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MySQL Founder Monty Quits Sun (Or Not)

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the who-didn't-predict-that dept.

Paul Boutin writes "A reliable source tells Valleywag that MySQL inventor Michael Widenius, better known as Monty, has resigned from Sun. Sun bought Monty's MySQL company in a billion-dollar deal last January. Brian Aker, who forked the Web 2.0-friendly Drizzle SQL database (and former Slashdot engineer!), remains at Sun." Kaj Arnö and Sheeri Cabral share their thoughts.

10 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Shoot by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I'd just made a billion-dollar deal for my company, I'd sure look long and hard at not working anymore.

  2. no golden handcuffs ? by KernelMuncher · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am surprised Sun didn't tie Monty to the company with golden handcuffs (deferred compensation). His departure could have a negative effect on customer loyalty. And it sure does look bad for the founder to be leaving so quickly.

    1. Re:no golden handcuffs ? by Jherek+Carnelian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They probably had a 9-month contract to keep him around and now the 9 months are up.
      It is extremely common for the previous owner/ceo to bail out in a year or so after their company is acquired.

  3. Re:Basic astronomy ! by east+coast · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, it's going to turn into a white dwarf in most likeliness.

    But I understand where you're coming from.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  4. Re:Please use this thread to do the following: by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now now. PHP is a pain but a dang useful pain. Just like MySQL.

    PHP and MySQL are both good but not great tools. What makes them useful is all the stuff that works with them.
    I would drop MySQL in a second for Postgres except that too many CMS and other packages use it. The same is true of PHP.

    There happy now?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  5. Well, I would do the same by eatfastnoodle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    isn't build a company, sell it to big guys and go into early retirement the ultimate dream of every nerd?

    1. Re:Well, I would do the same by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Actually, no, if I wanted to identify a nerd then one of the first question I'd ask them is, "If you built a company, would you want to be able to sell it to the big guys so you could go into early retirement?" If they say "yes", they're absolutely not nerds.

      This annoys me because there are so many people who just want money and who pretend to be in with the whole nerd idealism thing, especially those in the Free software / OSS movement. They might be talented coders, but their care is to advance their name, their salary, their standing, their employment prospects, whatever, and their love isn't actually for advancement of scholarship or engineering.

      In fact, I know more people who have used OSS as a temporary CV builder than who stick with its ideals.

      (Yes, I know OSS isn't the whole of software engineering; feel free to generalise my point to those who make excellent proprietary software - Mathematica is an obvious example for me, where Wolfram, despite being a self-whoring brat with delusions of grandeur, isn't floating nor selling his company; instead he's produced a package that's stuck consistently to some very basic but effective principles that make coding beautiful once you get to learn them.)

    2. Re:Well, I would do the same by jadavis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm not sure I agree with your version of idealism. Sure, idealistic people never want to retire.

      The part I take exception to is that selling a business and moving on is somehow not idealistic. Selling out is not bad by itself, it's only bad if you hurt people in the process (e.g., if it's bought out just to destroy the company).

      The usual case is that some idealistic person creates something, it makes people happy, they don't care enough about business details to stick around, so they sell it to work on something else.

      We don't always hear about the "something else", because it's rare enough to create something great, so in all likelihood they won't do it twice in a row.

      If they stick around with the first thing that attracts attention, and never let it go, maybe it's because that person doesn't really have the courage to challenge himself again. How idealistic is that?

      And these "CV builders" you're talking about can be easily spotted if that's all they're in it for. Does it really interfere with anything the idealistic people are doing? If not, there are a lot of people who just see a job as a place to make money, it's not limited to IT people.

      --
      Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
  6. Re:Please use this thread to do the following: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Sun has the money, and the engineering, however their marketing people will surely screw it up big.

    I imagine it going something like "All new versions will use a new and restrictive license" and "The new MySQL will be called Java Relational Database Engine and be pronounced "Drede"

  7. Re:Please use this thread to do the following: by Rich0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Couldn't agree more. My other big pet peeve is applications that are database-specific (which obviously is related to the fact that app designers don't have much choice in the matter). I don't want to install my own MSSQL server for the sake of the one application that can't run on my company's enterprise scale server farm running some other RDBMS. I don't want to pick a different application that doesn't meet my user's needs simply because it handles the other RDBMS.

    Oh, and if we actually had some standards perhaps there would also be a chance that every time Oracle releaes a new software releaes it wouldn't break half the applications I manage...