Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
Dana,
Is this one of your "deep insight" posts?
That said, based on the fact that the only talent you site for Mr Mickos as being "stand out" is his ability to (?): quash, quell and marginalize the protestations and objections by the technical architect and lead developer of a revolutionary product over sale of that product and the for-hire infrastructure and ecosystem of that product's development to an ill-suited suitor.
I would say, as many of my peers would, that the sale of MySQL over many valid and reasonable objections as voiced by Widenius, and MANY others, signaled the end of MySQL's halcion days, care to disagree? Anyone? Voodoo...? Voodoo...? Anyone? Voodoo Economics.
Therefore, the talent you must be citing is Mickos' ability to simultaneously line his own pockets, the pockets of investors, and the "Sand Hill" gang, along with the future pockets of the acquiring companie's CEO and executive core, while also damning a revolutionary product to future obscurity, marketplace abuse, and mediocrity.
Nothing wrong with lining pockets, but via destruction of the item of value is prettu repulsive.
Humm, that's not a talent I would be interested in hiring or putting in charge of my company, but hey, I don't work on Sand Hill road, nor do I work any where near Winter Street in Waltham MA, nor g-d forbid for any agency or even loosely affiliated company of Oracle (although I do love several of the products whose companies they've purchased and havent yet made entirely cost prohibitive).
Be nice if you could do a post about the state of MySQL and it's competitors and how you think Mickos and "The Power of the Schwartz" have done when they are benchmarked against criteria like product innovation and improvement "stewardship" in the wake of recent history rather than using the criteria of how much money they made themselves and their Sand Hill buddies.
Give it a shot, I don't think you'll get in too much trouble or lose any precious life-blood access telling the truth - after all, you don't work on Sand Hill Rd or in Waltham MA either.
Regards,
adam cassel
p.s. Keep up the entertaining and engaging campaign!! And thanks Dana, truly!
When mySQL co-founders Monty Widenius and Marten Mickos forked, it was Monty who made the early headlines with his opposition to the Oracle acquisition of Sun.
(Mickos is shown here in happier times, celebrating mySQL’s purchase of Sun with Jonathan Schwartz. Mickos is on the left, looking like the executive on casual Friday, while Schwartz is the kid who just came off a tennis court.)
Of the two it was Mickos who got the Wall Street cred, probably because he wanted it. Getting someone to pay $1 billion for an open source project, as Sun did for mySQL, will make anyone take notice. He quickly took a perch as entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital.
So it’s no surprise he landed at one of Benchmark’s investments. He has been recruited to be the new CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, the cloud software project that emerged from UC Santa Barbara.
Mickos shoved aside Woody Rollins as CEO. Rollins didn’t jump ship, however. He took the post of chief financial officer.
None of this should surprise anyone. Talent is scarce, and strategic talent is scarcer in open source than hens’ teeth. Mickos has proven he has it, plus a strong dose of realism. His willingness to push back against Widenius’ objections to the Sun-Oracle deal did him no harm on Sand Hill Road.
Now let’s see what he’s got.
