PostgreSQL is the open source database that can comepete with Oracle in terms of features and reliability. EnterpriseDB aims to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a PostgreSQL backend. The partnership is going to create a path for EnterpriseDB to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a DB2 backend.
It creates a migration path from Oracle that IBM can take advantage of.
You do realize that the AGPL is not the GPL right? And that not many projects use the AGPL? Only GPLv3 has an Affero type clause in it and many GPLv2 licensed projects haven't moved to GPLv3.
Problem easy to solve. Don't distribute the MySQL JDBC drivers in the case of a Java app, for example.
Tell the users to download and install MySQL and the drivers themselves. Not a big deal and not uncommon that the DB is not bundled with the application.
Better yet, use the application online and provide it as a service. You're not distributing anything and you don't have to worry about the GPL.
To add. I also thing Sun has been getting a very raw deal.
Everyone is painting IBM as such the Linux supporter, but when you get IBM salespeople in, AIX and DB2 come up in the conversation.
IBM and HP have had Solaris to Linux migration campaigns, but not AIX or HPUX to Linux migration drives and if you search for AIX vs IBM you'll find some intersting stuff on IBM's site.
Solaris was (maybe still is) the leading Unix. HP and IBM didn't say Linux was better than Unix. They said Linux was better than Solaris and people believed them. Well if Linux > Solaris and Solaris was > AIX/HPUX, what does that say?
I think the Linux community got suckered into IBM's marketing plan when they got sued by SCO. IBM wasn't defending Linux, they were defending themselves. It's not like linux was being sued and IBM stepped in. IBM was the defendant.
It seems very strange to me that open source proponents would essentially further IBM's marketing against Sun, when Sun has done more for open source if you look beyond the linux kernel.
very flawed assumption: that Sun's share of the x86 server market is as big as its going to get.
I'm not making that assumption. I think the x86 market will grow for Sun and I'm really surprised they haven't seen greater growth in that line. They have good designs and on their lower end, are price competitive with Dell. They even offer some larger servers and their relationship with Intel and AMD help them get them out to market fast. They were the first to come out with an 8 way quad opteron server. The x4600. And look. He picked up the server by the back of the chassis and didn't start bleeding:) Ok, most server manufacturers solved that problem now, but I've had my share of cuts from doing that.
According to IDC figures, the Unix server market is still about 2x as big as the linux server market or more. I don't remember the exact figures. That would indicate that they're selling at well below the current market potential, in my view.
What concerns me is that Andy Bechtolsheim went to part time so he could start another company. I don't know if that's because Sun hasn't been pushing x86 or because Andy is more a start-up guy. My guess would be he just likes start-ups. They've done well for him in the past.
In any case, SPARC is big business for Sun and will likely be so for a long time. At the current rate of declines for SPARC and gains for X64, it would take many years for SPARC to not be the dominant server for the company.
And Solaris is doing well too and is cheaper than redhat.
Unless those principle devs are still working at Oracle they can't do the former, and the latter is only possible on future versions of MySQL so one can fork the last free version of the software and Oracle can't do a damn thing about it.
But what would the business model be? Any MySQL fork no longer has the ability to dual license the software since the copyrights have been sold. That's how MySQL AB made money.
Developers, and their families, can't eat freedom and self righteousness.
Yeah right, if postgres was popular you'd be pimping mysql, just to be a trouble maker. In any case postgres is dangerously small and uns
Awww.. Look he tried to make a funny. See.. he was going to write unstable, but he stopped in the middle because his postgresql backed keyboard locked up.
What a darling to try and be clever.
People like Postgresql not because it's not popular like mysql. People like it because it's not crippled like mysql.
My experience, in general, has been that people moving from big commercial databases like postgresql. Those that that are new to rdbms's like mysql.
Isn't this the whole point of a real open source license, rather than just publishing stuff and saying 'go play'? Either you're spouting misinformation, or the GPL et al are completely worthless...
This is one of the weaknesses of the GPL that doesn't work well with internet services.
The GPL only requires you to provide the source, and modifications, if you distrubute a product.
Installing the software on a server, and letting others access the software, doesn't count as distributing the software.
The gap between MySQL and Oracle is huge and not likely to be closed anytime soon.
Technology leaders in big companies aren't as into all the open source gossip as the slashdot crowd are and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't even know there were MySQL forks or what that meant.
They would rather go with a MySQL that is named MySQL and has a big company like Sun or Oracle, the leading db vendor that also owns the only sane database engine for MySQL, than some noname fork. Even if it was started by the MySQL founders and all the developers went to it. If all the MySQL developers go to a fork, well then Oracle developers will take over.
If you want an open source database that closes the gap with Oracle, use PostgreSQL.
Sun should have never bought MySQL. Instead they should have put more effort into PostgreSQL. Sun has had some big wins with Solaris and Postgresql in the past and offer support for it on Solaris.
Must be tough since Oracle is an important part of Sun's business but Oracle has done things that could be considered as stabbing Sun in the back too.
Last reported quarter, Sun had around $916 million dollars in UltraSPARC/CoolThreads related hardware billings and only $176 million in x86 servers. The SPARC servers are supposedly also higher margin than the x64 servers.
SPARC sales are declining, while X86 servers (and CoolThreads) are increasing, but that's still a lot of money for SPARC. Add to that whatever the share of the $900 million in total hardware/os support fees that go towards SPARC based servers.
Just on those numbers alone, if you bought Sun for what Oracle is spending, would you kill SPARC? You would be stupid to.
Now throw in that more of your existing customers are choosing Solaris/SPARC over any other combination out there and killing SPARC seems even more boneheaded.
That's especially important because of how much Oracle has been pushing Linux. When you're pushing in one direction, and your customers aren't going along with you, it's time to reassess your game plan.
One thing I hope they do, which will likely boost Sun's T2 based servers higher, is reduce the core factor from.75 to.5 at least, which is what Intel and AMD multicore chips, and even some of the T1 chips were at. Some of the T1s are actually down to.25.
In fact, I think they have to do that to keep T2 going strong with Nahelem out now. There's probably some time to milk T2 for a while until the 5500 series XEON motherboards can support 4 processors.
Oracle isn't cheap, so I can understand why people buying Oracle wouldn't be concerned too much about the cost of the hardware. Plus, if you're server is generating millions of dollars a year, the difference between an Oracle/Sun vs Oracle/x86 solution is a drop in the bucket.
If you get a T5440 server with 4 8 core T2 Plus processors, 64GB memory, 2 SAS disks it will cost you $92k.
32 Cores *.75 is 24 processor licenses for that machine. Oracle Standard Edition licensing would be $420,000 or $1,140,000 for Enterprise edition. The cost of the hardware is already pretty insignificant.
I think Sparc servers are like SUVs. In the beginning they were specialized and only certain people bought them. Then they became popular (dot com era) and financing (vc money) was easy to get, then everyone had to have them. Until gas prices went up, then a lot of people realized they weren't worth it.
But for the people that really need them, they are still worth the price, and they are still willing to pay a premium and the makers can charge a higher margin on them.
Oracle/Sun just needs to figure out where the real market is and adjust, and SPARC can be profitable.
CMT and X86 servers will help boost revenue as SPARC revenue declines.
Sun makes some really nice servers. They were the first to come out with an 8 way quad opteron server and the design is pretty neat.
They are also working closely with Intel now on both their servers and OS. Intel seems to really like Solaris.
I like Solaris, I think people here really sell it short. When Solaris 10 first came out, linux fans kept saying the new features were no big deal, Linux would have them soon. Here we are so many years later and still no ZFS or DTrace equivalents ready for a production environment.
Sun was being shopped around to a lot of different companies, including Intel, according to reports.
It's more likely there were talks with Oracle before IBM got serious about the offer. While IBM rumors broke, Oracle might have regretted not jumping in, or looked into the deal more, or were worried what an IBM/Sun merger could mean for them considering Solaris/SPARC is important for their business.
If it went to court, it probably would have been easy to fight. Since CISRO is south of the equator, the WiFi technology they developed is out of phase with what we use up here, so clearly different.
That's why Australian toilet manufacturers can't break into other big markets. The water spins the wrong way.
I didn't say you couldn't buy RedHat. I said you can't buy what they have worked to accomplish.
Then you must not understand what RedHat has accomplished. What they accomplished was creating a good distribution and were able to build a good brand.
That helped them develop relationships with ISVs and IHVs so that they can support RedHat.
When you buy RedHat, you buy the brand. Just like with Sun/MySQL. While revenues fell at first, they MySQL revenue increased later on and it looks like they are generating more than the $50mil/year that MySQL AB was generating, and likely with lower operating costs.
Mindshare is attributed to the name and unless all the employees quit or get fired, that won't go away.
The ISV and IHV support won't go away either. It's too important.
So when you buy RedHat the company, you get RedHat the brand, and all the ISV/IHV support. You buy RedHat's accomplishments.
But you don't seem to understand that and instead just repeat your initial one liner without adding anything of substance.
Basically, Oracle will terminate the hardware business at Sun. In other words, Oracle paid $7.4 billion only for the software business of Sun. $7.4 billion is too much for such a miniscule part of Sun. Software brings little revenue (or profits) to Sun.
the difficulty of borrowing money right now (IBM was going to use its cash reserves, which isn't an option for Oracle
Why? Oracle has over 8 billion in cash, 2.78 in short term investments. Hell they could bump up their collection efforts and their net receivables could almost buy Sun. (hmm.. that doesn't look good).
Plus when they buy Sun, they get over $2bln of sun's cash.
IBM only has about 4.5 bln more in cash than Oracle, and Oracle has enough to cover the bill.
Go ahead. Call me what you want if it makes you feel better.
I'm under no obligation to share my opinions or make sure they're grammatically correct.
I value my time to not waste it proofreading comments on slashdot. Something I do for entertainment.
What does that mean of the importance of your, and other's time if you have time to nitpick on someone else's comments in an off topic manner?
The original comment was probably went to a score 5 faster than any other comments I have made, and even my response to the first grammar comment got modded up so go ahead. Call me names. I won't lose any sleep over it.
Slashdot Mirror
PostgreSQL is the open source database that can comepete with Oracle in terms of features and reliability. EnterpriseDB aims to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a PostgreSQL backend. The partnership is going to create a path for EnterpriseDB to be a drop-in replacement for Oracle with a DB2 backend.
It creates a migration path from Oracle that IBM can take advantage of.
Welcome to 7 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License
You do realize that the AGPL is not the GPL right? And that not many projects use the AGPL? Only GPLv3 has an Affero type clause in it and many GPLv2 licensed projects haven't moved to GPLv3.
Why would the fork have to stop supporting InnoDB?
If it's forking because Oracle would own MySQL, then it implies you can't trust Oracle. If you can't trust Oracle, you shouldn't use InnoDB.
Or even better yet. Don't use MySQL.
Problem easy to solve. Don't distribute the MySQL JDBC drivers in the case of a Java app, for example.
Tell the users to download and install MySQL and the drivers themselves. Not a big deal and not uncommon that the DB is not bundled with the application.
Better yet, use the application online and provide it as a service. You're not distributing anything and you don't have to worry about the GPL.
To add. I also thing Sun has been getting a very raw deal.
Everyone is painting IBM as such the Linux supporter, but when you get IBM salespeople in, AIX and DB2 come up in the conversation.
IBM and HP have had Solaris to Linux migration campaigns, but not AIX or HPUX to Linux migration drives and if you search for AIX vs IBM you'll find some intersting stuff on IBM's site.
Solaris was (maybe still is) the leading Unix. HP and IBM didn't say Linux was better than Unix. They said Linux was better than Solaris and people believed them. Well if Linux > Solaris and Solaris was > AIX/HPUX, what does that say?
I think the Linux community got suckered into IBM's marketing plan when they got sued by SCO. IBM wasn't defending Linux, they were defending themselves. It's not like linux was being sued and IBM stepped in. IBM was the defendant.
It seems very strange to me that open source proponents would essentially further IBM's marketing against Sun, when Sun has done more for open source if you look beyond the linux kernel.
very flawed assumption: that Sun's share of the x86 server market is as big as its going to get.
I'm not making that assumption. I think the x86 market will grow for Sun and I'm really surprised they haven't seen greater growth in that line. They have good designs and on their lower end, are price competitive with Dell. They even offer some larger servers and their relationship with Intel and AMD help them get them out to market fast. They were the first to come out with an 8 way quad opteron server. The x4600. And look. He picked up the server by the back of the chassis and didn't start bleeding :) Ok, most server manufacturers solved that problem now, but I've had my share of cuts from doing that.
According to IDC figures, the Unix server market is still about 2x as big as the linux server market or more. I don't remember the exact figures. That would indicate that they're selling at well below the current market potential, in my view.
What concerns me is that Andy Bechtolsheim went to part time so he could start another company. I don't know if that's because Sun hasn't been pushing x86 or because Andy is more a start-up guy. My guess would be he just likes start-ups. They've done well for him in the past.
In any case, SPARC is big business for Sun and will likely be so for a long time. At the current rate of declines for SPARC and gains for X64, it would take many years for SPARC to not be the dominant server for the company.
And Solaris is doing well too and is cheaper than redhat.
Skype is one, if not the biggest users of PostgreSQL and has released some tools that they use to manage their PostgreSQL cluster that are probably worth looking into.
With postgresql, you also have the option of scaling vertically instead of just horizontally. It seems that Postgresql scales better than MySQL across multiple cpus/cores and handles heavy load better.
Another interesting benchmark shows that both Postgresql and MySQL handle load better on Solaris instead of Linux.
What do you think most companies do with an RDBMS if they are not building software on top of it?
Most people don't build software on top of an rdbms, they build software that uses and rdbms as a backend data store.
Unless those principle devs are still working at Oracle they can't do the former, and the latter is only possible on future versions of MySQL so one can fork the last free version of the software and Oracle can't do a damn thing about it.
But what would the business model be? Any MySQL fork no longer has the ability to dual license the software since the copyrights have been sold. That's how MySQL AB made money.
Developers, and their families, can't eat freedom and self righteousness.
Yeah right, if postgres was popular you'd be pimping mysql, just to be a trouble maker. In any case postgres is dangerously small and uns
Awww.. Look he tried to make a funny. See.. he was going to write unstable, but he stopped in the middle because his postgresql backed keyboard locked up.
What a darling to try and be clever.
People like Postgresql not because it's not popular like mysql. People like it because it's not crippled like mysql.
My experience, in general, has been that people moving from big commercial databases like postgresql. Those that that are new to rdbms's like mysql.
Yeah, you're right. Foreign keys, who needs 'em
They should even get rid of SQL support altogether and just call it My. Who needs all that complicated elitist crap anyway?
Isn't this the whole point of a real open source license, rather than just publishing stuff and saying 'go play'? Either you're spouting misinformation, or the GPL et al are completely worthless...
This is one of the weaknesses of the GPL that doesn't work well with internet services.
The GPL only requires you to provide the source, and modifications, if you distrubute a product.
Installing the software on a server, and letting others access the software, doesn't count as distributing the software.
The gap between MySQL and Oracle is huge and not likely to be closed anytime soon.
Technology leaders in big companies aren't as into all the open source gossip as the slashdot crowd are and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them didn't even know there were MySQL forks or what that meant.
They would rather go with a MySQL that is named MySQL and has a big company like Sun or Oracle, the leading db vendor that also owns the only sane database engine for MySQL, than some noname fork. Even if it was started by the MySQL founders and all the developers went to it. If all the MySQL developers go to a fork, well then Oracle developers will take over.
What's more concerning is IBMs partnership with EnterpriseDB, which is based on PostgreSQL.
If you want an open source database that closes the gap with Oracle, use PostgreSQL.
Sun should have never bought MySQL. Instead they should have put more effort into PostgreSQL. Sun has had some big wins with Solaris and Postgresql in the past and offer support for it on Solaris.
Must be tough since Oracle is an important part of Sun's business but Oracle has done things that could be considered as stabbing Sun in the back too.
Last reported quarter, Sun had around $916 million dollars in UltraSPARC/CoolThreads related hardware billings and only $176 million in x86 servers. The SPARC servers are supposedly also higher margin than the x64 servers.
SPARC sales are declining, while X86 servers (and CoolThreads) are increasing, but that's still a lot of money for SPARC. Add to that whatever the share of the $900 million in total hardware/os support fees that go towards SPARC based servers.
Just on those numbers alone, if you bought Sun for what Oracle is spending, would you kill SPARC? You would be stupid to.
Now throw in that more of your existing customers are choosing Solaris/SPARC over any other combination out there and killing SPARC seems even more boneheaded.
That's especially important because of how much Oracle has been pushing Linux. When you're pushing in one direction, and your customers aren't going along with you, it's time to reassess your game plan.
One thing I hope they do, which will likely boost Sun's T2 based servers higher, is reduce the core factor from .75 to .5 at least, which is what Intel and AMD multicore chips, and even some of the T1 chips were at. Some of the T1s are actually down to .25.
In fact, I think they have to do that to keep T2 going strong with Nahelem out now. There's probably some time to milk T2 for a while until the 5500 series XEON motherboards can support 4 processors.
Oracle isn't cheap, so I can understand why people buying Oracle wouldn't be concerned too much about the cost of the hardware. Plus, if you're server is generating millions of dollars a year, the difference between an Oracle/Sun vs Oracle/x86 solution is a drop in the bucket.
If you get a T5440 server with 4 8 core T2 Plus processors, 64GB memory, 2 SAS disks it will cost you $92k.
32 Cores * .75 is 24 processor licenses for that machine. Oracle Standard Edition licensing would be $420,000 or $1,140,000 for Enterprise edition. The cost of the hardware is already pretty insignificant.
I think Sparc servers are like SUVs. In the beginning they were specialized and only certain people bought them. Then they became popular (dot com era) and financing (vc money) was easy to get, then everyone had to have them. Until gas prices went up, then a lot of people realized they weren't worth it.
But for the people that really need them, they are still worth the price, and they are still willing to pay a premium and the makers can charge a higher margin on them.
Oracle/Sun just needs to figure out where the real market is and adjust, and SPARC can be profitable.
CMT and X86 servers will help boost revenue as SPARC revenue declines.
Sun makes some really nice servers. They were the first to come out with an 8 way quad opteron server and the design is pretty neat.
They are also working closely with Intel now on both their servers and OS. Intel seems to really like Solaris.
I like Solaris, I think people here really sell it short. When Solaris 10 first came out, linux fans kept saying the new features were no big deal, Linux would have them soon. Here we are so many years later and still no ZFS or DTrace equivalents ready for a production environment.
Where did you read that they were going to borrow? I thought it was going to be an all cash deal with no financing necessary?
I would be really surprised if it will be profitable in the first year. Sun is going to have a $500 million hit in august.
Sun was being shopped around to a lot of different companies, including Intel, according to reports.
It's more likely there were talks with Oracle before IBM got serious about the offer. While IBM rumors broke, Oracle might have regretted not jumping in, or looked into the deal more, or were worried what an IBM/Sun merger could mean for them considering Solaris/SPARC is important for their business.
Apple demonstrated this tech with the Apple Lisa which kind of bombed
Let that be a lesson to everyone. Don't name unproven inventions after things yo love. Makes it harder to let go after they clearly won't work.
I'm going to trademark the word "claim" as it relates to intellectual property.
CISRO got a good deal with the settlement.
If it went to court, it probably would have been easy to fight. Since CISRO is south of the equator, the WiFi technology they developed is out of phase with what we use up here, so clearly different.
That's why Australian toilet manufacturers can't break into other big markets. The water spins the wrong way.
I didn't say you couldn't buy RedHat. I said you can't buy what they have worked to accomplish.
Then you must not understand what RedHat has accomplished. What they accomplished was creating a good distribution and were able to build a good brand.
That helped them develop relationships with ISVs and IHVs so that they can support RedHat.
When you buy RedHat, you buy the brand. Just like with Sun/MySQL. While revenues fell at first, they MySQL revenue increased later on and it looks like they are generating more than the $50mil/year that MySQL AB was generating, and likely with lower operating costs.
Mindshare is attributed to the name and unless all the employees quit or get fired, that won't go away.
The ISV and IHV support won't go away either. It's too important.
So when you buy RedHat the company, you get RedHat the brand, and all the ISV/IHV support. You buy RedHat's accomplishments.
But you don't seem to understand that and instead just repeat your initial one liner without adding anything of substance.
Basically, Oracle will terminate the hardware business at Sun. In other words, Oracle paid $7.4 billion only for the software business of Sun. $7.4 billion is too much for such a miniscule part of Sun. Software brings little revenue (or profits) to Sun.
Or you are completely off base.
The reason Ballmer was speechless is he forgot Oracle was still around or was suprised Oracle had that kind of money. Take your pick...
It's unlikely that the CEO of the #1 software company wouldn't know who #2 was.
the difficulty of borrowing money right now (IBM was going to use its cash reserves, which isn't an option for Oracle
Why? Oracle has over 8 billion in cash, 2.78 in short term investments. Hell they could bump up their collection efforts and their net receivables could almost buy Sun. (hmm.. that doesn't look good).
Plus when they buy Sun, they get over $2bln of sun's cash.
IBM only has about 4.5 bln more in cash than Oracle, and Oracle has enough to cover the bill.
Go ahead. Call me what you want if it makes you feel better.
I'm under no obligation to share my opinions or make sure they're grammatically correct.
I value my time to not waste it proofreading comments on slashdot. Something I do for entertainment.
What does that mean of the importance of your, and other's time if you have time to nitpick on someone else's comments in an off topic manner?
The original comment was probably went to a score 5 faster than any other comments I have made, and even my response to the first grammar comment got modded up so go ahead. Call me names. I won't lose any sleep over it.