Sun Hints At Open-Source Database Offering

An anonymous reader points out a ZDNet story which begins "Sun Microsystems has raised the possibility that it might offer customers its own database, a move that could trigger displeasure at Oracle but curry favor with open-source advocates," writing "Last week, during a meeting with financial analysts, Chief Executive Scott McNealy showed a slide that placed the words 'Sun DB' next to a list of existing database products. McNealy offered no details besides 'stay tuned.'"

Comments

Uhm...

[ceeam]

Do we really, _really_ need another OS/Free RDBMS? What is it going to do what others don't?

Re:Uhm...

[dsginter]

What is it going to do what others don't?

Make the PHB's feel all warm and fuzzy. Also see: StarOffice versus OpenOffice.

Re:Uhm...

[leonmergen]

Do we really, _really_ need another OS/Free RDBMS? What is it going to do what others don't?

What does it matter ? If Sun wants to launch it, and it's under their not-so-opensource license, why not. It can't hurt. It doesn't cost us anything...

Wasn't that what OSS is all about ? Having the choice ?

Re:Uhm...

[ultranova]

> Do we really, _really_ need another OS/Free RDBMS? What is it going to do what
> others don't?

Stored procedures & triggers?

Funny, I seem to recall using both on PostgreSQL, which I had compiled from the BSD-licensed source...

Ahem

[strider44]

It's going to be released under CDDL if anything. This in itself denies its use by most of the open source world. *sigh* why does Sun have to keep on trying to destroy Linux and the GPL?

Re:Ahem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! Let's destroy Linux by contributing huge our resources to Gnome and OpenOffice.org!

Re:Ahem

[htd2]

It's going to be released under CDDL if anything. This in itself denies its use by most of the open source world. *sigh* why does Sun have to keep on trying to destroy Linux and the GPL?

Sigh, Sun is the largest single commercial donator of source under GPL dwarfing IBM, SGI, HP and all the other commercial entities involved in GPL by a wide margin.

Just for laughs and to illustrate how risable your point is at the last count more of the Red Hat distribution had been donated by Sun than any other commercial entiry including Red Hat.

The more I read OpenSource (really Linux) advocates flaming Sun for some imagined misdemeanor or other the more I tend to conclude that Sun has been remarkably forbearing with the community as a whole and that if Sun have been a bit rude on occasions they have been rather less rude then the community right royally deserves.

Lets face it if you were to single out one major commercial player who has almost single handed made it possible for Linux ot exist its actually not IBM, SGI, HP but Sun. They were largely responsible for the creation of the commercial UNIX market, they were almost exclusively responsible for insisting on published standards, API's etc and they have made huge donations to the basic plumbing of Linux.

Sadly these hugely worthy but clearly boring activities are nothing compared to the IBM/HP/SGI eye candy which has little to do with fostering open standards and OpenSource and everything to do with moving tin, SW and services.

Sure they are abrasive but lets face it in the face of the abuse they have received I would be pissed as hell as well, talk about biting the hand that feeds.

Re:Ahem

[nathanh]

It's going to be released under CDDL if anything. This in itself denies its use by most of the open source world. *sigh* why does Sun have to keep on trying to destroy Linux and the GPL?

So you can't use CDDL code in Linux. So what? You can't use GPL code in FreeBSD. I don't hear the FreeBSD folks claiming that Linus is out to destroy FreeBSD.

And what's this about "denies its use by most of the open source world"? What FUD! You can use it all you damn well like. You just can't mingle it with GPL code and distribute the result.

You can, however, mingle CDDL code with BSD code and distribute the result.

Get some perspective. It's free. It's open source. Yes, the license is intentionally incompatible with the GPL. You'll get over it. You're no worse off than you were before.

Re:Ahem

[LarsWestergren]

Hey, there are loads of open source databases already. Why would this be any more of a threat than the others?

I also object to this FUD that Sun is out to destroy Linux. There is an amazing amount of badwill on Slashdot towards Sun.

Bruce Perens compared the new CDDL licence to Sun "holding a gun" to the heads of the Linux community and "asking them to be grateful for it". WTF? No one is forcing the Linux community to use this database or the patents previously discussed. It is Suns products, they can do what they want with them.

And we are totally free to ignore them if we want to.

Re:Ahem

[Donny Smith]

What's it to you?
Keep using your GPL software.

It really goes on my nerves to see people claim that GPL is the only "free" license?
CDDL? Big deal - download the software and use it - you never have to pay a single cent to Sun.

The point here is that
a) As the fucking article said, Sun's fed up with giving Oracle 50% of every DB deal they close while Oracle constantly competes with their application server platform
and
b) Lack of their "own" database is deterimental to Sun's utility strategy (presumably even IBM can take their lame DB2 and make money by renting it to their utility or Websphere customers), while Sun is stuck with Oracle.
I think GPL databases like mySQL and PostgreSQL are too "Linux-biased" for Sun's liking, so they might be looking for a non-GPL open source DB with enterprise features.

Re:Ahem

[cyngus]

Is it Sun or Sun's geeks? Would they work for Sun, and would other technical companies work with Sun, if they didn't release free/open software?

Its both. I would work for Sun under almost any conditions they set forth as long as I was paid a decent salary. From what I hear and know of Sun culture, its awesome. A company really run by geeks, which hasn't belped them in the marketing department, but has allowed them to do so kickin' work.

Is Sun's passive aggressive behavior, or other companies open pushing of free/open software better for the trend of free/open software?

Perhaps Sun doesn't feel the need to toot its own horn. After all, if anyone is going to look behind marketing glitz to see what's really going on, you would think it would be geeks. Geeks, who tend to be a little more suspicious and prone to fears of conspiracy and manipulation than the general populace, but such things tend to happen with greater intelligence.

Do people have free will and corporations are trying to ride that, or are we all pawns of corporations?

What a ridiculous question. When I woke up this morning I was free to choose any number of things. You have the choice to do anything. If you've been brainwashed by commercials and media, you have no one to blame except yourself (principally) and perhaps your parents.

Re:Ahem

[htd2]

Is it Sun or Sun's geeks? Would they work for Sun, and would other technical companies work with Sun, if they didn't release free/open software?

Sun's founders most notably Bill Joy come from a precursor of OpenSource so you could say that it is ingrained in Sun's culture. But more important than that is Sun's core belief that industry should innovate around open standards. Few companies now would publically disagree with this stance but when Sun started expousing this doctrine it was universally ridiculed by the same companies HP, IBM etc that the OpenSource (really Linux) community hold up to Sun as exemplars of how to support OpenSource. All this does is make the Linux advocates propounding these propositions look ridiculous and ungratefull to Sun and for that matter to anyone with any grasp of computing history.

Royally? Is it all at the forbearance of Scott McNeally, or is Scott McNeally at the forbearance of the skills, initiative and connections of people who work for Sun?

I don't know the answer to that you would need to talk to someone who works for Sun. However Scott and Johnathan sign the checks and the fact that they keep signing the checks to support a huge range of OpenSource projects from OpenOffice to Apache tends to suggest that it is Scott and Johnathan who are being forebearing.

Is Sun's passive aggressive behavior, or other companies open pushing of free/open software better for the trend of free/open software?

Sun responds when its pushed and does so with vigour, the OpenSource (linux) community pushes a lot and gets back rather less than it deserves.

For some strange reason the OpenSource (linux) community is much more receptive to blandishments from IBM. As an example the current ludicrous discussion about the merits of IBM's 500 expiring some non SW patent "donation" to OpenSource vs Sun's donation of 1600 current patents but under a license that not everyone likes. IBM's donation would appear to be largely useless but has no strings attached, Sun's appears to be very usefull but has strings as usual the community has become obsessed with the strings.

In my opinion if the OpenSource community wants to have a better relationship with by far its largest commercial backer then its largely up to the OpenSource community. Less whinging, less focus on style and more focus on substance would go a long way.

Re:Ahem

[htd2]

You're counting contributions by sun employees semi-officially and/or on their own time. Sun as a corporate entity isn't as giving to the GPL as you have portrayed them.

Really, so you have never heard of OpenOffice just the largest single donation of source under GPL (made by Sun) and Sun still continues to be by far in away the largest contributor with something like 100 full time staff.

Heard of gnome Sun is heavily involved in Gnome. They have made big donations to Apache, Mozilla and a whole range of other OpenSource projects.

Where do you think the NFS source code came from, PAM, XFN ext the list is pretty endless.

Perhaps Sun's problem is that they have given too much and given it in too wide a swathe of areas. Perhaps Sun should have concentrated on one narrow area like say donating a filesystem to run alongside all the other available filesystems with pretty much identical capabilites. Now who was that ??

Re:Ahem

[htd2]

NFS, PAM, XFN, etc that you list... the standard was set by Sun as an open standard, but the open source versions of them were reinvented on the outside, not donated by Sun.

Wrong Sun has released the NFS source code and they also funded the University of Michigan to do a Linux port.

And last time anyone actually counted Sun had more code attributed to it in the Red Hat distribution than any other commercial company including Red Hat. OpenOffice is definitely a huge chunk of GPL code, but they also didn't develop that. They purchased a dying company and opensourced the company's product. It was a cheap move aimed at poking holes in Microsoft's officeware dominance.

Hardly cheap Sun paid 59.5 million dollars for StarDivision and still employs most of their staff who now work on the OpenOffice program.

Its also hardly dying

How about the cheap move of releasing 500 patents that are all due to expire and calling that a great donation. Did you applaud IBM's donation ???

I know full well about Sun's positions on the matter. I've raised the merits of Open Source repeatedly to my Sun sales and technical representatives, who generally frown at me and hand me Sun company dogma about how they're going to crush linux into the ground, and that open source is just a phase.

You think you do and thats obviously part of the problem. Don't worry though you have plenty of company.

Re:Ahem

[Leo McGarry]

It's misspelled, but it means "provoking laughter." The word is "risible."

It's a good word. Vocabularies are nice. Everybody should have one.

Oh really? Um, yay..

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Open Source database already? How many do we need? MySQL, Postgres..didn't SAP release their DB engine under an OSS licence too? Given that Sun currently don't even offer their own closed database product, I can't imagine any OSS database offering from them is going to amount to much.

_Curry_ flavored open source databases?

[Unique2]

What with they think of next?

Throw money into an existing oss database instead.

[johnjaydk]

IMHO It's a bit stupid if Sun looks into getting their hands on an existing database in order to open-source it afterwards.

Their resources would be better spent on improving an existing open-source db. My personal favorit is Postgresql but hey, it's their money.

Build or Buy ?

[supersnail]

Given that a reasonably useful database system would be several hundred thousand lines of code, and, that Oracle & IBM have a 25 year head start not to mention MicroSofts 10 year head start. I don't think it would make sense for SUN to roll thier own database software.

So the question is who are they gonna buy? IBM has already snapped up Informix. CA has "given" Ingres to the Open Source community. SAP has donated SAP/DB to MySql. MicroSoft is unlikely to sell Access or SQLServer. Which leaves -- Sybase?

Could be intersting.

I doubt they can unseat MySQL...

[ShinSugoi]

... as the preferred choice for small-to-mid sized DB projects. I'm sure Sun is aware of this, so this "SunDB" is probably not something you're going to run for a typical website.

This begs the question; exactly what role would high-end Open Source DB software be able to fill today? Oracle is well entrenched with both DBAs and businesses -- Unless there are serious flaws in it that I am unaware of, I don't see the SunDB going very far.

Re:I doubt they can unseat MySQL...

[lokedhs]

Well, considering the fact that mysql is the windows of the database world (crappy product, people use it despite its crappiness) it's going to be hard for any product to unseat it.

Say Ingres

[Donny Smith]

My guess is it's going to be CA's Ingres.

a) It is Open source
b) CA is a non-competitor (no application server)
c) CA has been harmonizing their open source license with Sun's (I wonder why?)
d) CA hopes to make some buck from Ingress and even if they split it even, they're going to make a shitload more than by cooperating with Oracle.
e) Ingres has parallel features like Oracle RAC so it's more suitable for Sun's vision and for enterprise customers than PostgreSQL or other open source databases.
f) Oracle is competing with Sun (Oracle's application servers compete with Sun's J2EE servers/apps); there's no reason for Sun to help Oracle.

I'd really really enjoy see Oracle on their own. I've really had enough of their sales people...

The time for them to pause and think real hard how they're going to compete in the future.
Did they really think their competitors were going to stand idly and watch them take all the money (Oracle + Linux).... Hahahaha....

Re:Say Ingres

[freemacmini]

YOu forgot the most important reason.

Ingres is the only "enterprise" open source DB that can scale to lots of processors.

Obviously sun will want to go with something that will run well on their high end hardware.

It will be interesting to see sun try and sell ingres though. CA couldn't really sell it to any new customers and sun isn't known for their marketing savvy.

Linux the greatest threat to Sun?

[Secrity]

It seems that Sun has decided that Linux is more of a threat to it than MS. Sun has competition in the server market from three places; other Sys 5 distributors, Windows, and Linux. Sun seems to have made it's peace with MS by entering settlements with them. The other major Sys 5 distributors are either moving to Linux, moving to Windows, or are suing their customers. This leaves Linux with it's GNU license as Sun's major threat. It is only logical that Sun use it's resources against it major threat, which is now Linux and the GPL. I wonder how long Sun will still support Open Office. I wonder how long Sun will still distribute GNU licensed software with Solaris.

Re:Linux the greatest threat to Sun?

[LarsWestergren]

Insightful?

Fud fud and more goddamn fud more like it. "Sun has decided that Linux is a threat" "Sun are in bed with MS". You mean the settlement patent that Gosling recently said "means less and less to us".

Sun gave us Open Office, and a damn lot of support for free, as well as a shitload of other things, and now you are "wondering" (a sneakier more underhanded way of accusing them) if they are going to stop. Well, if that is the gratitude they get, don't be surprised if they do.

I wonder how long Sun will still distribute GNU licensed software with Solaris.

And what does this have to do with anything? They have no reason to remove it, and if they did this would only be an inconvenience to Solaris users. It would do nothing to hurt GNU/GPL/Linux or whatever.

It is only logical that Sun use it's resources against it major threat, which is now Linux and the GPL.

Just more unusbstantiated accusations.

Re:Linux the greatest threat to Sun?

[afabbro]

It just shows that IBM is running scared from Solaris 10.

Bwwwwwwaaaaahahahaahahaha! Man, that is funny. The reason things aren't ported yet is that Solaris 10 IS NOT SHIPPING YET. Duh.

Solaris 10 is set to take a lot of customers away from IBM. IBM is very afraid.

Unlikely. Solaris 10 has some nifty features, but a lot of it is catch-up to AIX...I mean, you don't see a lot of Veritas Volume Manager and such sold for AIX because it comes with its own (good, unlike SDS) volume manager and filesystem. ZFS might finally get Solaris to par with AIX.

Solaris 10 has LPARs...excuse me, containers. Except they're not as nice as AIX's. Especially when you get to I/O.

DTrace is about all Solaris 10 has on AIX. It's neat. But it's not enough to make up the big gap: processor speed. SPARC chips, even SPARC IVs, are *S*L*O*W*. It amazes me still, but I've got Intel boxes than run faster than Suns and that is truly sad. Sure, I can get Opteron from Sun for the low-end stuff, but when I want to look at an 8-way box or a 16-way box, POWER5 really trumps Sun. And when you're paying per-CPU licensing fees, you figure you can live without DTrace.

And then there's the stackable p570 stuff that Sun doesn't even approach.

Sorry, IBM has no reason to run scared. Sun is the one running themselves into the ground.

No need. Just handy.

[Vo0k]

1) Another choice. Maybe a headache for developers who want to support them ALL, but possibly another choice for customers or those who want to support ONE database - Not sure why this one would be better, but why would it be worse? A different set of features may JUST fit your niche.
2) Competition against proprietary. More open source solutions, less proprietary solutions. Another backstab to MSSQL :)
3) Open source = box of ideas. Port whatever Sun database has cool in its code base to other free databases, make them better.
4) Easier portability to other databases for proprietary software. If something uses SunDB and nothing else, having SunDB source you can easily write glue to make that thing run i.e. on PostgreSQL
5) "Do we need"... and does SUN need another not-quite-competitive piece of proprietary software? What is better, dump it or release as Open Source?
6) Open Source replaces negative competition with cooperation. There probably will be quite a bit current Open Source database developers can learn from Sun developers - and vice versa. And since it's no longer a trade sectret, the exchange is possible. Help? Why not?
7) The Name. Having such a name as SUN behind this thing, customers who would otherwise never trust the "bunch of hippies" who write Free Software may adopt it. And then more of Open Source.
8) Is it worse than others? Who knows what will the benchmarks show...
9) Another move towards OS - another example, another encouragement for others to open up their proprietary products.
10) Don't look the gift horse in the mouth.

Clustra anyone?

[rleyton]

Some three years ago, folk might recall Sun picked up a superb little database outfit by the name of Clustra. They buried it in iPlanet.

Used it a lot myself, and felt that - like many other companies Sun have bought - the pointy haired bosses there just didn't realise what they'd acquired.

Maybe a much-needed clue has finally hit home at Sun, and they're going to give Clustra the lease of life it sorely needs and deserves.

Re:Clustra anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be the case - Sun certainly has the appropriate competence available. Clustra, which was located in Norway and recruited most of its engineers from the local university's database systems group, still has about 40 engineers working on database products at the same offices as before, although now under the Sun Microsystems name.

Re:Clustra anyone?

[noodle dancer]

I'd put my money on it being Clustra any day. Why would Sun want to fool around with MySQL, or Postgres, or Ingres when they have their own HA DBMS and a truck load of developers.

Clustra was developed by Svein-Olaf Hvasshovd, Oystein Torbjornsen, and Svein Erik Bratsberg http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices /a-tree/h/Hvasshovd:Svein=Olaf.html. Looks like Svein-Olaf - Sophus - went back to Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. But Oystein and Svein-Erik still work for Sun at the Trondheim office.

For extra credit read:

http://research.solidtech.com/publ/drake-isas04-ha db.pdf - note location of Sun credits to this paper.

No matter what DB it is, Sun needs its "stack"

[PornMaster]

Sun's been touting selling an "application stack" for at least 6 years now. They've been pushing it with Veritas and Oracle as underpinnings for quite a while, but with Solaris 10's ZFS, they can push out the need for Veritas Filesystem and Volume Manager, and this can be a step to push out Oracle.

With MySQL being dual-licensed, and questionable for Enterprise-level DB use, it's not really an option to sell incorporated into the stack. PostgreSQL would be an option, since they could fork it (and the PostgreSQL team not having heard anything is irrelevant to an extent, since it's BSD-licensed). I think we can sit back and see what happens pretty safely. They're certainly not going to make things incompatible with Oracle for a back-end, but I'm sure they'd like to offer a cheap solution since they're obviously trying to lower-cost solutions in order to stay alive.

What's the status of compatibility with native Java bits with Ingres? Oracle has obviously bitten on the Java-compatibility of everything, but I think that anything Sun would want to do DB-wise would keep Java squarely in the mix.

bad for Open Source

[FSK]

IBM kicked Sun in head by dropping support for DB2 on Solaris so maybe McNealy wants to find out what it feels like when Oracle kicks them in the stomach as well.
Very few people in the enterprise world trust MySQL or PostgreSQL for anything other then web apps so this isn't going to win Sun any new business.

Oracle is an amazingly vindictive company, they will put the screws to Sun if they feel even slightly threatened. This is bad for Open Source because it just gives IT managers one more reason to replace Unix based systems with WinNT. Convincing your boss to move from Unix based commercial OS to Linux or BSD is a lot easier then trying to get Linux or BSD into a Windows shop. So in the end this will be bad for Open Source.

Re:bad for Open Source

[grigori]

IBM hasn't dropped DB2 for Solaris - they just haven't done it (?) for Solaris on peecee. They still do lots of it on SPARC. Oracle already screwing Sun and their cost/core really hurts total purchase price. This way Sun can say 'you want a DB app for free on our OS - here ya go'

Makes sense - here's why.

[t482]

Actually I forecasted this on my weblog last week.

Here is why: Oracle is now officially pushing linux on its customer base (they are slowing moving Oracle Hosting Services (OHS) over to a Linux based service. IBM is removing support for Solaris (Domino, Websphere, DB2). And Checkpoint is pushing Linux appliance servers. And so Sun is seeing an assult from all quarters.

In fact most people buy Oracle per CPU (typically $50K per CPU). Those running a machine with AMD Opterons running 64 bit Suse Linux and Oracle can expect to see a 4x improvement in performance per dollar of Oracle licensing fees. PowerPC also outperform Sun machines - and so many Banks are switching to AIX to reduce Oracle licensing fees.

What does that leave for Sun? To move up the value chain and start selling a system with a database integrated right into the OS. Sun will want a database that they can control though - so I bet the relationship with CA Ingris will sour (joint ventures almost never work) and they will switch to supporting Postgresql or another database they can dominate and buy up most of the developers.

Re:This karma whoring disgusts me

[Biolo]

I used to work at Sun, and yes most of the tech guys there do get really annoyed at some of the BS that comes out from the top guys. That was certainly the #2 reason I left the company, I'd lost respect for them. Reason #1 was money. The whole Microsoft sellout was the straw that did it for me.

This Is Only Relevant

[Master of Transhuman]

if Sun provides a decent competitor to Access on the desktop - one that's better and better supported by them than the new database being introduced with OpenOffice 2.

Sun is in no position to beat Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase, or (in the OSS community) MySQL, FireBird, and PostgreSQL with something new in that space. No community for one thing, no rep for another.

If it's just a "warm fuzzy" for their locked-in customers nervous about open-sourcing Solaris, then it's irrelevant to the rest of us.

The database in question is...

[teneighty]

The database in question is probably a database originally created by a Norwegien company called Clustra. This company was acquired by Sun 2 or 3 years ago. Clustra built a distributed database system that was seen by Sun to be a good fit for Sun's J2EE platform.

If it's true that this database is being offered as an open source product, it could be very interesting because it's a very good database from what I hear.