Sun buys Oracle!

Sorry. Every time I see a story like "Oracle buys Sun", I think of a meeting I attended with NCR, just after they'd been bought by AT&T. The NCR guys sat there, and told me their company had just bought AT&T. If you think I'm obnoxious on the web, let's just say those guys did not offer to take me to lunch.

So, why is it important that Oracle bought Sun Microsystems? In a word: MySQL. Oh, forget Java - that's a language on the way out. It will need some serious strategic realignment to be the juggernaught it used to be. No, Microsoft's inanimate efforts at competing are not going to take over the world. There will be a little chaos, and Java will continue its quest to be, well, something other than an academic exercise.

I know, I know. I can actually program in Java. I actually like the language. But a computer language is a little more than its fans, or the applications that use it. A modern computer language is a religion, a way of thinking and a cultural ethos. All wrapped into a few syntax rules and conventions. :-)

At its heart, Java is an academic exercise. C#, Microsoft's inane offering, is little more than a knee-jerk reaction. From the knee of the recently deceased. Heck, Microsoft hasn't had a good idea since they purchased the company that built Visual Basic.

Well? Have they?

MySQL is important. Actually, considering its importance to the web, it's of international interest, and of strategic interest to so many, I doubt you could actually count them. It's a fundamental part of LAMP, WAMP and the idiotically named "MAMP". Now, I could be an ornery bugger - like my "friends" over at Questioning Transphobia - and insist you "Just Fucking Google It", if you don't know what those acronyms mean. But, being the sort of chap that believes that when you use an unfamiliar term, you're duty bound to explain it - I'll explain it. :-)

Even if that equates to cisgender privilege. Whatever that is.

LAMP is "Linux", "Apache", "MySQL" and "PHP". Linux is the open source operating system we all know and love. Yes we do love it. Ever chat with a linux bigot fan? They're as bad as the genderqueer crowd. Apache is the web server software; it got that name because the original developers were forever patching, fixing, their software. It became so good it became the default choice, but in the meantime it seemed like it was forever being patched. So the developers would call it a "a patchy server". :-) MySQL is an open source database. At this point I will have to assume you know the difference between open source and closed source software. Open source, you can read the instructions to the computer; closed source, you can't. PHP is a cute name; it means "Personal Home Page" (or it used to, when I started learning it) and was invented a while back, basically as a way to change web pages in response to external inputs. This is called "dynamic" because computer science majors have never met an existing process they couldn't rename.

Sun recently, in a baffling strategic move, purchased the company that owns MySQL. Baffling because it wasn't their (Sun's) primary business, and also because it made sense only to those who would get rich from the sudden influx of Sun's money. I can't figure out why Sun bought MySQL. It literally made no sense.

Now, Oracle buying Sun - that makes sense. Not because Oracle wants to get into the hardware market. Intel has that wrapped up, and even AMD is having a few problems. Interestingly, Sun were the ones who kick-started Intel's rise to fame, fortune and monopoly. Sun's founders had a neat concept - the RISK chip. Computers work with central processing chips; these devices consume lots of electricity, produce staggering amounts of heat, generate amazing amounts of press and almost rabid enthusiasm in CPU fans and return - what you see on your screen. (By CPU fans, I don't mean those amazingly complex devices some put on the CPU's. I mean the people who put those amazingly complex and expensive devices on top of the CPU's. :-) )

Does Oracle, well, Larry Ellison, want to get into the hardware market? I don't think so. He used to have a Richard Branson complex, but I think he's had some therapy for that. He's not made a move like this for, oh, ever. ... Oh yes he has. He, just like Steve Balmer over at Microsoft, is in the habit of buying companies that have good ideas. Ones that might add to the central product of the firm. For Balmer it's Windows. For Ellison, it's Oracle. What is Oracle? A database. What is MySQL? A ... database!

I knew you'd get it.

Sun paid, if memory serves, one billion dollars, or thereabouts, for MySQL. John Dvorak, the well-loved [sic] industry watcher and pundit said of the merger, "The Sun-MySQL deal stinks". Erm, I guess he's not a fan of the acquisition.

He wasn't the only that couldn't figure out how a company that gave its main product away could be worth a billion dollars. No one else could figure it out, either. (I don't know their P/E ratio, but I doubt it sustained an evaluation of a billion dollars.)

Oracle has, by dint of merely observing the obvious, managed to put itself in the position of removing its main competition from the market. Steve Balmer must be furious. Microsoft has a database product called, er, yeah, it's on the tip of my tongue, oh what is it?! Well, it hardly matters - no one but Microsofties know what it is, or care.

Oh, Oracle won't kill MySQL. If they have sense, that is. (The record is mixed.) No, they'll simply try and push it in the "right" direction. I don't know what that will be - not being clairvoyant, I'm at a loss to say what Larry Ellison thinks. Considering some of the things he's said in the past, I'm not taking any position on whether he thinks, or not.

Here's what I think might happen: Java will develop some astounding database connectivity. It won't be any good, but will be blazingly fast against an Oracle database. The same query run against a Microsoft database will be measured with a calendar, or an antitrust lawsuit. Actually, it will be okay in response time - not quite as good, but not bad enough to generate much more than dark mutterings. Java will also change direction. It will cease to be an academic exercise, and will become an excuse for a language that looks like it was derived from C#. Which has some interesting philosophical similarities to Java... Oy, this one could boost the sales of Excedrin. Oracle has never met a competitor to Microsoft it either can't help screwing up, or emulating the worst of the Microsoft product with. I almost said "it can't help shafting", but I decided against such accurate old-fashioned wording.

Some might wonder about Solaris. A superb operating system. Absolutely wonderful. I love it. I've loved it since the moment I first laid eyes on it. I often thought of Linux as a Solaris wanna-be. It wasn't until I came across the Mac's OS X that I saw any alternative. When I studied up on the OS X innards, I kept my admiration of Solaris. (Picture this: a guy, sopping wet with sweat, grungy with road grime, on a blistering hot midweek afternoon, studying two thick books about OS internals. That was me, at the Princeton/Meadow Lane Barnes & Noble. I was reading, and comparing OS X and Solaris. For a blog post I never wrote!) :-)

When I was in charge of "important decisions", I always leaned to Sun for the really heavy, must-stay-up or my job is down the tubes sort of servers. Except the MS Exchange servers; I lost that political battle. Sun Microsystems were always a good pick - they produced reliable, tested systems. Heck, I heard they were in the back of battle tanks - that's a fairly hostile environment! (I also heard of the US Navy destroyer that was powered by Windows NT. It had to be towed back to port, apparently.) What I knew, know, is that Sun was a good company.

I even interviewed there, once. That was a disaster. They flew this guy down from Boston, and he was a techie. I was a mid-level manager. He talked tech, I talked gibberish. Really. It wasn't management-speak, which is a dialect of gibberish. I spoke true gibberish. The only other interview that was worse was the one I had at Bertlesmann, the record company. The interviewer had a strong accent, and I couldn't understand a word he said. Literally. Him: "Tell me about your [indecipherable, even after multiple tries]" Me: "Tell you how crazy I am?" I did... Oops. :-)

I made up for the Sun interview by buying a few million dollars worth of Sun servers. Bertlesmann would have to survive without me. (So far, and mystifyingly, they are... :-) ) The Sun guy bought the first round of drinks when I left the ratings company; it cost a fortune! (I heard $300, for the first round! In the late '90's!) I prattle.

So, why did Oracle decide to buy Sun? Not for the hardware. It bought it for the strategic possibilities of Java, and MySQL - it's main competition. Will it upend the market? Not really. Not unless Oracle does something amazingly stupid with MySQL. There are no guarantees they won't. But one thing we can expect: the end of true competition in the CPU market.

That's why I think it's a bad idea. Intel just isn't that innovative a company - it always needs its competition. And with AMD on the ropes, Sun's RISK chips are staggeringly fast; Solaris is superb, and Java is a computer language in desperate need of a strategic direction. Oracle are not likely to help with any of those. As for MySQL - I don't think it's the end of the product. But if I ran a corporate data center that relied on it, or relied on its competition to keep my Oracle prices lower - I'd be making some important decisions about the future. Right about... Now.

If I ran an Oracle/Microsoft shop - I'd seriously look at either merging the databases, or replacing one or the other. Two monopolistic corporations, in one data center? Not a good mix. Think "oil and water" - and you have the job of figuring out which is lighter. Because next year, your support costs are going to rise.

For the rest of us, trying to figure out their blog or forum databases - I'd start looking at the various content management system forums, and try to guess which way Oracle will go with MySQL. If they keep it open source, and developed - fine. I wouldn't count on it, though. Oracle has never been nice to its competition - and MySQL is its biggest competitor, yet. Look at the alternatives, see if anyone is developing against them.

It is, basically, up to the open source community to protect its intellectual investment in MySQL. Oracle has never liked the open source movement.

That's the danger of this merger.

On the other hand - if Oracle screws up on MySQL - an alternative will be along, in short order. Thank the heavens for capitalism. It sure as heck works.

Carolyn Ann