[General] Sun to buy MySQL for $1 billion

[Burhan Khalid]

Majed B. wrote:
> Thanks to Mr. Burhan, I realized that facebook is running on Apache as
> well. (checked with curl -D header.txt facebook.com) .. I thought it
> was a Microsoft house, but MS did buy a share of Facebook (5%).
> [http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+facebook+site%3Aslashdot.org&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8]

Facebook is one of the shining stars of PHP + MySQL + Linux (aka LAMP) 
stack; one of the few and far between.

> Recently, facebook acquired Plaxo, which is responsible for OpenID.
> So, now some major Open-Source software is coming to the hands of
> known entities, and hopefully, will become mainstream and stay open,
> as it was before acquisitions.

The beauty of OpenID is that there are many implementations out there. 
Even .com giant NetworkSolutions has their own OpenID service (which is 
free for end users -- called PIP).

> 
> Mr. Burhan,
>   I'm not quite sure that Oracle didn't get a good deal out of BEA.
> Middleware is not a small area, and a lot of organizations &
> governments run on middleware, like BEA & WebSphere.
> In fact, the ministry of interior has a deal with IBM to implement its
> portals using WebSphere, which provides portlets, mashups, document
> management systems, content management systems, and a lot more,
> (without mentioning AJAX support for all these).
> Check out the areas WebSphere tackles:
> http://www-306.ibm.com/software/websphere/

Yes, there is middleware (good middleware); and then there is BEA :) I 
think Oracle's strategy is to eat up software vendors with all the cash 
its got and to lock in customers to its proprietary stack; which it 
never fails to pit against Linux stacks; and honestly if you ask me 
Oracle's push into Linux is more a slap at RH for acquiring Jboss than 
well meaning attempt at championing the cause of Linux.

RH + Jboss vs. IBM + Websphere (as you mentioned above)

> I believe this acquisition of BEA puts a threat on IBM, since now
> Oracle can fight it in the DB & Middleware areas, but judging by
> Oracle's lame approaches & very-high prices, there's a possibility
> that they'd fail.

This is the reason why I really don't like Oracle "lame approaches and 
very high prices". Oracle never really had a strong foothold in the 
middleware space; lets see how this turns out. Competition -- well, true 
competition is always good for consumers.

> It would be nice to see more competitors, so that consumers get the
> benefit of reduced prices, but some competitors don't know their heads
> from their knees...

These competitors -- I love them, because they pay for high priced 
consultants ;)
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