MySQL: the Australian connection

Sam Varghese
Monday, 19 May 2008 23:33

Opinion and Analysis

After MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems, there was a lot of speculation as to how this would affect the database company. An announcement, recently, that some plugins would be available only to users of the enterprise edition of MySQL - a decision that was reversed - did occasion some fears among the open source community that MySQL was changing.

Lentz doesn't see anything wrong with making plugins available only to enterprise users. "Sun didn't make the announcement, it was a MySQL announcement. From my sources, the people at Sun didn't know about it, it was a plan that had been developed at MySQL prior to the acquisition. A couple of enhancements of the backup systems in MySQL 6 were to be made available only to subscribers of MySQL Enterprise. That was the actual announcement, it was made at a partner meeting at the MySQL conference  so it wasn't a community audience, it was a business audience. Nevertheless, there are always community people listening, and the way in which those enhancements were explained wasn't brilliant, maybe it wasn't even made clear that they were just plugins, but then again one often has to simplify things for the sake of presentation. I don't think Sun was particularly pleased with the announcement. These plugins will now be made free but other plugins in the future may be made available only to enterprise users. It's a valid business decision. it would have also been a valid business decision not to have these particular plugins available free."

He says he would have probably respected MySQL more if the company had come out and said they were going to go ahead with this closed source bit - "it's just a plug-in, to hell with you and we'll just get on with it, it's a valid business decision."

All the money that is being thrown at anything with open source in its name these days reminds Lentz of the dot-com boom, though he doesn't necessarily think that the investments are all going to turn sour. "Just like the first dot-com boom a lot of money is being pushed into projects that aren't going to work out. But that's not necessarily different from any other investment. People make lots of investments and some of them work out and some of them don't - that's the risk they take.

"In some cases, I think people are getting a little silly about open source and with web 2.0-style things. Some ideas are good and may be useful in a larger context and maybe they could be monetised if they are implemented real quick. But just being popular and cool doesn't make something into a revenue stream or a business model. In many, many cases, I have no idea where the business is going to come from. Advertising - putting Google ads on your site - is not a business model. It is a revenue stream and won't last. It is tied to this critical mass that you have."

He is convinced, however, that depending on venture capital at the outset to launch such businesses is a mistake. "What I am worried about, is people having an idea and then chasing venture capital to be able to develop it further. I think that if they could make it ready and take it to market really quickly with minimal resources, they would be in a better position, both in terms of time and financially later on.  Once you take on venture capital, you spend a lot of time dealing with that, rather than getting the product ready. A venture capitalist wants to have insurance in terms of the intellectual property which means you are going to spend a lot of time -  not mucking around with software patents, but just to show the VC that you own this stuff and you can sell it later. It distracts you from getting to market quickly which is the key thing you have to do. It also affects the business trajectory - the venture capitalist wants X times the money, that's what they aim for, they have a timeframe, maybe five years, within which they want to get that much money.