OStatic

A recent interview with Sun's Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green (published yesterday in eWeek) makes for fascinating reading, especially in conjunction with the dustup over Sun's announcement that some MySQL enhancements will not be open-sourced. Understanding how Sun views open source goes a long way toward explaining what's going on, and telegraphing their future strategy.

Green quotes MySQL founder Marten Mickos as saying "There's a difference between organizations that have more time than money and organizations that have more money than time", and goes on to say

There are small bits of technology that are really focused on those organizations that are in full deployment but have more money than time. And so items such as optimization, configuration management, performance capabilitiesβ€”those things that only are valuable when you're in large-scale deploymentβ€”are the kind of things that are available for a fee when you take a subscription for service, training and support, as well as those capabilities.

It seems clear that Sun is dividing consumers of open source software into two groups: hobbyists (or cheapskates) who don't need the high-end features that a company like Sun can deliver into open source projects, and serious users, who are willing to pay real money for open source software to be sure that they get all the bells and whistles. This really isn't anything new; open source companies have been selling service, support, and customization as value-add propositions all along. But the difference is rarely stated so clearly.

Where the disconnect between Sun and some of its open source critics comes is the switch from "use whatever software you need" to "your bank account determines your needs." It's easy to think of cases where organizations could substantially benefit from the sort of high-end services that Sun (and other vendors) keep behind the pay wall - public-interest groups and academic institutions for example - and yet are still in the "has more time than money" class.

While there is a difference between organizations with more money than time and those with more time than money, it's not the one that Sun is implying. Your time/money balance doesn't determine whether you can make good use of particular software features. Rather, it determines how likely an open source vendor (or any other vendor) will be able to extract money from your bank account.

The challenge for Sun (and other vendors) is to walk a line where they are able to sell their high-end offerings without alienating the community that keeps a software package widely used and extended. To the extent that they continue to give back to the community (and Sun has a good record of doing this across multiple projects), they're likely to be able to bank sufficient goodwill to maintain that balance.

Do you think Sun is balancing these efforts appropriately?

• mysql
• Sun