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MySQL Hits $50 Million Revenue, Plans IPO
An anonymous coward writes "MySQL, purveyor of the open-source database of the same name, is on the road to becoming a publicly traded company, bolstered by $50 million in revenue in 2006. "It's still in the pipeline," Chief Executive Marten Mickos said of the plan to hold an initial public offering of his company's stock. He declined to discuss when the company planned to go public, but said, "We're making good progress, doing all the things we need to get done.""
They're the happy medium. They give away their product for free, but if you want the extras (support) you gotta pay. I'm happy with that, as I'm sure most people are.
Programmers gotta pay the rent you know..
MABASPLOOM!
I wonder if Google is planning to leverage MySQL in a proxy warfare type scenario vs. M$.
The contention between the two giants has been heating up, and MySQL is steadily gaining ground on SQL Server for marketshare.
Couple that with Google's recent contributions to the MySQL project and statements by one of thier engineer's (Callahan?) that they would continue to enhance the DB & pump the code back into the community... focusing on stability, recovery, and fine tuning code.
Looks like Google could be contending with M$ on at least three fronts soon counting search, office, & now DB's through MySQL.
I want to see them rumble. The timing of this IPO is very interesting.
Regards.
Hell, even if they sell the software I'm happy if they give me the source. Open source != free.
Maybe if they were a public company with some cash they would have been be the ones to buy InnoDB, instead of Oracle.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
'If all there was was OSS,'
No. If nobody was being paid to code or profiting from open source software that would be true. Selling closed source software is not the only way to profit from software. IBM hosts OSS, codes OSS, and makes a boatload of cash on OSS. The same is true of many companies. Most programmers work on in-house applications, the idea that companies like Microsoft are where programmers get their bread is a myth.
More open source software means more companies have a greater potential to make money since they have the source code to make applications run in a way that is tailored to them. That opportunity existing means that more companies would take advantage of it and that my friend means more jobs for programmers.