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It's a pretty tricky business buying an open source company. You have to work with the community and existing people to maintain "master" of it. Oracle of cour

It's a pretty tricky business buying an open source company. You have to work with the community and existing people to maintain "master" of it. Oracle of course is not that company and so their subacquisition of mysql via Sun is now being pissed away in its entirety. If I were an investor I might have some questions. *Edit: Sun dropped $1 billion on mysql. That's a lot of money to later just "lose"

arkitaip 14y ago
I think it was a very deliberate strategy by Oracle to undermine open source RDBMs by extinguishing the number one solution if it failed to attract customers to Oracle db. Their major mistake seems to be that they underestimated just how skeptical the foss community is of them - and rightly so - and how fast it can re-group and create alternatives. But you know what I really like? The fact that virtually no startups these days talk Oracle when discussing big data, which used to be the domain that Oracle truly dominated. Seriously, when did you read about Oracle (db) here on HN? It's interesting that Oracle focused so much on fighting open source RDBMs when NoSQL databases were the real threat all along.
- FooBarWidget 14y ago
  Is the fact that almost no startups talk about or use Oracle that much of a problem for Oracle? Those startups wouldn't have generated much revenue for Oracle anyway. Those startups will forever be in search for a free solution.
  - Herbert2 14y ago
    It could be, fast forward ten years and the majority of the smartest minds in the industry will have no experience with your flagship product.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Startups targeting enterprise or government customers might well use Oracle. It's free* to develop on, and something a lot of those sorts of clients use anyway. * Last I checked, Oracle allowed you to use Oracle RDBMS free for "prototype development" but once you were actually generating revenue from that you are supposed to buy the necessary licenses, even for continued development or support purposes.
    - ghshephard 14y ago
      It's still the case - we had a free license from Oracle for the first 3-4 years of our company's life - We just had an account manager call us ever 6-9 months, see how we were doing. Eventually we got some real customers, revenues, and negotiated a several million dollar license purchase + 18%/year maintenance.
    - praptak 14y ago
      > Oracle allowed you to use Oracle RDBMS free for "prototype development" but once you were actually generating revenue from that you are supposed to buy the necessary licenses, even for continued development or support purposes. Hm... I vaguely remember (but it was a really, really long time ago) you could use Oracle for as long as you wanted as long as you didn't process your own or your customers' business data.
  - LordIllidan 14y ago
    What about when startups grow? Take Facebook as an example. Microsoft seems to be doing a good job targeting startups with Bizspark - not sure if Oracle has a similar program.
    - cookiecaper 14y ago
      Microsoft seems to be making an effort with BizSpark, I don't know that I'd call it "a good job" in terms of actually getting startups to adopt MS stacks for the basis of their tech.
  - arkitaip 14y ago
    An entire eco system - many which are at the forefront of big data - disinterested about Oracle's products is cause for concern, yes. And it's not just the startups but every person who reads about and tries to emulate them in the future, people who are now very unlikely to even look at Oracle's offerings let alone use them.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      I don't think those people and corporations matter to Oracle. Oracle doesn't go after startups. Or even companies like Facebook or Dropbox etc. It goes after: government agencies, banks, insurance companies, multi-nationals, huge retail chains, logistics, payroll, and such. And it does a killing at it. Web style big-data are not Oracle's domain. And it's not like those startup people will afterwards (when they "grow up") go work in the enterprise and use Mongo and MariaDB there. It's just different kind of problem domains altogether.
  - elteto 14y ago
    Only a few, but some of those startups will become the software giants of tomorrow and they will not use anything from the Oracle ecosystem. Something to be really worried about.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      >Only a few, but some of those startups will become the software giants of tomorrow and they will not use anything from the Oracle ecosystem. Something to be really worried about. As per my comment above, Oracle doesn't care about those startups, whether they become the "software giants of tomorrow" or not. They sell to government agencies, logistics, payroll, multi-nationals, banks, finance, insurance companies, etc. Those sectors do not overlap with the startups using MariaDB, Mongo, or what have you. Totally different problem domains and people.
- javert 14y ago
  Oracle (and IBM) will continue to dominate in industries that are not particularly subject to competition (especially not from startups), due to regulatory capture. In particular, this is banking (an extremely heavily controlled industry), and telecom (regulation here is mainly just to keep out competition, not as much to control).
  - gav 14y ago
    This is a really narrow-minded perspective, and quite incorrect. Oracle and IBM will continue to do well in big organisations where the company isn't IT-focused, and where the license cost makes sense. I see a lot of big Oracle HA configurations where downtime or data-loss is unacceptable (and very pricey), where management wouldn't risk their careers choosing something that a start-up would consider. You're going to see more open-source based solutions on the periphery, but core systems are a whole different thing.
    - javert 14y ago
      > This is a really narrow-minded perspective, and quite incorrect. I agree that it's sort of narrow-minded, in that there are reasons to use Oracle and IBM outside of the industries and use cases I singled out. I'm not sure why it's incorrect, though (feel free to enlighten me). where the license cost makes sense. I see a lot of big Oracle HA configurations where downtime or data-loss is unacceptable (and very pricey), where management wouldn't risk their careers choosing something that a start-up would consider. Is it really true that Oracle's products are superior if you're going for "no downtime, no data loss, cost not so important"? I don't have any experience in that arena. But I would expect an open source options to be competitive. If the Oracle products are really worth it, what explains that? Is it that you can get Oracle people on the phone at any hour whose sole job is to fix it, and there isn't similar open source support? (If so, why isn't there? Red Hat plays this role for Linux.) Is it that Oracle software is just too complicated and well-done and smart to be replicated in the open source world? "In theory," that should not be the case, but maybe the database equivalents of Linus Torvalds always end up just working for Oracle, or something.
      - 14y ago
- mootothemax 14y ago
  A good number of my consulting clients start off by telling me they think that they'll need Oracle. When it comes to the people in charge of the money, it seems Oracle's not doing too bad a job.
- mikevm 14y ago
  Wasn't it PostgreSQL the RDBMS that was competing with Oracle anyway? And PostgreSQL has been doing fine lately.

arkitaip 14y ago

I think it was a very deliberate strategy by Oracle to undermine open source RDBMs by extinguishing the number one solution if it failed to attract customers to Oracle db. Their major mistake seems to be that they underestimated just how skeptical the foss community is of them - and rightly so - and how fast it can re-group and create alternatives. But you know what I really like? The fact that virtually no startups these days talk Oracle when discussing big data, which used to be the domain that Oracle truly dominated. Seriously, when did you read about Oracle (db) here on HN? It's interesting that Oracle focused so much on fighting open source RDBMs when NoSQL databases were the real threat all along.

FooBarWidget 14y ago
Is the fact that almost no startups talk about or use Oracle that much of a problem for Oracle? Those startups wouldn't have generated much revenue for Oracle anyway. Those startups will forever be in search for a free solution.
- Herbert2 14y ago
  It could be, fast forward ten years and the majority of the smartest minds in the industry will have no experience with your flagship product.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Startups targeting enterprise or government customers might well use Oracle. It's free* to develop on, and something a lot of those sorts of clients use anyway. * Last I checked, Oracle allowed you to use Oracle RDBMS free for "prototype development" but once you were actually generating revenue from that you are supposed to buy the necessary licenses, even for continued development or support purposes.
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    It's still the case - we had a free license from Oracle for the first 3-4 years of our company's life - We just had an account manager call us ever 6-9 months, see how we were doing. Eventually we got some real customers, revenues, and negotiated a several million dollar license purchase + 18%/year maintenance.
  - praptak 14y ago
    > Oracle allowed you to use Oracle RDBMS free for "prototype development" but once you were actually generating revenue from that you are supposed to buy the necessary licenses, even for continued development or support purposes. Hm... I vaguely remember (but it was a really, really long time ago) you could use Oracle for as long as you wanted as long as you didn't process your own or your customers' business data.
- LordIllidan 14y ago
  What about when startups grow? Take Facebook as an example. Microsoft seems to be doing a good job targeting startups with Bizspark - not sure if Oracle has a similar program.
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    Microsoft seems to be making an effort with BizSpark, I don't know that I'd call it "a good job" in terms of actually getting startups to adopt MS stacks for the basis of their tech.
- arkitaip 14y ago
  An entire eco system - many which are at the forefront of big data - disinterested about Oracle's products is cause for concern, yes. And it's not just the startups but every person who reads about and tries to emulate them in the future, people who are now very unlikely to even look at Oracle's offerings let alone use them.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    I don't think those people and corporations matter to Oracle. Oracle doesn't go after startups. Or even companies like Facebook or Dropbox etc. It goes after: government agencies, banks, insurance companies, multi-nationals, huge retail chains, logistics, payroll, and such. And it does a killing at it. Web style big-data are not Oracle's domain. And it's not like those startup people will afterwards (when they "grow up") go work in the enterprise and use Mongo and MariaDB there. It's just different kind of problem domains altogether.
- elteto 14y ago
  Only a few, but some of those startups will become the software giants of tomorrow and they will not use anything from the Oracle ecosystem. Something to be really worried about.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    >Only a few, but some of those startups will become the software giants of tomorrow and they will not use anything from the Oracle ecosystem. Something to be really worried about. As per my comment above, Oracle doesn't care about those startups, whether they become the "software giants of tomorrow" or not. They sell to government agencies, logistics, payroll, multi-nationals, banks, finance, insurance companies, etc. Those sectors do not overlap with the startups using MariaDB, Mongo, or what have you. Totally different problem domains and people.
javert 14y ago
Oracle (and IBM) will continue to dominate in industries that are not particularly subject to competition (especially not from startups), due to regulatory capture. In particular, this is banking (an extremely heavily controlled industry), and telecom (regulation here is mainly just to keep out competition, not as much to control).
- gav 14y ago
  This is a really narrow-minded perspective, and quite incorrect. Oracle and IBM will continue to do well in big organisations where the company isn't IT-focused, and where the license cost makes sense. I see a lot of big Oracle HA configurations where downtime or data-loss is unacceptable (and very pricey), where management wouldn't risk their careers choosing something that a start-up would consider. You're going to see more open-source based solutions on the periphery, but core systems are a whole different thing.
  - javert 14y ago
    > This is a really narrow-minded perspective, and quite incorrect. I agree that it's sort of narrow-minded, in that there are reasons to use Oracle and IBM outside of the industries and use cases I singled out. I'm not sure why it's incorrect, though (feel free to enlighten me). where the license cost makes sense. I see a lot of big Oracle HA configurations where downtime or data-loss is unacceptable (and very pricey), where management wouldn't risk their careers choosing something that a start-up would consider. Is it really true that Oracle's products are superior if you're going for "no downtime, no data loss, cost not so important"? I don't have any experience in that arena. But I would expect an open source options to be competitive. If the Oracle products are really worth it, what explains that? Is it that you can get Oracle people on the phone at any hour whose sole job is to fix it, and there isn't similar open source support? (If so, why isn't there? Red Hat plays this role for Linux.) Is it that Oracle software is just too complicated and well-done and smart to be replicated in the open source world? "In theory," that should not be the case, but maybe the database equivalents of Linus Torvalds always end up just working for Oracle, or something.
    - 14y ago
mootothemax 14y ago
A good number of my consulting clients start off by telling me they think that they'll need Oracle. When it comes to the people in charge of the money, it seems Oracle's not doing too bad a job.
mikevm 14y ago
Wasn't it PostgreSQL the RDBMS that was competing with Oracle anyway? And PostgreSQL has been doing fine lately.