MySQL Founder Monty Quits Sun (Or Not)

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.

Comments

Re:Shoot

[lgw]

No Crystal ball needed to see that Sun isn't long for this world.

Sun's market cap is down to $6.4 billion. Sun has over $2B in cash, $3B in receivables, and $1B in inventory and stock in other companies.

You could make a profit today (if you could buy the company for thet 6.4B, which you can't) by buying Sun, ceasing all sales and business activity beyond existing support contacts, and just gutting the company for the cash, real estate, etc.

If Sun falls much more, it *will* be profitable to buy and gut the company, as was done very frequently to companies in similar positions in the 80s. For any tech company that *wanted* Sun for some reason, it's nearly free to buy it today.

Heck, one of Suns few remaining large accounts might find it cheaper to buy Sun than to renew it's support contract!

I think the only reason why one of the big consulting companies (Accenture etc) hasn't bough Sun just for bragging right is that those are partnerships, and don't have the leverage.