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Oracle Acquires Sleepycat
Deven writes "Computerworld is reporting that Oracle has just acquired Sleepycat Software (makers of the open-source Berkeley DB embedded database) for an undisclosed sum. Having previously acquired Innobase, Oracle is certainly taking a look at diversity."
God Damnit
.. o O o ..
Can Oracle's acquisitions be predicted based upon the database backends used with MySQL? What other backends work with MySQL?
What a bad reason to lay off their employees. I can't believe that they bought another company...
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
Diversity? It looks more like careening towards homogeneity to me. First they bought Innobase, giving them the ability to cut MySQL's transaction nuts off, then they buy another open-sourece-friendly DBMS which has transaction capability.
Now, if you were the largest commercial DBMS vendor in the world and you were worried about the OSS people moving into your space, what would you buy in order to stop them cold? Me? I'd keep them out of atomic transaction space.
Do keep in mind we are talking about Larry Ellison here. Just google on "larry ellison greed" to see what some other people think of this champion of diversity.
Oracle now owns two MySQL backend products. First InnoDB, which was their primary transaction-supporting backend, and now BerkeleyDB. Now, in order for MySQL AB to license MySQL database commercially, they need Oracle's permission (that is, if they want basic database features like atomic transactions).
And if you don't get a commercial license from MySQL AB, you can't link the mysql client library to a non-GPL application. That means, if you have a non-GPL application and you want to add support for MySQL, you are now dependent on Oracle.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
The price of these acquisitions is chump change for Oracle. My bet is that they are buying these companies to destroy them. Oracle does not want something like Mysql becoming a real threat to their DB business, so the tried and true solution is to kill the babies before they grow up. They will attempt to migrate what customers they can and then stop development on the acquired code bases. The acquired developers, if they stick around, will be put to work building migration tools.
Oracle may have screwed up the ability of MySQL to license the proprietary version of their database and may even killed MySQL's primary revenue stream, but they cannot remove MySQL, Berkeley DB or innobase from the market. Maybe MySQL will adapt, or someone will pick up the MySQL business, but the Free databases will continue to gain on Oracle. Oracle's nightmare cannot go away.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
This could become one of the biggest challenges for Open Source in the years to come. The biggies could but these companies (often run by a handful of good men) for a small sum; and then change the way they function. Of course the old source will still be available, but the guys who know the intricacies will no longer be working on it. Bug fixes might be late, new features may never come. Many of the old users will leave, some stay hoping for the best. All the roadmaps vanish. Until someone picks up the ashes and starts again. Rebirth.
I am not sure how fair it will be to ask any company/people to not take a multi-MILLION dollar offer, so that they would remain FREE.
You can mod this funny, 'cause after I finished writing it feels like a para from MadMax.
Life is just a conviction.
Do a Google groupd search for MySQL. Do a second one for Oracle.
Surprise! MySQL has 75% as many messages about it as Oracle does.
They damn well are competition. They are eating Oracle's entry market. Not everyone needs a super-duper database. A good enough free database trumps a extremely overpriced 'perfect' one in most applications.
... dodge this. Really folks, except for the nifty LAMP acronym what is it that keeps MySQL afloat? There's no reason not to go with PostgreSQL, a neat, cool and scary DBMS. If only those phpBB look alike script packs didn't insist hardcoding MySQL dialects in their code this would be a non story, it's that simple. It's like insisting on using VB just because everyone else does... and PostgreSQL documentation is good, so there's no "I can't figure it out" excuse.
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
There are two important decisions that I think are relevent:
(1) Oracle bought not one, but TWO mysql backends, which happened to be both of their transactional backends.
(2) MySQL AB licenses the client libraries under the GPL.
The only conclusion that I can come to from either of those is control.
MySQL AB needed control over their MySQL database, and so they restricted the distribution of the client libraries. You can argue about what licenses are acceptable for libraries in general, but for a client-server program, it is very strange to restrict the distribution of the client libraries. The decision therefore must have been deliberate, and made for a business reason. That reason is control.
And Oracle obviously made a business decision. There was question about the motives after buying Innobase, but those questions are now answered when they purchased the only remaining candidate for a transactional storage engine for the MySQL commercial product.
So here we have Oracle which clearly thinks they have control over MySQL AB, and MySQL AB which clearly thinks they have control over the MySQL database. For that to be false you would have to assume that one of those companies made a serious error in their business decision. So, Oracle now has some substantial degree of control over MySQL database.
To prevent Oracle from exercising this control, we need to
(1) fork the MySQL database
(2) do a cleanroom reverse engineering of the client libraries and make them LGPL/whatever (in order to keep current commercial MySQL users in business)
(3) fork InnoDB and/or BDB to make sure we have an open source backend that is actively developed.
By that time, it will all be irrelevant.
Fortunately, PostgreSQL is immune from these types of licensing problems. The client libraries and the database itself are freely destributable. And the developers work for a wide variety of companies. As far as I know, FirebirdSQL, Inges, and SAP DB are also free of licensing problems. That's 4 good alternatives if Oracle really tries to set MySQL back.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Good Luck in writing a transactional backend engine. It's hard work and requires quite a few people with deep knowledge of databases on a very low level and I know since i work in the business. Add to the fact that you have to start from scratch, that you will have to come up with something that has enough performance to be a viable alternative and it needs to be tested thoroughly on all platforms and be wordsize and endian independent.
Some people talk out of their behind.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I'm Mike Olson, Sleepycat's (now former!) CEO. I've taken a job as VP at Oracle working on embedded databases. Our entire team has come along.
h tml. I understand that a big vendor making a series of acquisitions in open source causes concern, but I'm convinced that the plan is as outlined in my posting. We're all showing up for work every day and working on the same embeddable database technology as ever. We're continuing to close deals with new customers and to support old ones. We continue to work closely with open source users.
I've posted a summary of this announcement on the Sleepycat blog, at http://blog.sleepycat.com/2006/02/next-ten-years.
There's lots of speculation that this move is intended to damage MySQL. I frankly don't see it; MySQL doesn't depend on Berkeley DB. It never did. We've always had a close and cordial relationship with those guys, but both businesses have always concentrated on our own customers and markets. We may have wished, sometimes, that we collaborated more closely, but we never did.
We've been good members of the open source community for a long, long time. We're pleased our software is so broadly used, and we're proud of the projects that rely on it. While I understand the concern, here, I'd ask that you watch what we do. I'm confident in the future of our products and of open source. Give us time to show you what Oracle and Sleepycat can do together.
Mike Olson, chairman@olsons.net