seedcamp. The question asked was “What tools will you use?”.

Mårten pointed this out to us at the opening speeches at the Sun Database Group Developer’s Meeting. Its interesting to see what technologies are used. MySQL is by far, the most popular database server that all startups seem to use (though to be fair, I see CouchDB and PostgreSQL there too). PHP is about the most popular language (followed closely by Java, then Ruby). Its amazing to see what kind of technologies people are using to build the companies of tomorrow.

Find out more about it, at the Zeitgeist redux on the seedcamp blog.

Smithy commented on my blog post about the rumor of Monty leaving Sun with a pointer to an article on ComputerWorld Finland that mentions:

Widenius told to Computerworld Finland on Friday that negotiations are still on.

Meanwhile, Matt Asay, who seems to think Monty actually has left Sun (even though all other reports have been clear to mention that this is unconfirmed), writes of a new investment Monty has made.

Last week I speculated about the impact of Monty leaving Sun. In the end, if he does stay, it’s wonderful for Sun. If he leaves, he will no …

ValleyWag reports that MySQL’s Monty Widenius is no longer “MySQL’s”. Some folks have known that Monty has not been happy in his current position; this leads me to believe the rumor is true (though of course an official announcement is the only confirmation).

So what does this mean for MySQL? Well, honestly, if a product falls apart because one out of 300 employees leaves, it was probably doomed anyway. There are plenty of capable employees left, and being owned by Sun means that there are many more resources they can tap as well.

What will the official company announcement be? My prediction is (more…)

A couple of articles have been published recently that point to a growing realisation/admission about the role that open source will play in the future of enterprise software.

In “The Commercial Bear Hug of Open Source” Dan Woods details the various methods by which open source has become increasingly commercial in recent years, while in “The Microsoft-Novell Deal and Trust in Princes” Bruce Byfield discusses the relationship between business and open source.

Neither article is perfect. Woods, in particular, appears to paint open source in the role of the glorious failure - failing to surpass traditional licensing models and being subsumed into the mainstream (a subject …

I have always considered MySQL as the best model for open source companies. Their approach to the market, the execution of different business models, their relation with the community or the way their work internally as a virtual organization have shown an innovative and successful example of how an IT company in the 21st century can be managed.

The agreement with Sun, announced last January, was the crowning point of all the efforts put in the company since the beginning, proving the success of their innovative model. Since then I have been trying to put some order in my ideas about their model and summarize them in a few blocks that could serve as a quick guide to emulate their success. I discussed my ideas with Henrik Ingo, a friend of mine …

At the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo, Jeff Rothschild of Facebook.com delivered a keynote entitled "A Match Made in Heaven? The Social Graph and the Database". See people's blog posts on the Forge at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/MySQLConf2008ThursdayNotes#A_Match_Made_in_Heaven.3F_The_Social_Graph_and_the_Database

At the 2008 MySQL User Conference and Expo, Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party delivered a keynote on "Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties".