…is the title of this post written by Tim Bray a few days ago in which he outlined the directions he would like to see his employer take to improve its fortunes.

He also invited others to continue the thought process. Many have already done so (I’ll include the best in tomorrow’s CAOS Links post) and given my recent constructive criticism of Sun’s open source strategy I feel compelled to provide some answers as well as questions.

I’m sure there are lots of things Sun should be doing with relation to storage and servers and processors and client devices, but I’m going to stick to what I know. What would I do?

Light a fire under MySQL
When Sun announced its acquisition …

Sun updates MySQL Enterprise. The Microsoft/Novell deal is two years old. Nuxeo and Boxee get funding. Red Hat’s CEO on open source in a downturn. Steve Ballmer as a glove puppet. And more.

Press releases
Sun Enhances MySQL Enterprise With New Query Analyzer Tool to Boost Database Application Performance Sun Microsystems

Microsoft and Novell Mark Two Years of Interoperability Progress Microsoft

Nuxeo secures 2 million Euros and strengthens its board of directors and corporate governance Nuxeo

…

Red Hat’s chairman wins enterprising award. Sun updates StarOffice. Barracuda Networks acquires 3SP. Reaction to Sun’s reorganization. Barack Obama’s laptop. And more.

Press releases
Red Hat, Inc.’s Matthew Szulik Named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2008 Overall National Winner Ernst & Young

Ingres Launches Ingres Database 9.2 Ingres

Sun Microsystems Unveils StarOffice 9 Software Sun Microsystems

Red Hat Increases Authorization to Repurchase Common Stock Red …

Sun Microsystems slashes jobs in major restructuring. SpringSource gets Groovy with G2One. Novell goes after Red Hat. Sonatype confirms Marc Visser as new CEO. Neil Young’s new car. And more.

Press releases
Sun Microsystems Aligns Business with Global Economic Climate and Amplifies Growth Opportunities Across Open Source Platforms Sun Microsystems

SpringSource Acquires G2One Inc SpringSource

Novell Announces New Program to Aid Transition to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Novell

Zenoss Adds …

A busy week for Sun includes new product releases and an annual shareholders’ meeting. Microsoft tries to unseat open source with BizSpark for entrepreneurs. Who is making money from open source? Obama: Open source President? And more.

Press releases
IBM, Sun Microsystems Launch ODF Toolkit Union To Grow Adoption, Community and Software Innovation Sun Microsystems

Sun Unveils New Systems And Storage Solutions For MySQL Sun Microsystems

Microsoft Jump-Starts Global Entrepreneurs With BizSpark Microsoft

…

I wrote yesterday that Christensen’s law of Conservation of Attractive Profits could be used to explain why open source vendors are increasingly turning to hybrid development and licensing strategies to generate revenue from open source.

Before I could think about doing so Arjen Lentz wrote a comment that did a lot of the explaining for me.

To recap, “The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits”, articulated by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Solution, states:

“When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the …

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with Juanjo Hierro from the Morfeo Project, a Spanish community of open source communities set up to speed up the development of Service Oriented Architectures-related software standards and create business opportunities for local suppliers.

Hierro explained that the Morfeo Project is based on “The Law of Conservation of Attractive Profits”, articulated by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Solution:

“When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.”

Christensen’s law has also been used by Tim O’Reilly …

VentureBeat and OStatic are among the news source reporting the launch of Cloudera a new vendor set up to provide support for Apache Hadoop and related projects.

Given the current economic outlook it’s great to see a new open source start-up rearing its head, and the list of founders indicates that this one has a good chance of survival. While VentureBeat is focused on the fact that Ex-Google, Yahoo, and Facebook employees are on the team, my eye was caught by the fact that Mike Oslon, Sleepycat Software founder and former CEO has been tempted out of semi-retirement.

Until this week Infobright’s claim to open source fame was its partnership with MySQL that enabled its analytical data warehousing software to act as a storage engine for the open source database.

However, the company is now taking the open source route itself by releasing the code behind its Infobright data warehouse (formerly Brighthouse) as Infobright Community Edition.

Earlier this month the company announced that it was moving to a subscription model for the commercial version of the product, Infobright Enterprise Edition, which comes with “enhanced features, services and support, warranty” amongst other things.

The company has also announced a $10m Series C investment …

Still no official news on the rumour that Monty Widenius has left Sun, but Dave Rosenberg confirmed over the weekend that he is leaving MuleSource, the open source ESB vendor he founded in 2006 with Ross Mason, creator of the Mule project.

“After two and a half years I’ve decided to transition out of my operating role at MuleSource and will be devoting my full time efforts to a new company I have been working on,” he wrote on Friday. “I initiated a CEO search in June and we expect to have a new person in place by the end of the year at the latest.

“I started the search because I felt like a more …