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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.'"
Do we really, _really_ need another OS/Free RDBMS? What is it going to do what others don't?
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.
Their resources would be better spent on improving an existing open-source db. My personal favorit is Postgresql but hey, it's their money.
TCAP-Abort
Yes! Let's destroy Linux by contributing huge our resources to Gnome and OpenOffice.org!
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.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
... 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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
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.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
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.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
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.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
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.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
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.
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 ??
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.
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.