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Oracle Top Execs Answer Sun Employee Questions
The Register writes "Sun invited Oracle president Charles Phillips and chief corporate architect Edward Screven to an employee-only town hall this Wednesday, where they took questions on what's coming. They said they'd be 'crazy' to close Java, that Oracle 'needs' MySQL, and all Sun's processors look appealing. They hedged on OpenOffice — Phillips said he couldn't comment on any product line — and on Sun's work in high-performance computing. Screven made it pretty clear the Sun vision of cloud computing does not fit with Oracle's; Oracle sees itself as a provider of infrastructure like virtualization to make clouds, not a provider of hosted services. As for who's staying and who's getting cut at Sun: Phillips said Oracle needs Sun, but warned 'tough decisions' will be coming. Don't forget, this is the company that couriered pink slips to the PeopleSoft staff it cut following that acquisition."
...that they don't decide to GPL Solaris. Really don't want to see my favorite OS pulled apart and canibalized to fuel the growing Linux hegemony. Let's keep some diversity and competition in the Unix market!
mySQL == OracleLite ? people will get fed up with it and want the 'real' version?
What about these?
Now that Lotus have integrated OpenOffice into Notes 8 Standard and are also pushing Symphony, they are the ones with the incentive to ensure the OO momentum is maintained (not to mention ODF).
Screven made it pretty clear the Sun vision of cloud computing does not fit with Oracle's; Oracle sees itself as a provider of infrastructure like virtualization to make clouds, not a provider of hosted services.
Uhm... That's one of the things Sun is doing with cloud computing that I don't think others are.
All the cloud stuff is, is virtualization and infrastructure. Jonathan Schwartz himself has said that if you're not comfortable putting your stuff on a public cloud they'll bring the cloud to you.
They've been doing cool stuff with their virtualization and provisioning systems.
Dual Opteron < $600
In the case of Sun, you have a company that makes (some) useful and reliable products. In the case of peoplesoft, you have a company that makes an obscenely bloated, broken, overpriced software package that has caused havoc and pain across the continent. Peoplesoft was the most similar thing to Microsoft available for takeover for less money than the contents of Fort Knox, and Sun did to them what so many of us would love to do to Microsoft.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So, Oracle admits they 'need' MySQL, which may or may not complement their core business, but then ducks a question on the future of OpenOffice, saying they can't comment on any product line. Isn't MySQL a product line, too? Why comment on the future of one and not the other? Sun employees, start twisting in the wind...
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
"OMG I work in . will I get laid off?"
"No no, no one will be laid off. All of Sun is important to us."
2 months from now when everyone from Sun will be ancient history.
--Wanted to link that pic of the Iraq guy at the press conference, obviously lying, with his hands in a "simmer down" gesture, but I can't find it. Maybe it wasn't Iraq. I dunno. Someone find it.
Phillips said MySQL has reach in "incremental markets" such as start-ups that Oracle can't get to on its own.
Basically, there is a customer out there that won't buy your product because it's too expensive for example. Instead of losing them to a competitor, you get them to use another product of yours, for free or hopefully with a service contract. Either way, they haven't gone to a competitor.
Your not making the money you would have made had you sold your flagship product, but you weren't going to make that anyway. Might as well get something, with the potential for more later, than turn them away.
Dual Opteron < $600
That's one tactic I hope field sales reps don't use. MySQL and Oracle have different strengths. Oracle should just kill Lite/Express/whatever. Then first sell Oracle. If customer balk at the price convince them to use MySQL. Oracle should use MySQL to keep customers who may want to move away from Oracle Enterprise because of cost.
I find it odd that no one asked any questions about the future of Solaris - although there was a round-about question on x86 which resulted in an somewhat positive answer for SPARC. Oracle seems to be keeping SPARC and thus Solaris alive. (There isn't another OS running SPARC that is in widespread use after all.) This also makes me wonder if Oracle product support for Solaris x86 is going to improve now. This also seems to suggest that Oracle may not be selling Sun's hardware business to HP per the original plan. The idea sounded very interesting - HP would then become the most diversified hardware company selling x86, Itanium and SPARC hardware.
Sounds like what a typical politician or an administrator would say.
Nonetheless, here are "Oracle's Technical Contributions to Linux" [contributions sounds so much better than develop]
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/linux-tech-leadership-contributions.html
and a link to Oracle's "Free and Open Source Software" http://oss.oracle.com/
looks extensive
If they released it under the GPLv3, it still couldn't be cannibalized for Linux (which perversely insisted on staying with v2, which they'll now be stuck with forever), and could immediately become the FSF's OS of choice. Which would be pretty cool, IMO. GNU/Solaris would be a much better system, I think, than anything else out there currently including both GNU/Linux and Solaris. (GNU coreutils, among other things, kick ass on anything else out there.) Heck, I think it would probably edge out the still-unreleased-but-nearly-finished GNU/BSD, and that's been as close to my dream system as anyone's come up with for quite some time.
The flip side argument, though, is: who cares if it's "cannibalized" for something else, e.g. Linux. It's still there, right? Just like the BSDers point out that proprietary derivatives of their software don't affect them at all, since the free versions are still there, unchanged. Anyway, porting kernel code between Solaris and Linux, like porting between BSD and Linux, isn't going to be that easy in the first place; license incompatibility will mostly mean that the final 10% of whatever component you might have in mind (ZFS is probably a good example) will have to be rewritten, and not just the first 90%. :)
Actually, for OpenOffice.org that might be its saving grace. The best thing that could happen to the Open Source movement is if Oracle decides to stop actively developing OOo - in that way other projects will be actively hacked on without the stranglehold that Sun has had on the market. And those projects will probably use - you guessed it - the GPL.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I don't think they bough Sun for MySQL. If I had to guess, they don't even _care_ they got MySQL with it. They have dinky versions of Oracle for developers and stuff anyway.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
Remember the horrifying results at threading performance of OS X compared to Linux on same hardware? It was in first G5 ages.
Oracle could be the one helped the issue to get fixed but there is no proof of that, it is just a rumour. Today OS X doesn't have that issue.
The tool everyone used for benchmarking was mysql btw.
Sun Employees: What is our status when Oracle takes over?
Oracle President: See Figure 1
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Best thing Sun ever did, and they killed it rather than letting it grow.
your ternary operator has a syntax error.
THL phish sticks
Perhaps you don't understand GPL but its viral nature is great for its copyright owners, I can make a product that if any other company tries to improve they have to pay me for copyright OR release all their changes for free. If oracle GPL solaris, they get to keep their hold on it and see what the Linux community can do with it, while any company wanting to make money of the code base has to pay them.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I talked to my manager today, he said we were going to use Postgres instead of MySQL for out next web project.
In his opinion, the latest stable release had poor support for stored procedures and now this acquisition puts further development into question. He wants to move everything out of MySQL at some point.
Since I have never used Postgres before, I couldn't comment on anything, but from my perspective, MySQL had been moving forward with their database. Even if the stored procedures were not on par with the other DB's out there, they would mature in time.
I was ready to speak up, until I thought about MySQL passing hands for the second time, talks about forks, and finally the developers leaving the company. All those things cannot be good short term, and long term will depend a lot on the parent company.
So for the time being, I think my manager is correct and I did not protest his decision.
I think it's you that doesn't understand ..
Wrong. You don't have to pay anyone if you already got the code freely under the GPL terms.
Wrong. You have to make the changes available to whoever gets your derived product. That means only your customers so you're not releasing anything for free. You'd be giving it to whoever bought your product.
I thought that most commercial MySQL installs used InnoDB (owned by Oracle) as the back-end anyhow. Does owning the free front end wrapper to InnoDB change anything?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think the problem with open source office suits is an office suite dosen't get anybody laid, so there is little enthusiasm from people not paid to do it. If you want to use an MS clone the Openoffice is fine, but there is never going to be any innovation unless it comes from another company, so the best hope is to open up the development and get all the companies on board with something, but given its slowness and dependance on java i don't think even that will result in a good product, its best for it to die and novell,linux foundation,red hat, etc, to put their effort into gnumeric,abiword,etc, (maybe rip out the good parts of openoffice and put them in libraries).
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
actually, companies are loading up code with the GPL virus in order to encourage developers to license a less restrictive closed source version.
The GPL doesn't keep software FREE, the community does. If the open source model is superior to the closed source model, there's no need for the GPL.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
MySQL and Oracle (the database, not the company) aren't competitors. MySQL serves people who want cheap / free systems that are fast enough, but fairly simple. Oracle serves people who need real heavy-hitting solutions. What Oracle should be doing is using MySQL to keep customers away from PostgreSQL which also has the cheapness of MySQL but can meet a lot more (though not all) of Oracle's greater sophistication than MySQL.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I don't think that is exactly what they are thinking, but they could help MySQL become more Oracle compatible (e.g. support some of the same views, SQL datatypes, etc...). Secondly, there are a lot of mid-sized shops (I've been at several) who are total Microsoft shops, because it plays nice with Active Directory, is cheaper than Oracle and is reasonably manufacturer supported. However, if you have MySQL with major-vendor backing/support available at little-no cost, it might get more middle-managers willing to use it for more and more applications; which is what many developers/technicians are asking them to do, because they embrace OSS, often use it in their personal/side-gig work, and to save money to sure up the budget.
There is a lot of business out there that if you called it Oracle MySQL instead of MySQL, with not so much as one line changed, would be more apt to use it.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
an office suite dosen't get anybody laid
Luckily the guy doing the NeoOffice port is married.
If something is GPL AND i own the copyright to it (as oracle do with openoffice) a company can either GPL additional code (which despite what you claim means unless you really trust your customers it will be available for free shortly after) OR pay oracle for license's and release a closed source product.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Oracle will not likely make MySQL more like Oracle or make an easy migration path up to Oracle from MySQL since doing so will also create a migration path down from Oracle.
As for the MSAD/MSSQL, Sun just announced expanded interoperability between MySQL and Sun Identity Management Suite which I believe works well with MS Active Directory.
I don't know much about it but your comment brought to mind the article I saw earlier today.
Dual Opteron < $600
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/21/oracle_sun_open_source/
Read every word of it. It's sad but true. I hope that Google finds a way to buy Java off Oracle.
Pl/Sql.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Okay, I'll agree that excessive breeding is bad, but I don't see how it's fair to punish someone for having one or two (one for each partner) kids. In a way they are providing society with citizens to work as they retire. There is some leeway for having a child at different age groups. Better incentives for waiting until thirty, might cover quite a bit of losses with regards to someone who has a child at 16 and lives to 99. The comparison is having a child at 30 and living to 99, the child being better equipped to contribute to society could cover more than just the 14 working years you'd expect. This also, generally adds to the quality of life.
Most things that shorten life expectancy also devalue quality of life. I'd go against it.
On the other hand I'm not 100% sure I could advocate placing extra taxes on a 16 year old that is having a child. In this respect I suppose I would just provide a bonus for hitting the optimum age range - say 25-35. Everyone else is either too young or too old.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
You guys are talking past each other. But in essence that is how MySQL is set up. They will license you a proprietary source copy, or you can use the Open Source one under a differing set of terms. Of course the packages themselves are somewhat different too.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I'm literally hating myself, for having refused a job offer by Sun 1 year and half ago, because of personal (but not very serious) reasons...Now I'll never have the opportunity to work in a company so academic and transparent...
I don't see it that way. The main benefit of adding a "MySQL" mode to Oracle is because MySQL's datatypes are non-standard and applications are likely to contain MySQL-specific DB portability bugs.
Nobody's going to buy Oracle and then start coding MySQLisms. If someone wants DB-portability, the techniques are already well known.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actually, Abiword was going quite well before OpenOffice.org appeared on the scene. Then there was a perception that nothing more needed to be done. If Oracle takes away the development from that product, it can only be a good thing for all those other projects. Because the real problem is that without Sun's development effort the project will just shrivel up and die. Unlike something like Mozilla, where a lot of people are working on the browser.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
before Oracle closes it because of low margins.
Nevermind the obvious synergies and benefits you get from controlling the entire stack -- from CPU to system software to applications. See: APPLE
Chip H.
Porting dtrace would be useless, Linux has pretty much catched up in that front - the only piece missing is the merge of utrace in the main kernel. In distros like Fedora, which include utrace, you already can use systemtap to probe both the kernel and userspace without problems (sure, it lacks the "final polish" of dtrace, but all the hard has been done)
Please... an attempt to copy dtrace, and not a very good one at that.
The big question is if Oracle will keep being Oracle. This company has swallowed something bigger than him. Oracle might be more firmly sat on top of a revenue generator product, but Sun is a much larger operation, involving a dektop presence pretention, mobile, high end hardware design, high end software (Solaris), etc. (That's a reason IBM was a less conflicting buyer for Sun). In turn, Oracle sells a databse, and some enterprise programming tools, they have a much narrower scope (even the name implies this focus).
Perhaps, Oracle should rename themselves to Sun, and just sell a database called Oracle. =)
It's all relative. Actually one of PeopleSoft's claims to fame in the early days was that it was less bloated than many of its competitors: you could run it on modest hardware, even on a PC, and have it function (function well is another thing). Oracle's own homegrown application software is huge, complex, resource intensive, and lacks any kind of modular architecture. Now after all these acquisitions Oracle has the good (or at least less bad), the bad, and the ugly all together.
Dude, even married people dream of getting laid someday.
You don't think Microsoft is actually innovating do you ?
New things are always on the horizon
My point was that the government likes their leverage, so the tax regime will never change.