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Larry Ellison is not happy today. Edit: let me explain. Larry bought mysql to save oracle from being outcompeted by a young entrepreneur. Who left after 2 year

by zibzab 5y ago

Larry Ellison is not happy today. Edit: let me explain. Larry bought mysql to save oracle from being outcompeted by a young entrepreneur. Who left after 2 years to create an even more competent DB. To add insult to the injury, this market value is below what they paid for mysql 15 years ago, which makes Larry look incompetent.

ashvardanian 5y ago
That is hilarious. For reference, Sun acquired MySQL AB in February 2008 for $1 billion.
- kerblang 5y ago
  And Oracle bought Sun in 2010; Widenius got mad and created MariaDB the same day, apparently out of spite. (I don't think any of the characters were particularly ethical, smart or otherwise commendable... they just did what people do)
0des 5y ago
look incompetent?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
slim 5y ago
to be fair, market value should have been obviously much higher when mariadb was not around. I would say his error was tactical : oracle is probably not capable of growing an opensource product which makes that acquisition a bad move
imjk 5y ago
This is a bad take. Oracle today is worth $216B. Over the last 15 years Oracle, under the leadership of Ellison, has grown 5x in value, returning significant shareholder value. I personally very much dislike Oracle and its products, but I have to respect Larry Ellison for his performance as an executive.
evanelias 5y ago
Your comment doesn't make sense. MySQL was originally purchased by Sun, not Oracle. Although Oracle did acquire Innobase Oy (makers of InnoDB, the most popular storage engine in both MySQL and MariaDB) prior to this. Oracle later purchased Sun, which included other valuable properties (e.g. Java) in addition to MySQL. Naturally this would be a more expensive acquisition than just MySQL itself. Regardless, the current enterprise value of MySQL (meaning, the MySQL business unit under Oracle) would depend primarily on Oracle's MySQL revenue. This really has no relation whatsoever, in any conceivable way, to the initial listing price of MariaDB's SPAC. These are separate databases with separate userbases, separate cloud DBaaS offerings, separate support contract businesses, etc.

by zibzab 5y ago

ashvardanian 5y ago

That is hilarious. For reference, Sun acquired MySQL AB in February 2008 for $1 billion.

kerblang 5y ago
And Oracle bought Sun in 2010; Widenius got mad and created MariaDB the same day, apparently out of spite. (I don't think any of the characters were particularly ethical, smart or otherwise commendable... they just did what people do)

0des 5y ago

look incompetent?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

slim 5y ago

to be fair, market value should have been obviously much higher when mariadb was not around. I would say his error was tactical : oracle is probably not capable of growing an opensource product which makes that acquisition a bad move

imjk 5y ago

This is a bad take. Oracle today is worth $216B. Over the last 15 years Oracle, under the leadership of Ellison, has grown 5x in value, returning significant shareholder value. I personally very much dislike Oracle and its products, but I have to respect Larry Ellison for his performance as an executive.

evanelias 5y ago

Your comment doesn't make sense. MySQL was originally purchased by Sun, not Oracle. Although Oracle did acquire Innobase Oy (makers of InnoDB, the most popular storage engine in both MySQL and MariaDB) prior to this. Oracle later purchased Sun, which included other valuable properties (e.g. Java) in addition to MySQL. Naturally this would be a more expensive acquisition than just MySQL itself. Regardless, the current enterprise value of MySQL (meaning, the MySQL business unit under Oracle) would depend primarily on Oracle's MySQL revenue. This really has no relation whatsoever, in any conceivable way, to the initial listing price of MariaDB's SPAC. These are separate databases with separate userbases, separate cloud DBaaS offerings, separate support contract businesses, etc.