This week Sun Microsystems announced an agreement to acquire MySQL, makers of the most popular open source database platform. This comes much to the dismay of open source zealots and sweaty nerds everywhere, who are afraid their beloved dolphin may end up in Sun’s enterprise tuna salad.

Sun has had a rocky past with the open source community, and tends to garner mixed reviews when they attempt to make inroads into open source.

Continue reading for more insight into Sun’s past open source shenanigans and what this deal might mean for the future of web developer’s favorite database platform.

Could Something Sinister Be Afoot?
Sun is a company after my own heart. They make great hardware, have arguably one of the best operating systems in existence, and Java is a joy to program with. Now they have acquired my favorite database. This all sounds swell, but could something sinister be afoot?

For years developers clamored for Sun to open source Java. While many key libraries were already open, Sun still hesitated, content to tease the developer community.

Having Java’s Source Is Great, But Sun Still Acts Just Like It Did When The Source Was Closed
Finally, in 2006 Java was fully open-sourced and released under a GPL license, although Sun still kept some key components under wraps. To me, however, the real benefit of the open source model is the ability for the community to contribute and steer development, which still seems to be missing from Sun’s open source plans.

Having Java’s source is great, but Sun still acts just like it did when the source was closed, choosing to plot their own course with little feedback from individual developers.

Hopefully Sun won’t take MySQL down the same path as Java. Right now MySQL enjoys the benefits of an extremely strong developer community. This community has been crucial to improving the product, proliferating it across every platform imaginable, and creating high quality companion tools.

Right now it’s unclear if Sun sees the communities hard work as an asset or not. Most likely Sun has snapped up MySQL in order to roll it into their enterprise software offerings, which was missing a database platform. Companies like Sun much prefer to sell hardware bundled with a large amount of software called a stack.

When the entire software stack (OS, network server, application server, database) is made up of a company’s own products, support is easier, margins are maximized, and it’s much more likely that the buyer will become forever dependent on their vendor’s stack.

If This Happens, The MySQL We Know and Love Will Become Stagnant
I don’t think MySQL as it exists today is in much danger. However, I could easily see Sun making some huge improvements in future versions that depend on other parts of their stack. If this happens, the MySQL we know and love will become stagnant, and eventually see a sharp decline in use as its features become antiquated.

My hope is Sun finally sees the value in a truly open development process, and isn’t just attempting to use MySQL as a way to suck people into their other software offerings.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.