Why Monty thinks IBM could acquire MySQL

A quick review of the Save MySQL online petition stats today shows that the results are still in line with the results I reported previously.  Over 90 percent of petition signees would require Oracle to divest MySQL to a “suitable third party”.  I noticed that Michael “Monty” Widenius’ post explaining the petition provided several options for a “suitable third party”.  First off, Monty makes it clear that his company is not interested in acquiring MySQL.  Monty’s list of potential buyers includes IBM, Fujitsu, any of the major Linux distribution vendors or a private equity firm that would take MySQL public.

As an IBMer I was interested to hear more about Monty’s thoughts on IBM.  Note that I do not work in the division where IBM’s database, DB2, is managed.  Nor do I have any information about IBM’s interest, or lack thereof, in MySQL.

I asked Monty this question via email:

Q] Would you require that IBM add the linking exception or have to re-license MySQL under the ASL 2.0 in order to acquire MySQL?

The linking exception or having to re-license MySQL are two of the options that Monty & Florian Mueller would like to see Oracle select before being allowed to acquire MySQL.

Monty replied:

“Personally I don’t consider IBM a direct competitor to MySQL and thus there would not be a need for a licensing remedy…With MySQL, IBM would have a vehicle to become a market leader in databases. IBM could only do this if they keep MySQL free to ensure it keeps it dominant position in units…IBM has more to gain by keeping MySQL Open Source and available to all than they could get by killing it.  With Oracle this is not the case.”

At first I bristled at this reply.  Why should Oracle accept a set of restrictions that IBM, another competitor in the database market, would not face?  However, the difference lies in the market position of the acquiring vendor.  Oracle is the revenue leader in the relational database market with over 40 percent share according to Gartner and IDC.  I don’t have the Gartner data handy, but IDC data suggests that Oracle had approximately a 2 to 1 lead versus IBM and Microsoft individually.  Considering Oracle’s market position versus IBM and Microsoft, it’s understandable that regulators would treat an Oracle acquisition of MySQL differently than, for example a Microsoft or IBM acquisition of MySQL.

One thing that does surprise me, pleasantly, is that Monty doesn’t see a “need for a licensing remedy” should IBM (Fujitsu or any of the major Linux distribution vendors) acquire MySQL.  Many have questioned Monty’s motives for blocking the MySQL acquisition.  Monty’s company competes with MySQL, but, unlike MySQL, Monty’s company cannot provide a commercial license to business partners or enterprises.  That’s why the linking exception or having to re-license MySQL under the Apache Software License 2.0 is seen as a boon to third party providers of MySQL products and services.  Had Monty replied that he would like any potential acquirer of MySQL accept a licensing remedy, one could draw a connection back to his current business interests.

Readers can make up their own mind as to Monty’s or Oracle’s motives.  But like most things in life, the story isn’t cut and dry.  And while I personally believe there is more for Oracle to gain by nurturing MySQL than not, but Larry Ellison won’t return my calls.

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Save MySQL petition kicks off 2010

Florian Mueller begins 2010 by demonstrating why he was named EU Campaigner of the Year by the Economist five years ago. While most of us were prepping for New Year’s Eve celebrations or contemplating New Year’s resolutions, Monty and Mueller spent December 28th launching an online Save MySQL petition against the Oracle acquisition of MySQL via Sun. Mueller reports via email:

“www.helpmysql.org campaign delivers first 14,000 signatures against Oracle’s proposed acquisition of MySQL to European, Chinese and Russian competition authorities.

In less than one week, during the Holiday Season, we gathered 50 times more customer support than Oracle claimed three weeks ago.”

You can read the full press release here.

The campaign is displaying stats from petition signees.  This post is based on the first 16,306 signees as of 9am EST on Monday, January 4th.  If the results change markedly with new signees, I’ll post an update.

MySQL Enterprise Usage
Whether MySQL poses a competitive threat to Oracle’s database business has been a point of significant disagreement between Oracle and opponents of the MySQL acquisition including Monty and Mueller.  Oracle says there is little to no overlap.  Monty argues that MySQL has become feature rich and is a suitable replacement for Oracle’s database in several situations. Nearly a quarter of respondents identified themselves as working at a company using MySQL, and not simply an independent or self-employed software or web developer.  Of the respondents working at a company using MySQL, just over 20 percent worked at a company with 1000 or more employees.  This is clearly a customer group where Oracle databases would compete.  These results would seem to support Monty’s claims about MySQL competitiveness against Oracle.  On the other hand, there’s no reason that a large company wouldn’t want to use both MySQL and Oracle databases for small and large projects respectively.  In such a situation, did the MySQL usage displace Oracle usage, or, as Oracle would argue, SQL Server usage?  The former would support Monty’s claim, while the latter would support Oracle’s claim.  A generalized version of this question would have been a helpful addition to the Save MySQL petition.

Signees Would Require Oracle to Sell MySQL
Of the three solutions that Mueller and Monty suggest Oracle agree to before being allowed to complete the Sun acquisition, over 90 percent of signees believe that MySQL must be divested to a suitable third party.  Only 60 percent of signees believe that Oracle should be allowed to acquire MySQL as part of the Sun acquisition.  These signees would require Oracle to either commit to a linking exception for applications that use MySQL or require Oracle to release past and future versions of MySQL under the Apache Software License 2.0.

Go ahead and take a look at the petition here.

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Florian Mueller responds to Eben Moglen’s Oracle/Sun submission

Last week Eben Moglen, founder and executive director of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), submitted an independent opinion on the Oracle/Sun merger to the European Union (EU). Moglen summarized his submission as follows:

“The GPL was designed specifically to ensure the permanent freedom of software, and the ability of everyone to improve and share their improvements to the program, no matter who acquires the copyrights to the code.  The whole point of GPL as a copyright license is to deal with every contingency that could result in hobbling or destroying the freedom of code shared under it. The drafters of GPL versions 2 and 3 considered scenarios very similar to the ones that the Commission is concerned about now. The design of the license, and the experience we have had using it, show that it can be counted upon to operate as intended in situations like this one.”

Moglen issued the 11 page opinion, pro bono and without the charge, at the request of Oracle’s counsel.  Moglen clarified that Oracle is an ongoing contributor to the SFLC, while Monty Widenius has contributed in the past.  However, neither the contributions from Oracle nor Widenius have exceeded 5 percent of SFLC’s funding since inception.

I found the following paragraph from Moglen’s submission particularly interesting:

“MySQL is now and always has been an atypical GPL software project, because its copyright was highly centralized inside a small commercial firm that considered dual licensing its only commercially attractive strategy for survival. But even MySQL AB’s atypical business model, which was highly unreflective of the mass of GPL’d software development, occurred within the parameters of the GPL’s overall design, which is to ensure the freedom of the software it protects regardless of the commercial motivations or behaviors of the parties distributing the primary upstream version.”

On the other end of the debate, Florian Mueller announced that he has submitted a 31 page rebuttal to Moglen’s position.  Mueller provided a summary of the highlights via email, from which I selected these comments:

“Fundamentally, his paper offers a different prediction as to what would happen post-acquisition. He simply expresses his firm belief that whatever made MySQL successful in the past is not really an indication for the future. In fact he believes MySQL AB had a very suboptimal business model…

If he were right that MySQL AB and all of the companies that succeeded around MySQL didn’t do it right and that a GPL-only approach works best, then actually there would be no point in Sun having acquired MySQL last year nor in Oracle acquiring it now because then the future would at any rate be that someone has to fork it and do a GPL-only project dependent on voluntary contributions. Interestingly, that approach would have been possible during all of those almost 14 years that MySQL has been available and no one, not even Eben Moglen, decided to seize that opportunity.”

Both Moglen and Mueller make strong and weak points.

First, Moglen is too quick to dismiss MySQL as an atypical GPL project.  As Mueller points out, whatever you think about MySQL and their business model, you can’t simply conclude that another business model would be more appropriate.  Just because Linux is licensed under the GPL and Linux vendors, namely Red Hat and Novell are closing in on a combined $1B in revenue, does not mean the GPL is the best license for every open source product with commercial aspirations.  The Linux ecosystem is very different than say, application servers or web content management.  Different markets with different ecosystems require different license considerations.

While Moglen appears to be arguing for a “pure GPL” MySQL, departing from the dual-licensed status quo, Groklaw reports that Mueller and Widenius would like to see the MySQL open source license changed from GPLv2 to the Apache Software License.  According to Groklaw, page 19 of an unreleased submission to the EU from Mueller/Widenius stated:

“We would like to draw attention to the fact that some major concerns about the effects of the proposed transaction could be somewhat alleviated by requiring that all versions of MySQL source code previously released under the GPLv2 license …must be released under a more liberal open source license that is usable also by the OEM users and would also create an opportunity for other service vendors to compete with offerings comparable to MySQL Enterprise. A good candidate is the Apache Software License (ASL).”

Something doesn’t feel right about Widenius proposing a license that MySQL could have chosen “over the past 14 years”.  Clearly MySQL decided against this move as the GPL/dual licensing approach led to a competitive advantage that the ASL v2.0 would not provide MySQL.  But I guess that’s why Widenius suggests Oracle should be forced to re-license MySQL under a permissive license such as the ASL v2.0.

We haven’t heard the last from Widenius & Mueller. Enjoy your holiday season ;-)

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Microsoft Azure to capture open source revenue streams

Three weeks ago I wrote that Amazon RDS was going to eat into MySQL’s revenue potential.  I also pointed out that Amazon’s RDS was but a precursor to future Amazon cloud service offerings for other popular open source products.  While that post was centered on Amazon, it wasn’t a stretch to predict that any of the big IT vendors (IBM, Microsoft, HP, Google, Cisco, EMC/VMware, and Sun/Oracle) would offer RDS-like cloud services in the future.

Well, reading details of the Windows Azure platform this week, the prediction badge no longer applies to Microsoft.  According to Microsoft, Azure SQL will support MySQL, and Azure .NET Services will support Apache Tomcat.  Microsoft will also support PHP and Apache Web Server on Azure.  I’ll focus on MySQL, and to a lesser degree Apache Tomcat for this discussion.  I believe MySQL and Apache Tomcat will be the first two products offered as a service on large IT vendor cloud platforms, aside from the IT vendor’s strategic software stack that is.

When Amazon decided to offer MySQL via Amazon RDS, they did so without purchasing MySQL support from Sun.  I’ve confirmed that Microsoft Azure is supporting MySQL on Azure without paying Sun for a MySQL Enterprise subscription.  The logic as to why Amazon could do without a MySQL Enterprise subscription applies equally to Microsoft:

“Amazon’s decision to use the free version of MySQL to build RDS is completely sensible. First, Amazon has the technical skills to support their usage of MySQL without having to acquire the MySQL Enterprise subscription. Second, this decision helps Amazon lower the cost of RDS, which makes RDS more attractive to customers. This is clearly not good news for Sun/MySQL, which is missing out on capturing some portion of the revenue from MySQL users spending on RDS.”

As in my previous post, I don’t want this to be about Amazon or Microsoft versus Sun/MySQL.

The larger point is if Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google, Cisco, EMC/VMware, Oracle/Sun offer a simple and supported cloud service for running MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss, Mule or Apache HTTP instances, what reason do customers have to acquire “enterprise subscriptions” from the vendors developing these open source projects?  Until now, the value of an open source “enterprise subscription” has largely been access to support and access to administration and management tooling.  In the case of MySQL, the former is provided by Amazon RDS and Azure SQL as part of the per-hour service.  Again in the case of MySQL, the latter is rendered unnecessary or replicated through Amazon RDS and Azure SQL tools.

If Microsoft can find business justification to offer both a .NET runtime and Apache Tomcat runtime as a service, then I wouldn’t bet on other IT vendors being solely faithful to their strategic software stack in their cloud service offerings.  I expect MySQL and Apache Tomcat will be supported by a plurality of large IT vendor cloud offerings.

Let’s turn our attention to the popular Apache Tomcat runtime. Covalent, now part of VMware via SpringSource, and OpenLogic are leading providers of Tomcat support.  Realizing that the scalable revenue potential is in selling products, SpringSource launched tc Server, or “Apache Tomcat with enterprise management”.  While I applaud the “selling products” angle, I reiterate that enterprise management not enough of a differentiator when up against cloud services from large IT vendors.

I still think that proprietary features in the “enterprise” version of the open source product, which are note available in the “free community” version, will be the path forward for open source vendors. Large IT vendor cloud offerings for open source products will rely on availability of the “free community” version and whatever features are supported in this version.  If there are compelling features outside of administration and management tooling in the “enterprise” version, then customers have a reason to skip the IT vendor cloud service and pay for the “enterprise” open source product.  I know the proprietary features suggestion is difficult for open source vendors to accept, and more importantly, difficult to rationalize in front of customers.  Difficult, but necessary.

In the end, there is no way that all expenditures on open source products such as MySQL or Tomcat will occur through a large IT vendor cloud service.  Clearly customers will want to use open source in their private data centers and acquire support and administration/management tooling from the open source vendor. There is also clearly an issue if IT vendors capture too much of the customer expenditure on open source products via their cloud services, leaving open source vendors behind these products to scrimp on future product development.  A happy medium will be found.  Well, it may not be happy enough for open source vendors as they watch large IT vendors capture revenue around open source products. But that’s competition for you.

Fun times ahead.

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Oracle unveils plans for MySQL, GlassFish, NetBeans and OpenOffice

Oracle updated its frequently asked questions (FAQ) overview of the impending Sun acquisition to address some important questions about the fate of Sun’s software assets beyond Java and Solaris.

To be completely honest, none of Oracle’s plans come as a surprise.  And at the end of the day, the FAQ is not legally binding and is not a commitment to deliver products, code or functionality. Oracle clearly states this at the end of the FAQ.  This too is completely understandable.  Oracle, like any other company with shareholders, will have to evaluate and adjust their plans and intentions on a product by product basis over time.  Oracle has a fiduciary duty to do so.

In the FAQ, potentially released to appease the EU and critics of the deal, Oracle tackles its plans for MySQL as follows:

“Oracle plans to spend more money developing MySQL than Sun does now. Oracle expects to continue to develop and provide the open source MySQL database after the transaction closes. Oracle plans to add MySQL to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Berkeley DB, an open source database. Oracle also currently offers InnoDB, an open source transactional storage engine and the most important and popular transaction engine under MySQL. Oracle already distributes MySQL as part of our Enterprise Linux offering.”

This position makes complete sense as MySQL and the Oracle DB are more complimentary than competitive.  I doubt that this assurance from Oracle will help Monty, Florian, RMS and others opposed to Oracle’s ownership of MySQL get past their fears.

Not unexpectedly, Oracle plans to keep GlassFish around, since it is the reference implementation for Java EE:

“Oracle plans to continue evolving GlassFish Enterprise Server, delivering it as the open source reference implementation (RI) of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications, and actively supporting the large GlassFish community. Additionally, Oracle plans to invest in aligning common infrastructure components and innovations from Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server to benefit both Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server customers.”

The plans for NetBeans are somewhat certain.  You’ll notice that Oracle makes no claims about “investing more than Sun does today” or “continue evolving”.

“As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle’s strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle’s next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.”

Finally, Oracle suggests that OpenOffice.org and a commercial offering will receive investment.

“After the transaction closes, Oracle plans to continue developing and supporting OpenOffice as open source. As before, some of the larger customers will ask for extra assurances, support, and enterprise tools. For these customers we expect to offer a typical commercial license option.”

So there you have it.  Oracle’s plans for Sun, well, based on current thinking and subject to change at Oracle’s sole discretion.  Which again, is perfectly sensible.

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Why no mention of MySQL in Oracle’s WSJ ad?

Matt Asay and Marten Micknos both tweeted about Oracle’s ad targeted at Sun customers that ran in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.  It’s also on Oracle’s website:

Source: Oracle

Customers have been leaving Sun and its uncertain future since the Oracle acquisition was announced for the stability of IBM, HP and Dell. The recent EU decision to continue evaluating the Sun acquisition prolongs the uncertainty surrounding Sun. On the surface, this ad is clearly intended to stop, or at least reduce, this unsettling customer trend.

Matt points out that there is no mention of MySQL in the advertisement. I’ll take it one step further and point out that there is no mention of any part of Sun’s software division (save for Solaris with its SPARC linkage). Nothing about Java, GlassFish, MySQL, OpenOffice, Netbeans, etc. R&D investments or sales support.

This is somewhat understandable. Why would Oracle pledge to “spend more money developing Sun xyz” software product when Oracle already has a competitive product in their existing portfolio. In some cases, Oracle *may* spend more developing the Sun product. In other cases, Oracle *may* spend significantly less, or even kill the product. But one would expect a blanket “we’re committed to protecting customer investments in Sun Software” or something like that.

I find the timing of this ad surprising. What better way to placate EU fears that Oracle is going to “hurt MySQL and open source choice” than publishing an ad that completely ignores MySQL or Sun’s software portfolio?

Most have speculated that Oracle was really after Sun’s software assets, and was likely to sell the Sun hardware/systems division after the acquisition was approved.  This advertisement would suggest otherwise. But hey, it’s an Oracle advertisement.  Take it with a grain of salt.

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

PS: I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

 

Whatever happened to support directly from developers?

Monty’s explanation of why he founded the Open Database Alliance focused on the Alliance being able to target customers that need more personalized services than Sun/Oracle could provide.  This jogged my memory about one of the early benefits marketed around purchasing open source support.  Namely, that customers could speak directly with the developers of the product.  In this brave new world, of 3 years ago, customers wouldn’t have to explain their issue to one or two levels of support professionals before reaching the actual developer of the code.  This was even while most questions related to configuration, settings, or other issues that a level 1 or level 2 support professional could handle easily.  But, when it was a tough problem, and/or the customer was down, going directly to the developer definitely had its appeal.

The ability to “speak directly with the developer” could not scale with the growth of an open source software business.  Vendors want their developers writing the next feature for the next release, or out doing professional support, not manning the phones to answer configuration questions.   I remember struggling with this issue  when we were crafting IBM’s Apache Geronimo and WAS Community Edition support offerings back in 2005.

I know some closed and open source companies rotate their developers into the support organization so developers can get customer exposure and better understand how their work and the product is used in the field.  However, this staffing procedure is seldom marketed to customers.

I checked the JBoss and MySQL subscriptions to confirm whether they market the ability to speak directly with the developer. As best as I could tell, they do not.

Customers don’t prefer a support triage system.  But maybe they’re not willing to pay a premium for it?  Or maybe larger open source vendors have acknowledged that this feature does not scale, and hence, aren’t offering it?  Maybe it’s a little from column A and a little from column B?

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Comparing the JBoss and MySQL acquisitions

Just saw this story on Slashdot which made me think of this post from Marc Fleury.

The Slashdot story questions what/where is the official MySQL tree:

“…With Monty Widenius having left Sun and forked off MySQL for MariaDB, and Brian Aker running the Drizzle fork inside of Sun, where is the official MySQL tree? …. Smugmug’s Don MacAskhill, who is the keynote at the upcoming MySQL Conference, has commented that he is now using the Percona version of MySQL, and is no longer relying on Sun’s.”

In researching a future post I came across this quote from Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz via Marc Fleury’s blog:

“A: First, the personalities involved. Let’s just say that integrating Marten Mickos into a company might be easier than assimilating a few of the JBoss personalities. Marten is a joy to work with and will make this integration work.”

Thinking about JBoss and MySQL today, I can’t help buy chuckle at the quote.  Both JBoss and MySQL have seen their executives leave the acquiring company.  However, for all the “JBoss personalities” out there, not one of them has forked the JBoss code in an attempt to compete against Red Hat.  Not yet at least (you never know what Roy will do ;-).

I truly wonder why.

Maybe JBoss developers are contractually prevented from doing so or have financial incentives not to fork JBoss?  But if so, why wasn’t the MySQL team put under similar legal restrictions and/or incentive plans?

Maybe Red Hat’s history with open source provided for an easier transition than Sun did?  I don’t buy this considering the initial challenges at Red Hat.  Every acquisition has its road bumps, Sun’s challenges with MySQL are no different.

Maybe there were plenty of open source application server choices (Tomcat, Geronimo, Jetty, GlassFish) out there, so the likelihood of a fork gaining traction is too minimal to bother with the effort?  I’m not convinced by this argument; EnterpriseDB/PostgreSQL, Ingres and JavaDB provide enough choice, as do Cloud databases that seem to pop up weekly.

Maybe, as Schwartz foretold, it all came down to the people and the “personalities”, on both sides of the deal

What do you think?

 

The cost of developing enterprise-only open source features

A friend passed on a link to Kevin Burton’s post titled: “Destroying MySQL”. In the post, Kevin asks what actions would be required to have a negative impact on the use of MySQL.  He then attempts to draw the conclusion that Sun/MySQL Co. are (unwittingly) executing against his hypothetical action plan.

While I’ll leave it to you to evaluate the merits of Kevin’s overall argument, the following text caught my attention:

“I’m not going to be buying MySQL Enterprise anytime soon. Further, I’m actively discouraging people from purchasing it…

Why? It’s just a bad deal. They’re going to give you a binary which isn’t tested by the community and has limited development. How is this a good idea?

I’m going to be throwing down $20-30k in 2009 on MySQL development but it isn’t going to be given to Sun, MySQL, or Oracle. It’s going to be given to companies like Percona, Open Query, or Proven Scaling that actually care about their customers and release stable fixes to MySQL community.”

Kevin’s comments highlight an interesting point regarding features only available in an enterprise edition.  I’ll speak generally going forward, because MySQL is not the only OSS company following, or on the verge of following, this approach.

We all know that the Open Source Software business model benefits from the testing done by “the community”.  This is supposed to lead to higher quality software and lower development (and testing) costs to the OSS vendor creating the product.  However, as “enterprise only” features are added to the mix, can we assume that the development-related benefits of the OSS business model are retained for these “enterprise only” pieces?

It’s logical to assume that the enterprise only features will not be of the same quality as the community code.  This is because fewer users will touch these features and uncover bugs.  However, vendors highlight “additional testing” as a benefit of their enterprise edition.  So, I could be convinced that the code quality will remain high.  However, this form of testing results in higher costs to the OSS vendor.  I’d argue that the development cost savings of the OSS business model are negated for enterprise only features, if not for the enterprise only product on whole.

I find this interesting because it’s further evidence that as the OSS business model matures, its resemblance to the closed source software business model grows. Which, if you ask me, is goodness for the industry as a whole.

What do you think?

 

MySQL needs to reconsider closed source

Okay, I didn’t really want to write about Sun again today, but Simon has an interesting post about the “Sun Model” for open source business.  Simon states that the model boils down to:

“1. remove barriers to software adoption between download and deploy;
2. encourage a large and cohesive community of software deployers;
3. deliver, for a fee, the means to create value between deploy and scale, for those who need it. “

I’d argue that this isn’t the “Sun Model” as much as it’s the general open source software business model.  Wouldn’t you agree?  The trick has always been step 3.  To this point, Sun’s Rich Sands writes the following comment on Simon’s blog:

“The tricky bit with this model is that it is too hard to make enough $ to justify all those engineers. Why? If the code base is commercial quality (a given with Sun), deployers often don’t need your services or add-ons to scale. They can figure it out themselves, or only a small fraction of deployers will scale big enough to need extra help. Or the community just builds a free alternative add-on.

The real Sun model, which could work, but is seen as unpopular with analysts and investors and people focused on everything “paying its own way”, is that ubiquitous software platforms driven by potent open source development and deployment communities creates “opportunities to monetize” hardware and services – aka “drag”. You still need racks of humming machines to run all that free stuff. Sun’s challenge: deliver hardware and professional services that run the free stuff with better ROI than anyone else’s gear. Then, figure out how to account for the drag, so that the software strategy of creating ubiquity and mass adoption gets credit for dragging all that hardware along, and the credit justifies all those engineers.

– rms | @richsands”

Rich makes a great point.  When the code base is of commercial quality, do customers really need a vendor’s services or add-ons to scale?  Or if a set of customers do, can the revenue offset the cost of delivering the software?

The answer that I back is to differentiate between capabilities within the for free open source version of the product and the for fee version of the product.  MySQL tried to do this last year, but had to backtrack due to community pressure.  It was the right thing for MySQL (and Sun) then, and remains the best move for MySQL (and Sun).  It won’t be easy to grin and bear it as the community throws tomatoes.  But the open source ecosystem will be better off for it.

Can you think of a better testament to the power of the open source business model than saving Sun Microsystems?  Without a way to convince a significantly higher percentage of users to become customers, Sun’s open source success, while great, will get lost against the breakdown of its high-end enterprise systems business.

Marten (& Simon), it’s time for you both to get your tomato-proof goggles and drive the differentiated product strategy again.