Oracle/MySQL – Project Peter – Monty’s dreams for BSD license

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These are tough days in the case of the Oracle/MySQL decision the EU faces. First of all, the lobbyists of Oracle achieved that the decision deadline will be extended from January, 19th to January, 27th 2010. Secondly, Monty recommended that a license change from GPL to BSD would be a great idea for MySQL’s future.

 

Today, Johann pointed me to a document called „Project Peter“ which can be found at wikileaks.org (download PDF from wikileaks.org server in Sweden). It’s a presentation of MySQL’s Robin Schumacher. You may ask „What is Project Peter?“. The presentation says:

Project Peter is an internal effort to assist Sun/MySQL customers in migrating from Oracle to MySQL by offering them a comprehensive solution that consists of Professional Services, Best Practices, and a set of approved third party migration tools and utilities that will enable them to move to MySQL in a way that is as easy as possible.

Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, tweeted some time ago about an interview in eWeek where he was asked if Oracle and MySQL compete directly against each other. On page 2 of this interview, he claims that certainly Oracle and MySQL compete to each other:

„MySQL most certainly competes with Oracle,“ Mickos said. „And successfully so. But what must be remembered in terms of dollars in that competition, it is not significant enough to warrant an antitrust consideration. Secondly, this competition happens partly outside of the business—in the free, installed base.

„So no matter who owns MySQL, the competition will continue to exist.“

Even if Oracle does ultimately own the MySQL code base and act as the enterprise headquarters for the database, „MySQL will still apply price pressure on Oracle,“ Mickos said. „That won’t change. This is why there’s no reason to stop the acquisition.“

Asked about the future of MySQL, Mickos claimed: „The MySQL business is a very strong business, with enormous potential in the next 10 to 20 years.“

 

So, maybe MySQL doesn’t compete in terms of dollars today. But if MySQL does have a bright future in the next 10 or 20 years, there’s evidence that numbers will climb up in the era of the „database for the web“. So that’s why there’s Project Peter for the sales force of Sun to try to convert Oracle customers to MySQL. I’m not sure if Oracle will accept a Project Peter if Oracle will own Sun and MySQL in the future – I guess they’ll shut down Project Peter because MySQL may be kind of a threat to Oracle’s business in certain areas.

 

And this is why Oracle mustn’t own MySQL.

Avatar von Björn Schotte

Kommentare

3 Antworten zu „Oracle/MySQL – Project Peter – Monty’s dreams for BSD license“

  1. So who should buy MySQL then? IBM? Microsoft? – Are they any better for the product? I doubt it. When Sun bought MySQL they payed $1.000.000.000 that’s a lot of money, yes economy went down .. but assuming even 50% of that is still a lot of money somebody would have to pay.

    And for me as a PHP developer it doesn’t matter whether the license is GPL or BSD – I can use both freely and get support from whom (MySQL, Percona, …) I want.

    btw. keeping lot’s of Open Source in the Oracle package might be good in order too make sure they have to keep it open!

  2. Today, I twittered with Matthew Aslett from 451 group and pointed him to „Project Peter“ which lead to a blog post by him (see tweet). There’s an interesting statement in his blog entry: […] on the theory that Oracle will not invest

  3. First of all, I want to link to a blog article written by the founder of MySQL to help MySQL being rescued – everybody can stand up and tell the European Commision why the Oracle/Sun deal threatens MySQL. Second, due to a personal request, I want to mak

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