Monday, January 21, 2008

Sun Acquires MySQL.

Why isn't the Open Source community protesting?

Where are the demonstrations?

Like the JBoss sellout almost a year ago. Nothing is said.

I wonder how much Martin Mickos made on this deal personally? The company was sold for over $1 billion. Did it make more than $60 million in revenue last year? Was it profitable? Or did the last two rounds of angel funding just manage to keep it alive?

How much of the $1 billion will go back to the Open Source Community?

Zero.

And therein lies the irony.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080116/tc_infoworld/94628;_ylt=AuY9uRHV5FNT737oee.BhMrw7rEF

Fanatic open source proponents who enjoy condemning commercial software vendors for charging for software need to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. For open source vendors have been exploiting them far worse than any commercial software vendor ever could.

Commercial software vendors pay wages. Developers get paid for the work they do. The commercial software vendors own the code.

Open Source software companies don't pay wages. Developers don't get paid for the work they do. The Open Source community owns the code. But the concept of MySQL just got sold out from under them for over $1 billion dollars.

If I was a developer who contributed to the MySQL code I'd be strongly asking; "Where is my dividend cheque?"

Martin Mickos is much more of a capitalist than Bill Gates ever was. He made his first billion from a software company much faster than Bill Gates and he managed to figure out how to run a software company without paying most of his developers.

Even Bill Gates wasn't able to pull that one off.

Congratulations Martin!

Remember Icarus from Greek mythology Martin? He flew to close to the SUN, his wings melted and he fell back to the earth. Could you be a modern day Icarus? Brought back to earth by a modern day class action law suit? I can't wait to find out how this chapter of Open Source mythology ends.

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

No comments: