Sun and MySQL

I’ve got a lot to update about in the next few days. I’m back in my apartment for the new semester of school, I’ve got a lot of infrastructure work to do here (most importantly getting net-to-net VPN with DynDNS at both ends working from here to home, even if it means bypassing IPcop totally), and I also did some freelance administration over winter break, including some work with SCO OpenServer and some work with DF generation - I also set up my own PDF form filling system, which I’ll be posting in CVS once it’s done. Most importantly, the new mailserver has been up and running for 22 days without any problems. And, by far the most exciting, I’m typing this up on my beautiful new Asus eeePC 4G (which I upgraded to 1 GB RAM) running OpenSuSE 10.3 from a 4 GB SDHC card - A HOWTO will be coming soon. I’m also going to be doing some work with sitemaps on this site - specifically Google sitemaps - and building one map for the blog, Mediawiki, and static content. I’m also testing Google Analytics on my wiki to augment Webalizer. I’ll be updating the blog in the next few days with a lot of content.

I’m also catching up on all of my RSS feeds in Google Reader (yes, I use Google everything - but not mail or Docs) which I mostly ignored over break. I started yesterday with 780 items, and I’m down to 500. I’m also going to attempt to start quick little “links of the day” entries, as it seems that it’s taking me too much time to fully blog on the interesting news of the day, and mylist of things to blog on is getting way too long. (Just as a side note, the only reason I really use del.icio.us is so I can have the firefox plugin sync my bookmarks between the many machines I use.)

Anyway, on to the hottest bit of news today - Sun Microsystems has acqured MySQL AB. Now, I must say that I’m an intern at Sun - the Campus Ambassador to Rutgers University. Essentially, my job is talking to students, professors, and staff and telling them that “Yes, Sun does open source, and they have a few things that should interest you” - in addition to giving tech demos, handing out CDs, and raffling off t-shirts - and even a SunSPOT. I must emphasize that what I say here is my own opinion and nothing more. Heck, I’m an intern, it’s not like I know any more about what’s going on at Sun than anyone else who reads Digg.

Anyway, lots of people are talking about the MySQL acquisition. I’ve heard every possible opinion, but it seems like lots of them are worrying about something along the lines of Sun pushing a Solaris/Apache/MySQL/Java stack on SPARC hardware. Now, I’ve been watching Sun *very* closely for the past year or so. And I’ve been following Jonathan Schwartz pretty closely too, especially his blog post about the MySQL acquisition.

I can’t say anything as a Sun employee (I don’t have anything more to say than anyone else who follows the news) but, personally, I think a lot of people who are worried are just missing the point. Sun used to be a closed, proprietary company pushing Solaris on SPARC. But it seems to me, lately, Sun is all about options. Java’s Free software now. Solaris has been opened as well. I don’t get the feeling that acquiring MySQL is about pushing Solaris instead of Linux, or that it will cause Sun to ignore PostgreSQL or Oracle/Solaris products. It’s about options. Just look at Sun in the news lately - more and more Intel-based commodity hardware, Solaris, Linux, or even Windows on Sun Hardware, Java, OpenSolaris…

I very much get the feeling that Sun/MySQL is not about Sun trying to force LAMP out of the marketplace or, as some have conjectured, to turn MySQL into a mostly proprietary product with minimal free version. It seems to be about options. About diversity. Whatever you want, Sun can help. Everything from million-dollar Enterprise servers running Trusted Solaris and giant Oracle databases to Intel-based 1U or 2U LAMP servers - or even, now, LAMP servers on non-Sun hardware. (Though why anyone with the money to do so wouldn’t buy Sun hardware, I have no idea).

Stay tuned for more.