$1 Billion and Not a Thing to Wear
Here's the thing. Sun buys MySQL for One. Billion. Dollars.
Now, I'm not a businessman. At all. I mean, c'mon, I write for a living, how smart of an money-maker is that?
But in all of the hooplah about Sun buying MySQL--and hey, did you hear, that Sun bought MySQL? Because I don't think there's quite enough reporting about it, do you?--I noticed one really weird thing.
In the world of journalism, when you want to take a picture of businessfolk, or the Rotary Club president donating a new swing set to the local elementary school, invariably they settle into the "grip-and-grin" pose. That's reporter-talk for that three-quarter turn to the camera and shake hands pose that just screams "posed."
It's one of those things in the biz, and you sort of just smile and deal with it because, honestly, what else are they going to do?
But take a look at this picture of MySQL's Martin Mickos and Sun's Jonathan Schwartz doing their grip-and-grin. Just look!
Come on, Jonathan! Two captains of industry. One ginormous deal. And you wear a T-shirt to the publicity shot?
Clearly, this deal was a mistake, because Sun can't afford to pay its executives enough salary to even buy polo shirts!
But it's a MySQL t-shirt. You can just about make out their logo.
As someone who does Free Software for a living, I trust much more someone with a t-shirt than someone who wears a suit.. The guy with the t-shirt probably knows something about computers... And I'm the audience here.. (I'm sure he wears a suit when he talks to his investment bankers..)
The picture was taken at 2pm last Sunday, give the guy a break. What were you wearing at 2pm last Sunday?
I like what said about who to trust more. But Sun has really been screwing around with open source for way too long to really figure how how much to trust them still. T-shirt or suite, they've been waffling for too many years. I'm still pissed they bought and killed off those cool box-appliance guys. Cobalt IIRC. They'd be rocking the industry if they were allowed to continue as they were.
Yeah! you said "I write for a living, how smart of an money-maker is that?".. u aint smart at all...
its a mysSQL T-shirt and i think its really cool that sun guy is wearing mySQL shirt. This is +ve, cool and great thinking by the dude. Its reflection of what mySQL means to Sun
One commenter reminded me of the screw-up Sun made with the Cobalt appliances. It made me wonder if Sun can possibly screw-up again with MySQL, as I had forgotten their ability for such calamities.
W. Anderson
wanderson@nac.net
I don't think bashing Sun for its Cobalt murder is fair.
Yes they where closed for a long time. But now they are probably the best friend of FOSS.
openSolaris, openJDK, openOffice and now MySQL. How much more can any company be when it also needs to satisfy its share-holders to survive.
Funny!
Marten gave Jonathan the MySQL shirt as a kind of welcome and a bit of a joke. Jonathan was game and wore it. It's a shirt that is given to new hires to MySQL.