Sun is buying MySQL for almost a billion dollars. This looks like a big gamble. Why are they doing this? Is MySQL worth that much?

Implications: Sun is buying MySQL for almost a billion dollars. This looks like a big gamble. Why are they doing this? Is MySQL worth that much?

Analysis: So why is Sun buying an open source database company and is it really worth 1 billion dollars?

Sun is buying MySQL (the most well known open source database company (think Oracle type of databases) because it adds to its strategy of becoming a software company that has all of its software be open source. (open source means that anyone with an Internet connection can get access to the source and make changes to it). They open sourced their own operating system Solaris, a few years ago they bought what is now known as Open Office (a Microsoft Office like set of applications) and they have also open sourced their new file system called ZFS. So that is the strategy, and with this strategy they are taking on companies like Red Hat and yes Microsoft and Oracle.

The second question is "Why is MySQL worth this much"? The answer is simple: most if not all Linux based systems out there (and there are quite a few) have something called the LAMP stack, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (or Perl or Python). The so-called LAMP stack is what makes Linux such a hot "item" in the software/systems market. With the acquisition of MySQL Sun will own one of the four "letters" in LAMP. Off the other "letters" only A for Apache could be for sale as well eventually. The letters L for Linux and P for PHP/Perl/Python do not have any companies behind them that can be bought.