Обсуждение: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] MySQL gets $19.5 MM

I am the CTO of a venture funded company and I can
tell you that the last thing on a VC's mind in this
market is patience.  Forgive me if I am repeating
common knowledge here but their first moves will be to
install new management and get the company to
profitability.  ASAP.

Technology and features be notwithstanding - they will
do whatever it takes including closing off parts of
the source code.  Expect to see a fork in the codebase
if at all allowed by the current license by the
original developers or someone close.

Ironically this may represent a golden opportunity
here for PostgreSQL.  Not right away of course but
over the next couple of years.  VC's require
profitability and profitability requires revenue.
Revenue requires deadlines, and the first thing you
lose with deadlines are features and quality.

With $20M in funding their main competitor will be
Oracle.  And right now I won't even consider Oracle
because it's just too expensive, as MySQL will be
soon.

Regards,
Gunther

>> Er... I said PostgreSQL was the superior product.
Re-read the original post.
>
>>> To be completely blunt:  MySQL the database will
not easily survive the demise
>>> of MySQL AB.
>
>> Agreed.  But $19MM ought to buy them a little more
time.

>Really? How patient are VC's who invest around 20
>megadollars these
>days? In the GB case the business modell got changed
>and the CEO
>replaced even before we had real offices.

>Now MySQL has to ramp up business to satisfy the
>investors and at the
>same time they have to develop another database to
>satisfy SAP ... how
>much time will be left to satisfy all the open source
>users with respect
>to the promised features "in the old product line"?
>Renaming the
>existing SAPDB into MySQL doesn't give any existing
>MySQL user more
>functionality. At least not in a way they couldn't do
>it right now
>without this naming confusion.

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gunther hust wrote:
>
> Technology and features be notwithstanding - they will
> do whatever it takes including closing off parts of
> the source code.  Expect to see a fork in the codebase
> if at all allowed by the current license by the
> original developers or someone close.

That original developer would be the current CTO and one of the original
co-founders of the company. If he's not having a big argument with his
money, these $19.5M are at least supposed to secure his investment and
his job. Don't expect a fork from that side.

Also a fork would mean that you take away the possibility for someone to
link their proprietary application against the client library since that
is GPL'd too as someone else pointed out.

Third MySQL AB makes it pretty clear that a fork of the code base will
not be allowed to use any trademarks of the company.

With no core knowledge in the server, no client library for the current
commercial users and a big handicap in getting the fork recognized as
such, I don't see a "successfull" fork anytime soon.


Jan

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