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MySQL Co-Founder Monty Widenius Quits Sun
BobB-nw writes "Michael 'Monty' Widenius, the original developer of the open-source MySQL database, has left Sun Microsystems and is starting his own company, Monty Program Ab, he said in a blog post Thursday. Widenius and Sun had a slightly rocky relationship since the vendor bought MySQL last year for $1 billion. In a much-discussed November blog post, he trashed Sun's decision to give MySQL 5.1 a 'generally available' designation, saying it was riddled with serious bugs.
Meanwhile, Monty Program Ab will be 'a true open-source company,' with only a small number of employees who 'strive to have fun together and share the profit we create.' The company will work on the Maria project, a storage engine Widenius and others developed, he wrote.'"
I've been a fan of MySQL for several years, using it alongside other database platforms for a huge variety of tasks. I appreciate the hard work that has gone into MySQL, regardless of the never-ending flamewars on this-platform-or-that-is-superior. Yeah, I use Postgresql a lot these days, but I also still use MySQL.
I wish him all the best with his new venture, and look forward to seeing what sort of stuff he comes up with next.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The same has happened to the Blogger founders after they were bought by Google. If you're a startup guy working for a 20,000 employee company is not going to cut it. And to make things worse you won't have control over the product you created anymore.
I'm surprised it took him so long to quit.
--
Can you say, piece of shit?
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Queue Sun preventing him from doing this with some sort of anti-compete clause in 5,4,3...
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
what? monty burns blocks the sun? --- excellent!
Meanwhile, Monty Program Ab will be 'a true open-source company,' with only a small number of employees who 'strive to have fun together and share the profit we create.'
This is all good until real money starts pouring in and someone wants/needs more money or claims they are more deserving than another or something along those lines. Then the "fun" arrangement becomes less fun and more bitter. Other things that can spoil the fun are if someone decides to wear only black turtlenecks or attempts to make himself into a god of some sort.
Sorry couldnt resist it :)
I'm curious as to why he didn't hitch up with the Drizzle guys. It sounds like he's intending to do exactly what Drizzle is doing. Surely he could have leveraged their efforts and they almost certainly would benefit from having Monty and his team around...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I don't think that's the right Tom Dillon. I got a first name to associate with the last name by googling "dillon google". I suppose I should have asked if his first name is, in fact, Tom.
Startup: Check
1 out of 10 companies last the first year.
No dependable revenue stream: Check
You don't make money making Open Source Software, you make money supporting it / consulting services, packaging and distribution. Making software is expensive. Being a 'a true open-source company,' leads to little teeth to get a good competitive advantage.
Focus on Employee Happiness not productiveness: Check
Yea a productive employee is a Happy Employee, But a Happy Employee doesn't make them productive. Unfortunatly with work there are always the stinker jobs thar are not fun. You can't expect work to always be fun and to have fun at work.
Profit Sharing: Check
If you work harder then everyone else you should deserve more. But how to you fairly determine who is worth what. Bob program may make a lot of money. But bill spends his time helping out Bob in his product.
Small Size: Check
A Small company against the big guys. It will take a while to gain trust. If you start out big(ish) then you can actually get some automatic cred.
Starting in a bad economy: Check
Where is funding going to start how will you get a loan. If he does get one the banks are stupider then I thought.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Seems to me as CO-founder he would have had to approve such a move and even if he did perhaps to make some stipulations on future development instead of constantly being in that 'rocky road' development.
Independently how 'Monty Program' will get along, or perform, this is a honorable step (and may even be beneficial for MySQL - Sun is not in the best shape today). Big Corporations tend to eat your soul, no matter how hard you try to avoid this.
Congratulations, Monty.
Why didn't he go all the way and name it "Monty Program's Flying Code Circus"?!
I'm sorry, as I really like MySQL, but, Monty's just taking his billion dollars and trashing Sun as a cover. The bugs that he talks about, that he complains about, all have dates back to 2001... so, he could have fixed that stuff before Sun even bought him out. The bottom line is, Monty's pointing the finger at Sun when the reality is, he's probably doesn't want to work for anyone other than himself, and is just looking for an excuse to cash out. If he would just say that, I think everyone would get it, but, when you can look at the defects he's blogged about and see how old these bugs are, one has to ask, come on dude, why didn't you fix it, like, years ago?
This is my sig.
While it is a loss to the community, don't say you didn't see it, I sure did.
I wish them the best of luck with their new company startup.
They will certainly need all the luck in the world at this moment in time... as will I and many others.
Auf Wiedersehen Monty!
FYI -- The swastika was used for _thousands_ of years before it was used by the Nazis, and many cultures still use it. It is not an evil symbol.
Having chatted to some people at work, the concensus seems to be that it was primarily to piss off Oracle; "look, we can do databases too, we don't need you". So, Oracle have gotten into bed with HP & linux, just to spite Sun after having largely given Sun "favoured OS" status for a number of years.
All seems to be one big corporate soap opera/bitchfest...
His reason for leaving was allegedly a lack of career postresqlon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've started a number of companies and you're saying a bunch of stuff that isn't really accurate.
You don't make money making Open Source Software, you make money supporting it / consulting services, packaging and distribution. Making software is expensive.
Actually making software can be pretty cheap, relatively speaking. Engineering costs for any pure software company are 10%-25% of total costs. Most of the cost is actually in sales, marketing, and administration. Don't take my word for it - look up the income statement of any publicly traded software company from Microsoft on down.
Being a 'a true open-source company,' leads to little teeth to get a good competitive advantage.
That doesn't necessarily have to be true at all. If you are the developer of a given piece of software and if companies will pay for services relating to that software, the primary developer is in the best position to provide those services since no one knows the software better. Furthermore it is impossible to undercut open source software on price so deep pockets don't help the big guy like they might if the company depended on revenue via a traditional software business model. Once the software is installed companies find it expensive to switch platforms which can mean recurring revenue and barriers to entry. That's certainly the basis for competitive advantage though not any assurance of such advantage.
If you work harder then everyone else you should deserve more.
Deserve? Maybe, but maybe not. The party that takes the most financial risk is who deserves and will get the most reward or take the biggest losses. Hard work is a factor but not even close to the biggest one. You don't make the biggest bucks unless you have the most skin in the game.
A Small company against the big guys. It will take a while to gain trust. If you start out big(ish) then you can actually get some automatic cred.
A guy with a track record of starting successful organizations (like MySQL) often gets to skip this step. The hardest company to start is usually the first one because no investor knows who the hell you are and they certainly don't trust you. Plus pretty much no one starts off big. Only guys with a track record are able to raise the large dollar amounts necessary to start "big".
Where is funding going to start how will you get a loan. If he does get one the banks are stupider then I thought.
Very, very few startups get funding from a bank. Banks want tangible assets as collateral for the money they loan and startups rarely have such assets. Usually funding comes from friends, family, angels, private equity, venture capital, government small business loans and various other sources. Banks, not so much.
Isn't this the guy who moved MySQL towards a commercial end before SUN stepped in and bought them?
Sounds to me like its all good and well, unless its someone else that is getting most of the cash.
If he wasn't the driving force behind it, then forget what i just said.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have to admit that I am glad to see him leave Sun. I am developing an Open Source POS system and originally I was using MySQL as the database. I sent an email to MySQL about distribution questions and was then contacted by different sales people trying to talk me out of Open Sourcing my project. "Do you really want you competitors to have your POS code"... "How are you going make money off of Open Source". I felt bullied.
Understand that MySQL is only GPL (Free) if everything touching it is also GPL (or internal use only). If we distribute it with MySQL and make it commercial, we need to pay yearly for MySQL ($$$). That is understood when dealing with GPL software. Just don't try and talk me out of GPL'ing my code to line your pockets. Business models like this hurt the Open Source community and don't promote Open Source software!
Martin Mickos, the old CEO and Current Sun Database Technology Group SVP is leaving too.
Damn! He will be missed.
That's funny, I have a broker with that name. And given what my account looks like since January of last year, I'd say that alias for him fits really well :D
To put one billion dollars in perspective:
If you were paid $500 an hour and worked a full 2000 hours a year, you'd earn one billion dollars in:
ONE THOUSAND YEARS.
Think about that. What material or intellectual property would you give up for that much money?
What material or intellectual property wouldn't you give up is probably a much, much shorter list.
Hell, what dear relative would you give up for that much money.
Last time I checked the term was "General Availability". Generally available sounds more like it'd be hit-or-miss downloading it...
You know that part where you quote something he said in his blog? Yeah, a link would have been nice there.
SlashSig Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderatio
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They are screwing up OpenOffice.org, now MySQL seems to be falling apart - the only way you can trust them is when they contribute as one of many others - eg. their GNOME interactions seem to be pretty cool.
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/MySQL-CEO-Marten-Mickos-is-leaving-Sun--/112582
MySQL handles typical web load better than both Oracle and PostgreSQL. 99% reads and not to complicated queries and a lax attitude towards MVCC (with the query cache enabled) makes MySQL run really fast.
Most read-only systems with PostgreSQL, Oracle or even MySQL use a cache engine like Memcached or OSCache so the database mostly just idles.