Can Sun Make MySQL Pay?

AlexGr submitted a nice followup to last weeks billion dollar Sun buyout of MySQL. He notes that "Jeff Gould presents an interesting analysis in Interop News: How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion? That's the question Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has been trying to answer since he bought MySQL last week. Like most commercial open source companies, MySQL makes money by enticing well-heeled customers to pay for an enterprise version of its product that comes with more bells and whistles than the community version it gives away for free. It appears though that the additional features of the Enterprise version are not enough to compensate for the revenue-destroying effects of the free Community alternative. What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?"

Comments

Re:Mudslums Misteat Women

[scubamage]

Please chemically castrate yourself, or jump off of a tall building before you have a chance to reproduce. Thanks.

Re:Java

[Vellmont]

If Sun goes down the same route that Microsoft is with Sql Server/.NET and integrates Java into Mysql, Sun gets a powerful new platform for the enterprise.

So a crappy database server with some Java tacked on somewhere? No thanks. Microsoft has the advantage the SQL Server is actually a good database. If I wanted to choose something open source, I'd just pick postgresql, as it's a hell of a lot closer to the Oracle/SQL Server class of products.

Re:Why should this be a surprise?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Good luck. Even if you get better performance on the Microsoft platform in the short term, you are still using a proprietary OS that you have absolutely no control over, and will be at the mercy of the Microsoft extortion machine in the future.

Look at how well the XP to Vista 'upgrade' went in terms of performance.