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

Please use this thread to do the following:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Tell us how great your database is, (ie. postgres, mssql server, oracle etc..)

2. Tell us how shitty mysql is in your eyes.

3. Tell us how mysql "sold out"

So everything under this thread can be modded as "redundant"

Thank You.

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[DanWS6]

4. For extra credit tie into your rant how terrible you believe PHP is and how xyz is so much better.

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[LWATCDR]

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?

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[DanWS6]

No.

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[LWATCDR]

Okay Mr. Cranky Pants.

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[Kjella]

Tell us how great your database is, (ie. postgres, mssql server, oracle etc..)

I'd rather tell why I think databases in general suck: Lack of standardization. It's one thing if you could do like with browsers and make compatibility chart with ANSI SQL, but it's choking full of proprietary extensions. Hopefully they'll sooner or later get around to supporting SQL:2003 which takes care of the worst ones. Here's one example, creating an unique ID:

The standard specifies a column attribute of:
GENERATED ... AS IDENTITY (non-core feature ID T174+T175).

PostgreSQL doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.
DB2: Follows standard, albeit with some restrictions on how identity columns may (not) be added to an existing table, etc.
MSSQL offers IDENTITY as a column property, but with a different syntax (not as intuitive and with less options) than the standard's specification.
MySQL doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.
Oracle doesn't support the standard's IDENTITY attribute.

And they bloody well all have a way of doing it, it's just five different ways. That's what I hate about databases, you don't pick one for RDBMS features but because you need to pick a language. It's like picking a computer because of the compiler. They seriously need to get the standards *ahead* of the implementations, like for example browsers and HTML/CSS standards. Or at least get a reasonable subset standard so you can write a non-trivial database neutral application.

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[Rich0]

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...

Re:Please use this thread to do the following:

[discogravy]

lol ur still using xyz?

Shoot

[XanC]

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

Re:Shoot

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your crystal ball tell you that?

Re:Shoot

[sm62704]

Posting at slashdot, Yoda is.

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.

Basic astronomy !

[assemblerex]

The sun destroys everything it touches. Eventually it will implode into a black hole and devour what little shareholder value is left.

Re:Basic astronomy !

[east coast]

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

But I understand where you're coming from.

no golden handcuffs ?

[KernelMuncher]

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.

Re:no golden handcuffs ?

[Jherek Carnelian]

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.

Re:no golden handcuffs ?

[swordgeek]

Unless of course, you're a talentless, brainless, lying, two-faced, pony-tailed bastard with no future. Then you stay on until you get named CEO.

Oops, was that my outside voice again?

Please tell me...

[pushing-robot]

...he's leaving to work on Python.

I mean, the PSF needs good, experienced developers, and, um, that's all.

Re:Please tell me...

[Just Some Guy]

I mean, the PSF needs good, experienced developers, and, um, that's all.

So you'd inflict them with the guy who congealed MySQL, of all things? What'd they ever do to you?

Re:Please tell me...

[styrotech]

Yeah I got it, but... _Monty_ ? shouldn't that be __Monty__(self) ?

Is it still MySQL?

[peterdaly]

With the founder leaving, the name MySQL no longer fits.

Next slashdot poll...

MySQL's new name should be:
1. TheirSQL
2. SunSQL
3. JavaSQL
4. CowboynealSQL

I vote for #4.

Re:Is it still MySQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun N1 iPlanet Java System ONE database Enterprise Edition (R)

Re:Is it still MySQL?

[mr_mischief]

You forgot the version 9 at the end, even though there was no 6, 7, or 8.

Monty on the Run

[TheModelEskimo]

Monty was last seen boarding a ferry to France.

Well, I would do the same

[eatfastnoodle]

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

Re:Well, I would do the same

[eln]

Well no, the ultimate dream of every nerd is to have a threesome with Jessica Alba and Natalie Portman (petrified!) with hot grits down their pants, but I'm sure the retiring early thing is a close second.

Re:Well, I would do the same

[mr_mischief]

You mean besides hiring the guys who beat him up in high school to mow his 16-acre lawn?

Re:Well, I would do the same

[eatfastnoodle]

that can and will happen after I have 1 billion in bank and tons of time to kill.

Re:Well, I would do the same

[AioKits]

I'm still researching to see if my ultimate dream is even legal in this state.

Re:Well, I would do the same

[eatfastnoodle]

well, I'm very strong physically, for a nerd

Re:Well, I would do the same

[AlecC]

Having slightly met Monty W, he is a true nerd. He didn't build a billion dollar company, he built a database that did what he thought databases should do. Many people do not exactly agree with him (see arguments on /. ad nauseam). But other people built a billion dollar company on that database. It deos not surprise me at all that he has taken his share of that billion dollars and walked off into the sunset. Maybe it is to Fiji, but even if it is, I would hazard a guess he will still be playing with databases on the beach.

Re:Well, I would do the same

[jadavis]

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.

interesting timing

[toby]

Monty's been working on the interesting "Maria" transactional engine (evolved from, and compatible with MyISAM), which is slated to become MySQL's future default engine.

Since they recently made a feature-complete ("no known bugs"!) release of Maria, I'm tempted to think that was his personal deadline to quit.

Josh Berkus (core PostgreSQL developer) also recently quit Sun.

I like Sun. I'm sad that they have lost these two brilliant database engineers, and I hope they go on and kick Oracle's (and that other company's) butt anyway.

Re:interesting timing

[Sun Chi]

You can use "that other company's" name. I mean, we are talking about Microsoft here not Lord Voldemort, right?

Re:interesting timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Maria isn't transactional. It was supposed to be, but it did't work out that way. Punting on transactions, they fell back to crash recoverable MyISAM. The next release is supposed to handle concurrent inserts. Other concurrent operations may follow someday. In the meantime, it doesn't support transaction backout, verb backout, two phase commit, transaction isolation, or any of the hard stuff.

MySQL went with InnoDB because MyISAM wasn't transactional. MySQL went with Falcon because Maria didn't have credible plan to become transactional. And that was almost three years ago.

Does Monty know how to write a transactional engine (or even think it's important)? Maybe, but so far, it's all smoke and no fire.

--JS

Re:FUD (no way)

[russotto]

It looks like BS, guys. According to the company LDAP DB this person is still here :-) Sounds like a typical case of FUD, which works as you can see from the comments..

Did you refresh your cache?

Falcon architect Starkey also gone

[toby]

It's worth mentioning that Jim Starkey (inventor of MVCC, etc) also quit recently. (He joined MySQL in 2006 to work on Falcon.)

So Sun has lost more database genius in 2008 than most companies ever had. :(

Re:Falcon architect Starkey also gone

[NimbusDB]

Yes and no. I'm not longer a Sun employee, but still involved with Falcon with both a consulting gig and a separate code collaboration agreement. My primary project is NimbusDB, a database designed from the ground up for the cloud platform. But I'm still involved in Falcon code and meet with the rest of the Falcon team regularly. The really big difference is that I don't have to participate in interminable conference calls. That in itself makes a job worth quiting. [The comment above on Maria is also from me. Slashdot was not at all happy that my MySQL email address had disappeared into the ether.]

Re:Falcon architect Starkey also gone

[MikeO]

Glad to see that (from the wikipedia link above) I'm not the oldest programmer reading slashdot, and very positive to know that the generation preceding me is still having an impact.

Re:Chrome Users: new security flaw found

[lgw]

That's already been fixed in the Chromium codebase, r1677, but the latest download seems to be r1583. If I were the Chrome team, I'd be in more of a hurry to get this particular fix out there.

Inventor?

[konohitowa]

Since when does someone who codes up a partial SQL implementation get promoted to inventor status? It reminds me of a guy at work (one of those self-promoter types) telling me how he and his team "invented an XML".

Perhaps Linux inventor Linus Torvalds and Melissa inventor David Smith could chime in with their thoughts on this.

Re:Inventor?

[RPoet]

How is Linus any more of an inventor? He coded an operating system. Just because it's more work doesn't make it more of an invention. The "inventor" title should be reserved for people who come up with novel solutions of a new category.

Re:Chrome Users: new security flaw found

[claytonjr]

That's already been fixed in the Chromium codebase, r1677, but the latest download seems to be r1583. If I were the Chrome team, I'd be in more of a hurry to get this particular fix out there.

If you were the Chrome team, You'd be a lot of people!

Article Summary

[nathanh]

DELETE FROM sun WHERE name="Monty"