Oracle to buy Sun for $9.50 a share

CNN Money ^ | April 20, 2009 | Ben Rooney

[Mike Fieschko]

Oracle get MySQL as well.

[brownsfan]

“Oracle get MySQL as well.”

I thought MySQL was freeware? Sort of like Java. So, ownership is almost meaningless?

[Glenn]

It’s only money.

[krb]

Is there a Linux port to the Sun workstation?

[krb]

“MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, now a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems,[3] which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. The project’s source code is available under terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL

[brownsfan]

Thanks.

Bottom line will be that MySQL won’t be killed by a database company that has every reason to want to kill it.

[TChris]

Is there a Linux port to the Sun workstation?

Sun's Linux Offerings

[krb]

They don’t really have a good reason to kill it. Oracle’s products are way too high end for what people use MySQL for. Also, people are migrating to PostgreSQL anyway, which is totally open source:

http://www.postgresql.org/

[krb]

Nice!

[TChris]

Also, people are migrating to PostgreSQL anyway, which is totally open source:

I can't figure out why Firebird hasn't caught on more widely.

I use it exclusively for all my development work. It's a mature, scalable and robust SQL database. At LEAST the equivalent of MS SQL Server in my experience.

FirebirdSQL

[Mike Fieschko]

I thought MySQL was freeware? Sort of like Java. So, ownership is almost meaningless?

MySQL is GPLed software. Sun offered support, and some of the MySQL people went to Sun when Sun bought MySQL AB, though some have since left Sun. Oracle's products are, in some cases, direct competitors to MySQL.

If a company owns the code and employs the coders, that company can significantly control development and deployment.

[pikachu]

Todays starts the annual MySQL Users Conference and early response is not good. I work for MySQL (and now Sun) and have had several customers catch me in the hall ways asking what is going on and if they should not panic.

[krb]

If someone were to pick up the Python module and carry it forward I bet you’d see more usage:

http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=python

[bmwcyle]

Oracle has a bad habit of over charging for every thing.

[brownsfan]

“They don’t really have a good reason to kill it. “

Sure they do. Oracle has dabbled in desktop DBs in the past. If Oracle could get into that market and make it a gateway to their Enterprise DB they’d do it in a second.

I realize Oracle’s current DB stuff is generally high end, but they do have that small office version. Oracle is an interesting company. Their DB is top shelf, but painfully expensive. The rest of their stuff, the middleware, portal, etc. Junk. Absolute junk.

[bmwcyle]

ping

[Mike Fieschko]

Is there a Linux port to the Sun workstation?

Not sure what you mean. Linux runs on x64 and SPARC chips, but I expect you already know that.

[krb]

Nope, I didn’t know that. The last time I used a Sun computer was before I got into Linux, and I never bothered to check into using it on a Sparc machine.

[Mike Fieschko]

Linux SPARC-HOWTO.

Debian SPARC Port.

[mbs6]

Maybe Oracle will finally release a Java compiler which emits actual executable rather than bytecode. I love programming in Java, but in my opinion the drawback of having to install a JVM on every machine, and making sure it’s the correct version of the JVM, is significant. Performance would also be improved, as Java programs are not overly speedy. And yes, I do know about Excelsior Jet.