Thousands (or Millions) of Programmers Needed!!!

I wonder if this ad could possibly be in the future for ANTs.

After reading the Sun Micro press release regarding their purchase of MySQL, I can't help but ponder the idea of an Open Source business model for ANTs. I must admit that I don't understand the intricacies of the open source income engine, giving away your product to make money, but I have been trying to get up to speed on how that might be profitable for ANTs.


One thing I do understand about Open Source is that Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL has made a ton of money giving away MySQL . According to the Sun Micro press release at the time of their purchasing MySQL, "More than 100 million copies of MySQL's high-performance open source database software have been downloaded and distributed and an additional 50,000 copies are downloaded daily." I suspect that being given away is not the "big secret" in the MySQL story, but its success was a result of being a product in great demand with superior support. That, in turn, lead to widespread acceptability and use in the open source community. The new and disruptive characteristics of the ACS would surely attract the curiosity of the open source community as well. Then, with stellar support from ANTs, added functionality provided by this hoard of zealous developers and sufficient demand by large enterprise users the open source business model could be put to the test yet again.

In a MIT Sloan Management Review article that I found very interesting, Mr Mickos gives insight into how the open source model has worked for MySQL . Part of the secret is to have 12 Million programmers that require no salaries, no benefits, no work spaces and no tax liabilities.... All working on YOUR product and bragging about it.. What an employers Nirvana.

And as if the success of MySQL wasn't enough, Mr Mickos has now orchestrated the sale of his $50 million per year open source company for almost $1 Billion. My bet is that with the ACS in it's quiver, MySQL would have one heck of a value proposition to offer the 100's of thousands of existing applications sitting on proprietary databases costing customers millions in support each year. Seems to me that Sun Micro will certainly recognize the fit that the ACS has with MySQL in accelerating this migration of there competitor's databases onto MySQL. Oracle certainly has recognized the speed, ease and reliability of the ACS in moving Sybase applications to Oracle. So?? Open source or not....

Maybe Marten Mickos can give ANTs a hint at how the ACS can be given away and money be made in the process. But then again, maybe Oracle doesn't want that to happen. Either way, I will enjoy being part of a win win combination.

Enough babbling from me, tell me where I'm wrong.......if I'm wrong.

~~David~~