He explains in the related blog post that the founders (presumably meaning Widenius and Axmark) received "less than 12% of the deal", which is quite believable.
In any case, this large lump of cash is only about half what Sun or Oracle would spend on MySQL R&D in just one year, and obviously a small fraction of what would be needed to buy it back - especially after the sale to Oracle is concluded, and assuming the new owner wants to sell.
It's very hard not to agree with the court that Microsoft wilfully infringed. Furthermore, it seems they expected to be caught, and to lose the inevitable suit - and didn't care either. Not hard to see why: The damages awarded are equivalent to just two days' revenue for Microsoft (although they infringed for five years). As a commenter pointed out, that's why such cases are unlikely to change their posture on software patents; even when they lose in that arena (and they are serial infringers, frequently losing such cases) - they have already made a huge profit on the whole dirty business. Same old Microsoft.
The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).
Speaking as a programmer who followed that "royal road" of BASIC->Pascal->C->and beyond.... But that was 25-30 years ago!
Today: Lead him AWAY from C/C++ and towards VHLLs (you choose, there are so many good examples).
In fact *start* with a VHLL. Scheme would not be bad. There are plenty of other suggestions in other comments.
Imperative programming can be a limiting paradigm and difficult to grow beyond. It is better, imho, to be exposed to a variety of paradigms, especially functional and declarative, early in the learning process.
The third party engines that people mostly are interested in (PBXT, for example) also offer ACID transactions and foreign key constraints, so even without InnoDB, MySQL wouldn't be completely useless.
Unfortunately CHECK constraints still aren't in the picture, and even InnoDB lacks niceties such as deferred checking.
Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business.
Uh, no. Microsoft's objective has always been to eliminate competition and choice - by any means, legal or not.
In the other corner, Google wants to give people more choice in operating systems that doesn't presently exist. (The idea that Google (or Apple) aspire to "eliminate" Windows is not credible.)
That 90% of the problem is that alternative jobs don't exist? (On that note - only have to wait, First World lifestyle is inexorably converging on the average Nigerian's.)
It has been part of the Mac System since the Mac was released in 1984; the existence of a resource fork made this possible in "Classic" MacOS. (But I can't remember exactly how Lisa OS does it.)
Linux package management, or Windows installer, is not the same thing at all.
If you've used a Mac you know that, from 1984 until today, to install an application you just physically copy it. The application is everything, there are no "other" hidden changes to the system, no registry changes, etc.
The user is in control, both in the installation and removal steps, and the operation is transparently obvious - in keeping with the Mac's original human interface philosophy.
For the reason I stated: That using Sun's ZFS left them without control of development, and tracking an outside codebase has reputational risks to which Apple in particular is averse. Having ex-Sun people work on a new filesystem is great, but they still need to navigate the patent minefield that Sun has sown around ZFS.
Interesting that Sun non-competes did not stop their engineers walking down the street to work on directly competitive technology... (First I heard that engineers left Sun for Apple, actually. I thought the ZFS team was quite small, and it is obvious from the list that the key people remain at Sun.)
I predicted that they were working on a ZFS-alike on 2 Sept.
NIH Syndrome does seem the most likely explanation. Which is disappointing. Cooperation on ZFS seemed a natural and powerful cross-endorsement for both Apple and Sun.
A lot of confusion has resulted from labelling ZFS a "filesystem". It actually combines both volume management and filesystem layers to achieve unique levels of performance, manageability, and data protection.
Merits close study, as the concepts of ZFS overtake current best practices, conventional filesystems and RAID. You can get this taste of the future today, if you're using Solaris 10/OpenSolaris/FreeBSD.
Slashdot Mirror
He explains in the related blog post that the founders (presumably meaning Widenius and Axmark) received "less than 12% of the deal", which is quite believable.
The EUR 16 million figure is from Widenius' Wikipedia entry. (Which is famously served by MySQL.:)
In any case, this large lump of cash is only about half what Sun or Oracle would spend on MySQL R&D in just one year, and obviously a small fraction of what would be needed to buy it back - especially after the sale to Oracle is concluded, and assuming the new owner wants to sell.
Others include
And there are many more, relational and non-relational, out there.
Groklaw has it.
It's very hard not to agree with the court that Microsoft wilfully infringed. Furthermore, it seems they expected to be caught, and to lose the inevitable suit - and didn't care either. Not hard to see why: The damages awarded are equivalent to just two days' revenue for Microsoft (although they infringed for five years). As a commenter pointed out, that's why such cases are unlikely to change their posture on software patents; even when they lose in that arena (and they are serial infringers, frequently losing such cases) - they have already made a huge profit on the whole dirty business. Same old Microsoft.
The way damages were calculated is detailed by the document linked (and was upheld by appeal, as it most likely substantially underestimated the real damages).
Speaking as a programmer who followed that "royal road" of BASIC->Pascal->C->and beyond .... But that was 25-30 years ago!
Today: Lead him AWAY from C/C++ and towards VHLLs (you choose, there are so many good examples).
In fact *start* with a VHLL. Scheme would not be bad. There are plenty of other suggestions in other comments.
Imperative programming can be a limiting paradigm and difficult to grow beyond. It is better, imho, to be exposed to a variety of paradigms, especially functional and declarative, early in the learning process.
Au contraire, I clicked the article link JUST to find this comment. Thankyou for maintaining a cherished /. tradition!
Oracle still owns Innobase Oy and the InnoDB technology.
The third party engines that people mostly are interested in (PBXT, for example) also offer ACID transactions and foreign key constraints, so even without InnoDB, MySQL wouldn't be completely useless.
Unfortunately CHECK constraints still aren't in the picture, and even InnoDB lacks niceties such as deferred checking.
His Wikipedia page puts his share from the sale to Sun at around EUR 17 million - as it happens, about what Sun spends on MySQL R&D every year.
With all the hot air over-inflated Atwood and pals inject into the intertubes...
Uh, no. Microsoft's objective has always been to eliminate competition and choice - by any means, legal or not.
In the other corner, Google wants to give people more choice in operating systems that doesn't presently exist. (The idea that Google (or Apple) aspire to "eliminate" Windows is not credible.)
Perhaps you haven't visited lately. Although many groups are harmed by spam, there are thousands of active (non-spam) newsgroups.
That 90% of the problem is that alternative jobs don't exist? (On that note - only have to wait, First World lifestyle is inexorably converging on the average Nigerian's.)
It has been part of the Mac System since the Mac was released in 1984; the existence of a resource fork made this possible in "Classic" MacOS. (But I can't remember exactly how Lisa OS does it.)
Linux package management, or Windows installer, is not the same thing at all.
If you've used a Mac you know that, from 1984 until today, to install an application you just physically copy it. The application is everything, there are no "other" hidden changes to the system, no registry changes, etc.
The user is in control, both in the installation and removal steps, and the operation is transparently obvious - in keeping with the Mac's original human interface philosophy.
In OS X the Developer Tools that would be required are optional. (On Linux too, these days.)
Requiring apps to be built from source just wouldn't make sense for Apple's market.
Existence of the NetApp/Sun suit, while most likely a loss for NetApp, is IMHO enough to prevent Apple betting the farm on ZFS in the heart of OS X.
After all these years, Sun knows how to cover themselves. ZFS engineers can't just cross the road to Apple and work on a directly comparable product.
Also, the "lead engineers" are still at Sun, if the ZFS list is anything to go by. In particular Jeff Bonwick.
For the reason I stated: That using Sun's ZFS left them without control of development, and tracking an outside codebase has reputational risks to which Apple in particular is averse. Having ex-Sun people work on a new filesystem is great, but they still need to navigate the patent minefield that Sun has sown around ZFS.
Interesting that Sun non-competes did not stop their engineers walking down the street to work on directly competitive technology... (First I heard that engineers left Sun for Apple, actually. I thought the ZFS team was quite small, and it is obvious from the list that the key people remain at Sun.)
The reason they abandoned the ZFS effort was probably not licensing, imho.
I predicted that they were working on a ZFS-alike on 2 Sept. NIH Syndrome does seem the most likely explanation. Which is disappointing. Cooperation on ZFS seemed a natural and powerful cross-endorsement for both Apple and Sun.
A lot of confusion has resulted from labelling ZFS a "filesystem". It actually combines both volume management and filesystem layers to achieve unique levels of performance, manageability, and data protection. Merits close study, as the concepts of ZFS overtake current best practices, conventional filesystems and RAID. You can get this taste of the future today, if you're using Solaris 10/OpenSolaris/FreeBSD.
why is it just the EU that's following them up? Because the US govt is just a branch of the corporates.
There *are* US regulators??
Which pretty much permanently canceled whatever prestige or symbolic value the prize might have had.
n/t
By some of the pixels. And I've seen quite a few 'shops in my time.